More of Edgemere

Densifying Far Rockaway While Maintaining Suburban Comfort

Proposed new density for the Edgemere neighborhood

1. Project Overview

What if suburbs could be dense? Edgemere is a neighborhood in Far Rockaway with a more suburban layout than much of New York City. Due to it’s lack of space the rental vacancy is low, making housing unaffordable. Our project addresses this and other issues caused by the low density of Edgemere, while attempting to maintain the comfort and access to amenities in a suburban context.

Edgemere is located adjacent to Far Rockaway in Queens, NY.

“What if suburbs could be dense?”

How Edgemere might look with a more dense urban makeup

Goals and Metrics

1. We are measuring the visibility, walkability, daylight, and resiliency of Edgemere before and after we densify the neighborhood.
2. We are measuring these outputs because we believe that they are indicative of overall comfort in the neighborhood. If we can maintain these at a comfortable range while increasing density, we believe we will have succeeded in improving the neighborhood.
3. We set up our project to measure the performance of an urban street layout in a suburban context. We wanted to incorporate the positive elements of density into the more flat context of Edgemere, hoping to find ways for density to be interwoven into Edgemere’s layout without losing the benefits of its current flat and open plan.

What Did We Discover?

We have concluded that visibility to parks and amenities is heavily affected by park placement and FAR. Walkability to parks and amenities mostly affected by parcel width. Access to daylight is affected by FAR and density option.

Through the computational design model, we have identified visibility and walkability trends that allows the city to address accessibility, walkability, and open space while increasing density, housing affordability, and social equity.

Here’s why the outcome of this model is important. Through background research, we discovered that Edgemere, like much of New York, suffers from a housing crisis due to the low vacancy rate. Increasing density would, in our model, increase the supply of affordable housing, and lessen the housing crisis. The more suburban and car-friendly layout of Edgemere’s streets takes away from walking safety, and we would like to make the area more comfortable for people on foot. Mixing the zoning would allow pedestrians easier access to amenities. We also wanted to hybridize the area for social benefit. Converting part of the largely privatized land into public space is crucial to decrease physical and social barriers among different groups of people. Finally, inefficient land use leads to an overall high building coverage. This results in problems like flooding (lack of permeable surfaces), habitat loss, water waste and contamination (especially from lawns) and so on. Increasing density will increase the efficiency of land use, energy and the overall cost of maintaining our living environment.

Our analysis of Edgemere found that after we incorporate the changes produced by our design space proposal, we are able to see the validity of our hypotheses. Increasing density is possible while simultaneously increasing permeability through the space and access to a greater diversity of resources and amenities. Overall visibility, walkability, and daylight access can all be brought to a comfortable standard in a densified Edgemere.

2. Computational Design Model

This diagram highlights our inputs, procedural rules, and outputs. Major inputs were population, density options, and density distribution. Outputs include daylight access, walkability, and views to amenities.

Analysis Tools

Resiliency Index — Custom Tool

We wanted to determine how park placement could increase the resiliency of Edgemere in the face of sea level rise.

This is an equation we devised to calculate the “resiliency index” of our design.

More evenly distributed and smaller parks produce a resiliency score of 9.2

Parks along the shoreline at a larger size produce a resiliency score of 4.6

Based on this equation, the more parks land in the buffer zone, and the closer they are to lots, the higher the score of the Resiliency Index. The following images explain the process of deploying the resiliency index tool.

Procedural Types

This section focuses on the procedural rules we have defined, the outputs that we’ve employed, and how all of these relate to our goals and metrics.

Parcel width determined the size of lots, either 40 feet wide or 80 feet wide. This impacted the number of new buildings overall that the site would receive.

Park distribution dictated whether parks were located along the shoreline or evenly across the site.

Retail distribution was used to determine placement of retail, either at well distributed street corners or along a main street.

FAR and Density Distribution defined the shape and size of our new buildings, for increased density.

Presents the average number of hours that daylight was available to each building surface.

Measures the percentage of uncovered view from building facades to parks.

Measures the average distance from each building to the nearest amenity, such as a park or retail space.

Design Space

In this section we will describe our team’s input ranges, reasons for the ranges we chose, and elements we may have left out.

We varied the FAR and density inputs from low to mid level to high, because we felt that it gave us a clear picture of different outcomes at each level.
We varied the park distribution input from an evenly divided spread to one in which parks were placed at the shore (with consideration toward mitigating sea-level rise) because we were interested in comparing outcomes of environmental impact in relation to human comfort and access.
We varied commercial distribution between corner placement throughout the site, and consolidated placement along a main avenue, because we were interested in comparing accessibility under both conditions.
We varied parcel width between large and small, comparing between the familiar parcel size and a new, larger parcel size. 

3. Analysis and Results

Exploring the Design Space

In this section we will shed light on our team’s design exploration and some initial insights using Scout. We can use the scout interface to explore scenarios for different conditions of density in Edgemere.

What if FAR is at it's highest level, and we vary density options? How do the average daylight hours change?

In density option 0 there are 3 average hours of daylight.

In density option 1 there are 3.6 hours of daylight.

What if FAR is at mid-level and we vary park distribution? How does visibility change?

In park distribution 0 the park visibility is 1.4%.

In park distribution 1 the park visibility is 0.7%.

What if FAR is at its lowest level and we vary commercial distribution? How does walkability change?

In commercial distribution 0 the walkability average is 89 feet.

In commercial distribution 1 the walkability average is 86 feet.

What if FAR is at its highest level and we vary parcel width? How does resiliency change?

In parcel width 0 the resiliency score is 3.6.

In parcel width 1 the resiliency score is 4.7.

What if FAR is at its highest level and we vary density options? How will daylight access change?

In density option 0 average daylight hours are 2.8.

In density option 1 average daylight hours are 3.6.

In density option 2 average daylight hours are 2.9.

A few inputs that we decided not to explore include those that would describe the environmental impact of increasing density. Because of how many factors play into that metric, we felt it would require too many, and too specific inputs to calculate. We also didn’t include inputs relating to the amount of ecologically preserved landscape that could be produced by the increased density and population here in Edgemere. That would have required looking toward another site, and imagining the process of migration from that site to Edgemere, and the recovery of the ecology post-exodus. All of this would have required more inputs and detailed study than we were ready to take on.

Results

Below are some images highlighting the extremes of our data.

Higher parcel width produces longer daylight hours but lower walkability.

More even park and commercial distribution produces higher resiliency, but decreases walkability.

Higher FAR produces higher resiliency but decreases visibility.

Higher FAR also slightly decreases the daylight score.

As these charts show, the most significant tradeoffs are between resiliency and views. In addition, a higher FAR value decreases the visibility score and the hours of access to daylight. More and smaller parks produce greater resilience but also lower visibility. Larger parcels produce higher visibility but lower resilience.

Parcel width had the greatest impact on walkability. Though it had slight impacts on daylight access, there was only so far that parcel widths could be increased. FAR also had a major impact on determining daylight access and visibility toward amenities. Generally the larger the buildings, the more resilient they became. Placing amenities like parks and commercial spaces more evenly throughout the site generally increased accessibility metrics like walkability. We found that it is possible to increase the density of Edgemere while still maintaining individual comfort and access, if we more evenly distribute amenities across the site. Building taller structures toward the north of the site produces better daylight and visibility without impacting the walkability and resilience. Thus, we feel that taller buildings on the north side of the site is the best option for increasing density.

We were intrigued to find that the walkability did not change much between different commercial distributions. Even more interesting was the fact that the distribution in which commercial spaces are consolidated along a main street offered slightly higher walkability.

Design Comparison

Images highlighting differing metric performances under three FAR options.

In this image we compare several options that are representative of metric trends in our analysis. We are viewing the three different FAR options, and the changes in output that they produce. We’ve discovered that the visibility index increases as FAR increases. We learned that access to daylight decreases as FAR increases. Walkability wasn’t significantly impacted by changes in FAR. But increased FAR decreased the resiliency index. In these images we do not change any other inputs, in order to maintain consistency among variables.

Conclusions and Next Steps

We recommend that the results of our model be used by urban designers and city planners interested in explaining to the citizens of more sprawling and underpopulated areas that increased density has benefits that outweigh its downfalls. In addition, we can find interesting ways to increase density without losing access to important elements of human comfort like daylight and amenity access, walkability, and environmental preservation.

The next steps for implementing this computational approach to the city might include producing a more detailed and specific test analysis of the site in question. We might then proceed to share the results with citizens and planners. Eventually we might be able to test our conclusions through new architectural interventions on a 1–4 block section of the neighborhood, to understand how realistic they are.

There are some limitations to our design model. It doesn’t account for the embodied energy involved in the process of densifying Edgemere, nor does it delve into the process of preserving ecological landscapes elsewhere by increasing the population here. More minutely, we do not account for the change in cost of housing that would take place as the amount of housing available increases. We hope that the change would be a downward trend, making housing accessible to more people.