In November of 2004, a reconstituted APA Urban Design Committee tackled the question of the intersection of Planning and Urban Design, acknowledging the artificial split that exists between the architectural design of public open space – which focuses on form – and planning of public open spaces – which focuses on policy and participation in development. I developed this project with Robert Lowe, Urban Designer for the RPA.

To get started, we sought submissions to demonstrate lessons learned and products created that link public participation and urban design on behalf of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA) Urban Design Committee.

Thirty Projects were submitted by planning and architectural firms, public agencies, university-based programs, community development corporations, and civic associations in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and Long Island. The program encouraged sharing of successes and frustrations over the last decade to the present. For more detail:
See San Antonio PowerPoint Presentation (pdf) San Antonio Workshop.

The committee wanted to ensure that a planning framework for discussion would differentiate how APA would view the urban design from the AIA. In this era of a star-architecture culture and so-called signature-buildings, the tendency to celebrate bold new urban design visions has a side effect. The haunting sense that additional forms of community input were missing, and without it, a deeper understanding of the underlying political, economic, environmental, and/or technical concerns would not emerge. This lack of depth contributed to the failure of some high-profile projects in the New York Region, such as building a new Jets Stadium on the west side of Manhattan and the delay in rebuilding the World Trade Center Site. Consequently, the committee sought to recognize urban design projects in the planning realm that were sensitive to these underlying planning concerns. In addition, the task force sought to distinguish New York metro urban design initiatives from a regional perspective.

Unlike most of the country, the New York metropolitan region has a two-hundred-year physical development heritage. The redevelopment, renewal, and preservation of existing communities is the primary challenge rather than planning new development projects on expansive green fields. As a result, the literature currently describing nationally celebrated urban design projects has little relevance to the issues and concerns of communities within the New York Metro Area. The committee understood that the most exciting planning and urban design projects in the nation are taking place in the New York City-Westchester-Long Island metro area. This is a geographic area that captures an incredibly diverse range of urban and suburban landscapes. Nowhere is there as rich a tradition of civic involvement in community planning and design as here, nor as much creative professional talent. And yet, each community rarely understands what even their most proximate neighbors have accomplished, let alone the value this work would have to a national audience.

The Public Place Public Process sought answers to questions about how well the planning and design community engages the community to build a public space. The Committee’s 2005 call for submissions garnered 23 submissions. In March 2006. a full-day workshop at the Regional Plan Association’s (RPA) offices yielded unique insight into the impact of civic engagement practices on the products of planning and design. This paper reflects on these events at the close of 2006 with a summary of findings to date and an outline of plans for a workshop about launching the Committee’s next steps.

At the start of the April 2006 presentation of our findings at the APA conference, we brought a quote from the legendary New York Yankee Baseball Manager and Urban Planner, Yogi Berra, “You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there.” This is not only an amusing turn of phrase; it is a timely thought for New Yorkers. Our review, comment, criticism, and contribution to the growing list of major planning and construction events in New York City are daunting. As a result, examining the quality of the public processes in defining the public space in all dimensions remains a significant interest of the APA Planning and Urban Design Committee. To date, it continues to be a viable mechanism for defining the central question. Is it possible for us to acquire some assurances in the conduct of these events that we are building better communities?

Best Practices

Community revitalization, smart growth, legacy, brownfields

The committee called for best practice case studies from around the region. Metro APA and AIA mailing/ e-mail lists and several other organizations were used for outreach efforts. The call for submissions stressed The APA is especially interested in projects that demonstrate a strong connection between a robust public process and a physical plan or design. As illustrated in plans, renderings, and models, these are projects where a specific design solution was arrived at through a public process. Submissions were composed of design presentations to communicate the consequences of the goals and policies that the stakeholders adopted to the public.

1. community revitalization
The community has a comprehensive strategy for revitalizing a neighborhood, or perhaps the commercial or cultural center of the neighborhood. For example, the design studies may illustrate how new housing is designed to reinforce existing neighborhoods, how a commercial corridor is revitalized through a streetscape or façade restoration initiative, or how a new public space is landscaped and programmed.

2. brownfields or greyfield redevelopment
The community has reclaimed a strategic property that was abandoned or underutilized, perhaps a former industrial site. The design studies illustrate how environmental restoration is accomplished in finding a new use for the property.

3. smart growth initiative
The community has found a way to capture development that would otherwise have sprawled out to some undeveloped area. The design studies illustrate how new context-appropriate development completes the existing neighborhoods or town centers or how new development is oriented towards transit such as a subway or commuter rail station.

4. legacy project
The community has created a plan that celebrates the history or cultural heritage of the community. The design studies illustrate how historic buildings have been re-used or how new spaces are created around buildings, monuments, or parks that have significance for the neighborhood.

While impressed by the quality of responses, we felt compelled to put the idea of ‘best’ aside to focus on practice. Our interest in the ongoing potential of this project held higher ground, so we began to mine all of the submissions for insights regarding the meaning of the term public process as described in each submission. Participants presented the interplay between public processes and design very differently. It was used as a tool to protect, defend and inform the public, as well as a means to discover and affirm community values and culture.

We express our gratitude to the Peer Review Committee (organizations listed for affiliation only) for all of these thoughts. Thank you.

Bruce Rosen, New York City Department of City Planning
Charlie Zucker, Consultant in Urban Design
Lance Brown, City College of New York, School of Architecture
Peg Seip, Consultant Community Planning and Development
Susan Meiklejohn, Hunter College Department of Urban Affairs and Planning
Tamara Greenfield, New York City Department of Parks
Terrence O’Neal, New York State Chapter of the American Institute of Architects
Tom Lunke, Harlem Community Development Corporation
Wayne Benjamin, Harlem Community Development Corporation

Planning .:.
Select objectives that measure the accomplishment of goals.

• define policies that govern resource acquisition, use, and disposal
• find resources to acquire objectives
• adjust to changes in these objectives

Networking .:.
Key services and components for strategic action:

• Scan the environment
• Selection of “key” issues
• State vision/mission statements
• Conduct an external and internal analyses
• Develop goals, objectives and strategies
• Implementation actions selected
• Monitor, update, and re-scan

Model Selection .:.
The strategic model is one that:

• Emerges from a mutually beneficial partnership
• Allows for meaningful participation throughout the planning and design process
• Results in tactical implementation for a self-renewing design and planning solutions
• Provides opportunities for innovation in the use of materials and methods
• Promotes a “many-disciplines” discourse for collaborations to generate creative ideas
• Fit appropriately in physical, social, economic and cultural context
• Responds to concerns about environmental, operational and economic sustainability
• Allows participants to build/own the project
• Responds to concerns effectively and quickly

Additional information about publications with access to Adobe PDF documents where noted.

Good, Deeds, Good Design
Princeton Architectural Press, New York (2003)

Over the last twenty years, Rex Curry has taught a variety of urban planning seminars and studios in Pratt’s School of Architecture, the Graduate Program for Planning and the Environment, and in the Pratt Institute Center for Community Development.  As the former president of the national Association for Community Design, Inc. (ACD), he has furthered the development of this national organization by representing a combination of for profit and nonprofit planning and architectural practices in the United States.

One mainstay of community service through architecture is the community design center, some of which have existed for over twenty-five years and contributed a unique body of knowledge and great depth of experience.  CDCs have come to represent great potential for a new form of professional practice.  Read Article (pdf 365K)

Chinatown

In July 2000, a news headline described conditions in Chinatown in the following manner: “Boom times are the worst thing ever to have hit New York’s Chinatown.”  In January 2001, members of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) invested in the development of a “working papers” project and a survey of public opinion.  Over a period of six months, beginning in March 2001, research and interviews identified the facts, defined issues and encouraged mutual action in areas of shared interest.  On September 11, 2001 everything changed. The papers became a resource for recovery.    Read Executive Summary (556 .pdf)

Community Design as a Standard of Practice

While at Pratt Institute, I sponsored a Fulbright Scholar interested in design, community participation and development.  When I received a call from the editor of Time Savers seeking contributions to their first publication of Urban Design Standards, I asked our resident scholar Dr. Sheri Blake if she would be interested in the project. The article link is below. 

When trapped in the matrix of metrics, Blake points out that change does not occur without persuasion.  In this sense, when the facts do nothing but paralyze a community, other methods are needed to develop the courage to change and grow with uncertainty.  Read Article (pdf 366K)

Gowanus Research Leads to Zoning Changes in 2007-2008

The freight moving capacity of the Gowanus Canal defined Brooklyn’s economic growth for a century.  The material the canal delivered are the homes that surround it.  Today, it there is less a robust but steady investment in environmental protection and lack of decline in some businesses that hint at its new potential.  This combination of economic inputs implies significant changes to the adjacent “upland” residential communities such as Boerum Hill, Columbia Heights, Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope and many others.

The choices outlined in the 1987 Gowanus Canal Development Study (GCDS) examine the potential for a sequence of land use changes into the future.  Data for local business and local nonprofit corporations provided measures of changing economic conditions.  A series of “sites” in the report offered probable development locations.  Several fragmented urban blocks over total area of 1.7 square miles, almost 467 acres define these locations.  The primary investment remains a public responsibility.  Making right a long series of past environmental wrongs has proven to take two decades vs. the 4 to 5 years originally estimated.  A subsequent analysis undertaken in 2000 identified the causal issues, but once again attempted to define and market development locations.

During the initial 4-5 year period the Canal’s ancient flushing mechanism was re-engineered using the same technology –  a pump to bring clean water into the Gowanus Canal to achieve “fishing and boating status” (level 7).  The next high level of need is the administration of environmental services to continue the process of land restoration and monitoring for intentional dumping and spills in the area.  This is where clean up efforts have stopped “dead in its tracks”.  Dumping is part of the Canal’s legacy, just putting clean water into it does not mean that CSO dumping has been reduced or the that the need for indemnification of past land owners by the public can proceed given the current status of the land and environmental protection reform. 

The 2000 report (a few of the pages are inserted below) included a detailed review of zoning history examining the last fifteen years of public land use decision making.  An argument promotes the “re-invention” of local business opportunities using a special district approach with financial incentives.  The vision is a revitalized canal business and industry center drawing on the substantial resource of design professionals in the area.  The challenge is it argued, is the revitalization of this part of Brooklyn’s waterfront landscape is through unifying the demand for employment with new affordable housing based on industrial product design and research. 

The community base of demand for “doing something” came from a visionay, a resident business man, and the unofficial Mayor of Carrol Gardens. Buddy S. Scotto’s saw a little bit of Venice, young entrepreneurs, and above all an end of its pollution. The central lesson here should be persistence. Any developer taking a modest look would require a fearlessness sense of risk. Since 1987, when I first started to take a serious look, I realize that position will hold through 2050 with a strong new group of advocates.

Survey of Outreach Programs 

This survey examined the relationship between graduate urban design programs and university-based community outreach programs.  The survey reports urban design programs in schools that included community outreach organizations.  In addition to those covered, six others, without graduate programs in urban design do have undergraduate programs:  Arizona State University, Tulane, University of Maryland, University of Tennessee, University of Oregon, and Yale.  To open and download the table (pdf 280k) Click Here