Stamford, Connecticut: From Traditional Downtown to Edge City

Since undergoing ‘urban renewal’ in the late 1960s and 1970s, when 72% of the downtown land coverage by buildings was demolished and replaced with uses intended to restore the city’s vital commercial and retail center, the center of Stamford, Connecticut has become a model “Edge City” rather than a traditional downtown. At the heart of downtown lies Stamford Town Center, a behemoth shopping mall with 853,000 square feet of leasable space, equivalent to 20 acres or 15 football fields. Surrounding this are numerous office towers, often constructed atop multi- story parking garages. The number of parking spaces in downtown Stamford tripled between 1965 and 2010. The area had six times as many off-street parking spaces (33,540) as residents (5,571) in 2010. This is also equivalent to 1.4 parking spaces for every one of the almost 24,000 downtown workers. An examination of city records around the time of the urban renewal distinctly shows that city officials were intentional in their efforts to accommodate automobiles to attract business and retail. A key to downtown development has been the city’s proximity both to New York City and to amenities such as country clubs and suburban estates that have appealed to CEOs. While Stamford continues to capitalize on its geographic good fortune, the automobile-dependent model in which people commute into Stamford is vulnerable to congestion on the I-95 corridor (a major throughway connecting the New York City metro area and the Mid-Atlantic with New England). The urban fabric post urban renewal of large blocks and streets also does little to support traditional mixed-use Transit-Oriented Development projects.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD30 Standing Committee on Transportation and Land Development.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Olinski, Neil C
  • Garrick, Norman W
  • Atkinson-Palombo, Carol M
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Maps; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 19p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Central business districts; Commuters; Office buildings; Parking; Parking garages; Shopping centers; Transit oriented development; Urban areas; Urban renewal
• Geographic Terms: Stamford (Connecticut)
• Subject Areas: Highways; History; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01587894
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-6744
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 27 2016 5:12PM