Victory vs. LA Live

Dallas is often accused of being little more than desirous of the glitz and glam of LA. Today, we're pitting the Victory development in Dallas (which I once described as a Potemkin Village) with LA Live in Los Angeles. Perhaps the need to describe any place still as a "development" is damning enough. It isn't part of a neighborhood. It has no life beyond its limited programming.

I'm guessing it is no coincidence the majority of online imagery of both places is comprised of shiny, computer generated renderings rather than, ya know, real pictures of the places that are both at least the majority of the way towards complete construction. The imagery that does exist is often of night shots where precise lighting can perhaps conceal flaws or lull visitors into hypnosis to loosen their wallets.

Here we have two very similar developments, both designed and constructed within the last ten years - at the height of the debt-fueled building boom, and organized around sporting venues and general entertainment. Furthermore, they are both highway and downtown adjacent, have direct transit access, and exist within polycentric 20th century, car-oriented cities. They have the same general underlying logic, very much emblematic of turn of the 21st century places...for better or worse.

Recently, we had a hot or not poll for Victory in Dallas where it currently sits at a 3 out of 10, albeit with a far lower voter turnout than Addison Circle received with the FrontBurner bump.



For more imagery of Victory, go to this link. For reviews of both, see Wick Allison's from D of Victory and LA Live's which reads as though it could describe either.

For now however, judge by the differences you see or you felt if you've visited both. Here is the pictorial showcase for LA Live:

DING: ADDISON CIRCLE vs. ATLANTIC STATION

If anything will appeal to Texan sensibilities it is this. Or just irony.

Since the Addison Circle polling has received some love and attention from FrontBurner, let's give it something to square off against.

Since CNU just wrapped in the ATL, I once lived there, AND I even worked on tiny irrelevant bits of both projects, we are going to put it up against Atlantic Station, in Atlanta, GA. The similarities don't end there.

Both projects are of a similar size in terms of land area. Both are in urban infill locations although Atlantic Station is much closer to its downtown. Both projects are highway and railroad adjacent, but one key difference was also that they were built at different times. Atlantic Station is about five years younger and fueled moreso by credit bubble than was Addison. That and its closer location allowed for a bit higher density and a mega-parking garage constructed below grade.

As a younger project, it also has that new car smell of a place not yet lived in. I'll let you determine the rest of the differences and judge for yourselves. Compare w/ Addison here.

Round 1: DING:

Which recent "new urbanist" project do you like better?
	Atlantic Station - Atlanta, GA
	Addison Circle - Addison, TX
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Hot or Not of Place: Addison Circle

Remember the instructions. We are looking for the subjective, the emotive. How does the place make you feel? We want to then compare findings of various places around the City with the objective, which I will use LEED-ND as a template.

As background, Addison Circle is a development began in the late '90s in Addison, Texas by a City looking for a new "center of gravity," a place to hold their many yearly festivals. These include: Kaboomtown, Tastes of Addison, Oktoberfest, and others. In order to support those festivities, they decided to build a neighborhood to enjoy and take advantage of the open spaces necessary for hosting festivities. Having banned conventional garden-style apartments, the following imagery shows the end result.

What do you think? Give it a rating and what was done right? What could be better?

How Do You Rate This Development

NOT

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HOT

Results