Innovative and highly sustainable pedestrian-focused community prioritizing access to affordable housing and services

Moorhead, a mid-sized city located on the northwestern Minnesota border and directly across the river from Fargo, has recently developed and released an ambitious and community-focused comprehensive plan that puts its community members’ well-being frst and foremost in a myriad of ways (housing access, walkability, access to nature and parks, climate resiliency, etc). When the opportunity to develop an innovative pedestrian-focused master plan on 78 acres within the city presented itself, our combined development team was eager to not only meet the comprehensive plan’s guidelines but often exceed them in the hopes of creating a holistically supportive and sustainable environment for working class residents.

The master plan is oriented around an existing swale that forms the spine of new nature paths, parkways, and gathering / play spaces, which then branch directly into the new housing development areas to bring opportunities for more active lifestyles access to nature to all residents and the local communities.

The initial sites to be developed (shown above) are planned to be incrementally constructed over a span of 10-15 years, gradually resulting in a built community that contains many of the services and amenities needed for residents of various life stages and situations, greatly reducing the need for car ownership and use. Each building is planned to include underground parking, reducing long-term maintenance needs as well as stormwater runoff while also allowing for increased development density. The spacing and orientation of the buildings was very carefully considered to balance human scale with access to daylight throughout the year. Commercial functions and services primarily occur along the outer perimeter, with core services focused towards pedestrians. With local residents facing a housing affordability and access crisis, the project’s pro forma prioritizes housing affordability, with the intention for the majority of the housing to be affordable to a wider range of life situations and working-class professions, including nurses, teachers, entrepreneurs, young professionals, etc.