Value-Added Design
How urban designers can add value to development professionals.
Andrew Baqué

Gertrude Stein famously once said, in reference to her childhood home of Oakland, that “there is no there there.” That lament, while pithy, perfectly captures the tenor of a place that is missing a key ingredient for long term success. Successful places of every scale, from large cities to small developments, have a presence. A personality. A sense of place that transcends traditional ways of measuring and stems from something more fundamental. The value of a space isn’t just measured in storefronts or square feet, but also by people. It isn’t just the GLA; it’s also the DNA.

Casto Lifestyle Properties’ mixed-use development, One Hundred Central, located in Sarasota, Florida.

Urban designers understand that. Urban design is based on the understanding that the quality of a built environment evolves naturally from the ways in which people use and move through a place, and it is the ability to create that essential character and generate that energizing spark that makes urban design services such an important part of a successful project.

Urban planners focus on land use, infrastructure and regulatory policies for cities and towns. Architects attend to the form and aesthetics of the structures and landscape architects to the shape and quality of spaces between them. Urban designers fuse those disciplines into a focus on human experience as the driving force in the design equation. The result is a place that creates culture and commerce as equal assets of maximum value.

From civil engineers, commercial developers and architects, to single-use and production homebuilders, virtually everyone can benefit from adding urban design capabilities to their roster of services. Whether you retain urban designers as full-time employees or maintain a relationship with a trusted professional, incorporating principles of urban design into your work can provide a valuable edge in a competitive industry. Urban design professionals can help you avoid the bland results that Stein found so uninspired, and instead design and develop the kinds of destinations with plenty of there there.

Urban design has played an increasingly prominent role in shaping design and development and, in recent years, the underlying principles have begun to coalesce into a cohesive and influential specialty. In 1980, two seminal projects, Battery Park City in New York City and Seaside, close to Panama City, Florida, served as catalysts, helping to break through ingrained design and development conventions and provide inspired examples of urban design’s place-making potential.

Battery Park, a 90-acre planned community in Manhattan, sits on land reclaimed from the Hudson River, and weaves a dense fabric of neighborhoods into a street grid that relates to and connects with the surrounding city. Seaside, an 80-acre, master-planned, mixed-use project, created an interconnected beach front community, with the intimate scale, public spaces and architectural mix that would soon become an urban design hallmark.

Children play in the Pop Fountain on Town Square at Zona Rosa, a development of Columbus, Ohio-based Steiner + Associates, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Despite their differences, these two projects share a fundamental dedication to the importance of the human element in the design landscape. Their underlying design principles — compact, integrated and dense development, a mix of uses, an emphasis on walkability, circulation patterns and a renewed appreciation for the importance of an engaged and enlivened streetscape — articulate a philosophy that would become known as New Urbanism.

Battery Park and Seaside were the first compelling large-scale examples of contemporary urban design in action, and the degree to which they had such a transformative and galvanizing effect is a testament to the growing desire for a fresh approach to design and development strategies. These projects plugged into an emerging social value system, a burgeoning movement that was already percolating through society. Single use was becoming mixed-use, and the compartmentalization of America, with suburbs and strip malls, was giving way to a cultural shift with compact, efficient designs that value a diversity of uses and create lifestyles instead of simply buildings. Urban design is often linked to the concept of Smart Growth, which advocates equity in the human and natural environments, and recognizes the social and commercial value of a balanced approach to community development.

While the glossary of urban design is inevitably heavy with words that can initially seem suspiciously touchy-feely or philosophical, those allegedly abstract concepts, when implemented properly, translate into concrete results and tangible benefits. Quality urban design results in developments that are both destinations and comfortable, habitable spaces. Not only places people want to go, but places people want to stay. The end result is more vibrant, successful, and ultimately more lucrative developments.

Applying urban design principles to a project pays dividends. Simply adding residential components creates a new social and spatial dynamic that can have a profound impact. Mixed-use, human-scale design creates the kind of density and activated spaces that drive revenue; urban design works, ultimately, because it is profitable. When dining, entertainment, office and residential are combined in ways that expand options and encourage activity, the amount of time, money and energy that residents, workers and visitors spend in a place can skyrocket. Varying usage patterns and an array of connected, animated public spaces generates and sustains retail activity, and is one of the most efficient and effective ways to increase the popularity — and profitability — of a project.

Casto’s mixed-use development, One Hundred Central located in Sarasota, Florida.

Of course, not every project can be a high-density town center, and not every development will be a case study in mixed-use master planning. Demographics, location and politics still dictate the final product. But, in a world where every new development faces a Darwinian competition for hearts and wallets, thoughtful, quality design will always win out.

Urban design professionals can provide developers with the tools to do just that, adding valuable perspective and an expanded diversity of service to all kinds of projects. Rick Cole, the city manager of Ventura, California, an urban policy expert and award-winning urban designer, once said, “When we build our landscape around places to go, we lose places to be.” By embracing principles of urban design, we can have both. And development professionals will benefit from not only an improved finished product, but also from an improved bottom line.

Andrew Baqué is a group leader with engineering design firm Atwell-Hicks.


©2007 France Publications, Inc. Duplication or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of this article contact Barbara Sherer at (630) 554-6054.