After a terrific few days in Denver, I have made it back to Boston and am settling in for a two week stretch of thesis writing.  As noted earlier, we were in Denver to compete against three other graduate teams in round two of the 2009 Urban Land Institute / Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition.  We had a great time throughout the process: meeting the other teams, working on our presentation, eating lunch with Mr. Hines, etc.    Finding out that our proposal for Panorama Station won the competition and the $50,000 team prize was truly icing on the cake.

Appreciate Steve breaking the news on his blog.  As a side note, if you haven’t already, you should check out the videos of Jeff Speck’s presentation he posted – good stuff.

Thanks to Mr. Hines and ULI staff for hosting such a great competition. And thank you to everyone for the congratulations via email, facebook, etc.

ULI has yet to release pictures and press releases from the competition, but in the meantime here are a few new images from our project.

Our proposal for a new transit-oriented development to replace an existing big-box and strip retail center.

Integrating the station plaza platform with an iconic pedestrian bridge creates a memorable destination and strong sense of place.

The competition required that existing tenants – like Sam’s and Kmart – be integrated into the design.  Here this is accomplished by providing generous street-front entrances to sub-grade retail sales floors.  Elevator connections to structured parking in the center of the block continue to provide convenient access for store patrons.

THE TEAM

Sarah Snider, Master of City Planning / MIT
Eric Komppa, MBA / University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jesse Hunting, Master of City Planning / MIT
Duncan McIlvaine, M.Arch / MIT
Blair Humphreys, Master of City Planning / MIT

ABOUT THE PROJECT

This is our complete design board.  The board measures 51″ x 22″ – or six 17″ x 11″ sheets.  In addition to this we were required to turn in two separate 17″ x 11″ sheets, one with financials and one “day in the life of” sheet conveying life in the year 2050 (click here to see it).  I have chopped up the board pictured above into separate images to fit on your screen below.  The proposal is for an approx. 80 acre site surrounding Denver’s Alameda light rail station.  The northern portion of the site is currently a fairly typical big box retail layout, while the southern portion has a range of tenants connected to the Denver Design District. The primary challenge was to redesign the site to take advantage of the light rail station without displacing any of the existing tenants.  The boards are meant to be self-explanatory (i.e. we weren’t present when the judges viewed them), so I haven’t provided any commentary but if you have questions, just let me know.  Thanks!

note: this post is image heavy so it may load a bit slow.

I just attended a lecture series featuring Enrique Peñalosa, a former Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia.  He is considered a visionary for his work in Bogotá that included major enhancements to quality of life through investments in bike/pedestrian infrastructure, construction of a groundbreaking bus rapid transit system (BRT) and introduction of unique community events like Ciclovia.

It was an enthusiastic presentation and I was fairly intrigued by a number of his ideas.  Certainly there are contextual differences between Colombia and the United States that make some of what he has accomplished difficult to apply here, but a number of his principles seem universal and I think they are worth sharing.  These notes are not all exact quotes, but are a mix of quotes and paraphrasing.

What is a Good City?

Quoted Jan Gehl, “A Good City is one where people want to be out of their houses!”

A Good City:

• is not malls, but public space and parks.
• has places for people to walk and to be with other people.
• gives people needed spaces to play
• does not make some people feel inferior

A Good City looks out for the most vulnerable citizens: elderly, children, disabled.  He recommended that public officials should be required to navigate the city one day a year in a wheel chair.

A child on a bicycle can go safely anywhere in the Good City!

Cars = Monsters? No, but…

While cars are great thing and provide a great service, the poor design of our cities has turned them into monsters.  If you say to a child, “Watch out, a car is coming.” They will likely jump out of fright.  And for good reason: over 200,000 children are killed each year by automobiles. The answer is not more separated infrastructure for cars, but integrated infrastructure that values all persons equally independent of their mode of travel.

How to Measure of a Proposed Intervention: Does IT make the city more pleasant to walk in?

Comparison of space usage by cars, buses, and bikes.  Münster, Germany was one city mentioned by the Mayor that provides excellent bike infrastructure.

On Public Spaces: sidewalks, parks, bike lanes, etc

Sidewalks are not relatives of streets – they are not paths simply for moving.  Sidewalks are more closely related to parks and plazas.  They are places to play and congregate.

The allocation of space between streets and sidewalk for any given area should be based on maximizing happiness.

When shopping malls replace public space it is the result of a sick city with poorly performing public spaces.  People are not stupid, they go to the shopping malls because it offers a pedestrian environment they can’t find anywhere else.

Human like hard surfaces.  We have to understand that there are places for parks and places for plazas.  Ultimately cities are a human habitat and sometimes hard surfaces are appropriate.

Synthetic soccer fields are better at reducing crime in poor neighborhoods than extra police stations.  If you don’t provide space for teens to play, then they will find other things to do with their time.

With limited resources, there are always questions as to what comes first.  For instance, when we have to decide between paving a street or installing a skate park, we will choose to build the skate park.  Cars will be okay on the mud roads, but the skate park enhances the quality of life to a greater degree per dollar spent.

Adding nice bike lanes not only makes biking easier, but changes the social status of bicyclist by sending a signal to everyone that they are important.

Parking is not a constitutional right!

Twenty percent of Bogotá car-owners ride public transportation to work.

Transport and Bus Rapid Transit

You CANNOT design transport without first knowing the type of city you want!  Transport is a political decision: How much space do we want to give to cars and how much to people?  Engineers will tell you how many cars can travel on a given road, but you have to decide as a community how many cars you want to have.  If they made more space for cars in New York City or London, there would be more cars.  So ultimately it boils down to politics and the will of the community.

To have a good BRT system you should plan on spending between $8 – 16 million per mile.

Built Form

Suburbs provide something urban areas need: good schools, open space, etc.

The best density that is most often seen throughout the world is buildings between four and six stories tall.

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Coming Up Next Week

Okay, I know the notes are a little disorganized, but I thought they were worth posting.  I will have the next section on Re-visioning the Chamber Proposal up by Monday.  We will take a look at the current and historical context of the site and surrounding areas.  We are going to work through this “re-visioning” process one step at a time. It may go a bit slow at first, but I think it will provide a better solution in the end.

UPDATE: We were named finalist in the 2009 competition! Click here to see our entry

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Site Plan for Dallas’s Cedars neighborhood, ULI Urban Design Competition 2008. Credit: Blair Humphreys (click for larger image)

Today I am starting a two-week long urban design competition hosted by the Urban Land Institute.  Last year my team finished well, receiving one of three “honorable mention” slots putting us somewhere in the top 7 out of nearly 100 teams competing.  Our entry from last year was “Digital Thread”, a mixed-use plan for The Cedars neighborhood in Dallas with a focus on technological innovation and digital urban fabric.

“Digital Thread” – my MIT team’s entry into the 2008 ULI Urban Design Competition (click to download .pdf).

I am excited about this year’s competition and am hoping to improve over last year’s result.  I will keep you updated as things progress over the next two weeks, we submit our proposal, and then find out where we finished.  But I am still planning to dive into some issues related to Maps3 this week, so keep coming back.

If you want more information on the ULI competition: http://udcompetition.uli.org/

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

• Bratislava Pictures I
• Bratislava Pictures II
• Bratislava Pictures III

Eight of us have been working under the direction of Julian Beinart and John de Monchaux for a couple months now and have made it through a couple pin-ups and one client meeting. Basically, our task is to create a masterplan for a 850 acre natural mineral spa resort to be located a couple hours outside of Bratislava, adjacent to a small village.  We have split up into four teams of two and I have had the pleasure of working with a m.arch named Zameer Basrai.  We are still in the course of figuring out all of the features of our plan, but I thought I would go ahead and share some of our work.

please note: all of these are working renderings – final presentation is still a month away.  Also, these are currently only ideas, not actual development plans, and represents only a small portion of the many ideas being considered.

COMPLETE PRESENTATION BOARD 10|31

OUR CONCEPT

Our concept is to create a ceremonial source of the ancient mineral water - coming from an underground lake said to be 22 million years old – within a hill that is central to the site.  Additionally, we plan to create a man-made lake that will bring value to other portions of the site, providing attractive development locations for a mixture of hotels, resort housing, commercial nodes, and an indoor water park.  (I got the idea for a indoor water park after visiting the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine with my family – so thank you to my nieces and nephews for their help on that!)  Our plan also attempts to integrate with the existing fabric of the Bardonovo village and utilize the towncenter and other assets to the benefit of both our development and the community.  Finally, it should be noted that there are a number of program requirements placed on us by the underlying financial realities of the project, so the end result is influenced by our personal ideas and the development requirements and constraints.

Or, allow Zameer to put it more poetically:

Some say it is sacred and some say it is forbidden and only few can dispute its magical presence, but it had remained untouched for too long, unclaimed for too long. In a celebration of this hidden treasure we attempt to unfold the depths of water that have remained below our cities forever.

The cut and the lake

Spa/Village

The project is an exploration of built-scapes responding to the physical and metaphysical presence of the [water source]. The cut signifies man’s inward journey, his ceremonial descent into the earth to retrieve this irreplaceable resource. The lake in turn signifies man’s worldly pleasures, his desire to live and work in proximity to water. Both experiences contribute to the identity of the project forming two polar opposites in organization and design.

CONCEPT DIAGRAMS

credit: zameer basrai

CONCEPT RELATED IMAGES

source: unknown

SITE PLAN 10|31

credit: zameer basrai

PERSPECTIVES 10|31

credit: blair humphreys

credit: blair humphreys

credit: blair humphreys

PHASING DIAGRAMS 10|31

credit: zameer basrai

UPDATED SITEPLAN 11|17

credit: blair humphreys

MY THESIS TOPIC IDEAS

1. Distributed urban college education
Basically I am curious what opportunities there are for higher-education to be distributed across residual space in urban setting, utilizing the facilities and expertise of existing firms to enhance the education, while providing a cheap and enthusiastic labor force.  Still interested in this, but decided that it was not the best option.

2. Effects of 21st century retail on urban form
What is urban form affected by new types of retail (i.e. internet)?  This topic is already receiving quite a bit of attention and is difficult to study.

3. Examine impact of agricultural idling incentives on city form
So we pay the carrying costs on land even as it accrues value for later development?  Surely this policy has a dramatic impact on urban form, especially in cities like OKC – I will have to wait to find out, because this topic is a little too boring to study for an entire semester.

4. Analyze potential for handheld gps enabled phones to measure pedestrian movement in a city
New cell phones – like the GPS enabled 3G iPhone – provide a new opportunity to understand the ways pedestrians move through cities.  Obviously there are privacy issues, but certainly a system could be anonymized.  This is a relatively new area of research and something I think would be really cool to study. The SenseABLE City Lab here at MIT has done some similar work with cell phone data, but the new embedded GPS systems provide an extra level of detail that makes the system work at the pedestrian movement level.  I remain intrigued by this, but ended up deciding against it.

5. Power and politics of urban design in Oklahoma City
Hmm…this would be really interesting! BUT, I decided for various reasons (e.g. my future job prospects) to leave this one alone.

6. Assess public places not by design, but focus especially on the surrounding urban design that supports the public place (i.e. library, retail, density of residents, density of office, density of lunch places, etc)
I love public spaces and this seemed like an area that hadn’t been looked at.  Interesting questions like, what are the best uses to have around a park?  Is a library good, like Bryant Park?  What about office buildings?  Concrete convention centers?  Fun stuff, maybe later.

7. Value based property taxes – taxing a property based on the building allowed by zoning; should combat land speculators that blight urban landscape.
Do you ever get tired of seeing surface parking lots in the middle of downtown?  Part of the problem is that our tax system enables these lots to be profitable, even though they often do not provide the same level of benefit to society as a developed project.  There have been other tax systems utilized that tax property relative to the residual land value sans improvements.  So an office building and a parking lot taking up the same amount of land would be taxed the same.  This was an idea pushed by Henry George, an economist and NYC mayoral candidate in the late 1800s.  Ultimately, this idea was politically infeasible and probably still is…which is why I am not doing it.

[correction 11/6 - Joshua (see comments) enlightened me to the fact  that land value taxation, or LVT, is being successfully implemented in a number of communities throughout the United State; you can find out more at urbantools.org]

8.  City organizational structure and its impact on urban form – Vienna has a combined planning & public works department, whereas Oklahoma City has separated the planning and implementation functions.
I am curious what the pros/cons are to having planning & public works combined into a single department versus the system currently in place in Oklahoma City.  In reality, street projects have an as great or greater affect on the form of our city than planning.  Not sure what the benefits of the current configuration are, but I will have to wait to find out.

9. Studying the ideas of Hans Mondermann on naked streets
The late Hans Monderman has shown how streets with fewer signs, fewer road lines, etc are actually safer.  Seems unintuitive, but has been proven true under a variety of conditions.  Obviously, highways are not a good candidate for such a system – as Kramer showed us:

10. Assessing the environmental impact of transportation infrastructure in a world of cheap, pollution free cars!
Even if we get to pollution free cars, we still have to look at the sustainability of the built form we use to support an auto-dominated transportation system.  I think we can probably do a better job in planning for a future that continues to see cars as the predominate mode of transportation.

THE WINNING TOPIC

Ultimately I decided that I wanted to write a thesis on something I enjoy studying, and I really enjoy studying Oklahoma City.  Some of the possibilities above have to do with OKC either directly or indirectly, but with any OKC related question I always come back to my lack of understanding – and the lack of available research – on the history of planning and development that created the city we see today.  Steve and others have done some good stuff on the post 1960 period and on various isolated elements of the early 20th century, but this early period has not received much attention through a purely planning, urban design, and development related focus.   So my thesis topic is:

The early planning tradition and development forces that shaped Oklahoma City

I am starting pre-landrun and will study as far as I can, but probably won’t get past 1950 – which thankfully will allow me to avoid the Pei Plan and the gloominess it brings.

NEED YOUR HELP

Well, if you have anything that you think will give me some insight into the early planning history of Oklahoma City, please let me know.  I, in return, will try to post some of the resources I come across and share what I find out.  In fact, I have already found some cool stuff that I will try to get posted later this week.

A classic courtyard with a very pleasant fountain in the center.

I ran out of the house on Saturday afternoon when sunlight began to pour through my south facing window (after days of cloudy skies). Would have been nice to get a series of these shots throughout the day, but the sun didn’t really cooperate.

A wonderful pillar supported arcade surrounds the central courtyard.

I was sitting about 20 feet away from this guy when I noticed that he had positioned himself perfectly to get sunlight on his body, while his face stayed comfortably in the shade. I couldn’t figure out how to get a picture that would tell the story, but finally managed to crawl up on a second story window sill and hover with camera directly above the guy.

On any given day you can expect to find a number of people sitting, eating, reading, or utilizing the free wi-fi.

Taken from inside the library with the courtyard visible through the window. The light marble surfaces of the grand staircase shine bright as the sun pours through the southwest facing windows.

I met this guy yesterday an an XPrize Lab @ MIT reception and have to say that I was really impressed. The solution seeking way that he approaches problems is refreshing. For example, he told me that in most cases, Americans looking to save energy would do better to paint their roofs white, than they would to install solar roof panels! For some reason, we politicize problems to the point that it is all meaningless, but as you can see in this interview, this guy is a pure problem-solving engineer. His name is Saul Griffith, he is brilliant, and I guarantee you that you will see a lot more from him in the future!

Interview

Here is an interview where he explains his approach to the problem of global warming:

Link

For more on Saul and his many exciting projects, go to his webiste: http://www.saulgriffith.com/

I am headed to Bratislava, Slovakia to work on a planning and design project with a team of students and professors from MIT. We will be spending the next seven days doing site visits and due diligence before returning to Boston where we will spend the next semester designing a health spa resort.

Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to post pictures while I am there, but the post may be a little hit and miss for the next week. Either way I will let you know how it goes and keep you updated as we progress throughout the semester.