Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Community Design Principles

1. Cities exist as habitat for People. Good design is focused on the comfort, safety and convenience of the People who will use the place. There are other competing priorities but none should be given priority over People.

2. People and Movement. An inherent quality of people is movement. Just as people need to eat and sleep, they need to move. So a fundamental quality of good design is how it accommodates and facilitates mobility.

3. People live in the spaces between buildings. A building standing alone in space may be an interesting object, but it doesn’t create a Place. But put a few buildings close together and you begin to shape open space into a Place and this is the beginning of a town. Good design focuses on the Places and the people who will enjoy them, not just the buildings.


4. A city is not just a series of separate pieces – it is integrated. Once buildings come together in a city or town, they react to each other either positively or negatively. Good designers take time to understand these relationships and to integrate the separate pieces into good places for people.

5. One primary and necessary integration is between the development patterns of a city and the mobility system that serves it. Historically cities have been shaped by the available systems for moving people and goods from place to place. Early cities grew up on rivers or lakes or where trails crossed. When people moved largely on foot, cities were compact. As new forms of transportation arose, cities were able to expand. But the key relationship between development patterns and mobility systems remains. Good design demonstrates that integration.

6. Put things close together, not far apart. Good design provides convenience and choice for future inhabitants. Compact mixed-use development patterns with the things you need every day close at hand reduce travel distances, facilitate walking and biking, and can be served by a variety of mobility systems.

7. The streets are the backbone of a good city. Buildings may come and go, but street systems have a tendency to endure. Good designers plan them carefully so they can endure for hundreds of years and still contribute to making the city a good place. A small-block, integrated network of streets provides convenient access for people and disperses traffic.

8. The streets, plazas and other public places are the community’s outdoor living room. They should be designed for the comfort, convenience and enjoyment of people. Streets are multi-use public spaces; motor vehicle functions should not be allowed to dominate a street’s role as a good place for people.

9. “In-Ness”. In urbanized areas, people are generally more comfortable inside than outside. Inside is inclusion: outside, exclusion. (Inside does not mean indoors. One can be comfortably “inside” while outdoors but in a good place.) Good designers plan a design so future inhabitants will feel comfortably inside a good piece of the city.

10. A good city is sustainable; it has the capacity to adjust to new conditions. Change is inherent in human life. As change occurs good cities adjust to the new conditions and prosper. Those that can’t or don’t adjust wither and die. Good design is adjustable to respond to future changes and is sustainable. 

 
SOME SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS

1. Design must respect its context.

2. Design must be credible. Structures must look like what they are. Walls must have the apparent thickness and structure to be functional. Entrances must be real and functional.

3. Structures must shape adjacent spaces into places that are appropriately scaled and comfortable for people.

4. No dead walls. All exterior walls that will be experienced by people must be attractive and have human interest and richness.

5. Motor vehicle parking must enhance rather than detract from people’s experience.

a. On-street parking is encouraged where it will provide a comfortable buffer between the pedestrian and moving traffic. 
b. No vehicles parked off-street may be visible to pedestrians on streets designated as “pedestrian streets”. 
c. Curb cuts and vehicle entrances are not permitted on pedestrian streets.

6. Vertical doors and windows reflect human form and are appropriate in urbanized areas.

7. Design must manage the inside/outside transition from private areas to public places carefully with urban, not suburban, design tools. Suburban setbacks and planting are not acceptable transition tools in urbanized areas.
SOME DESIGN TOOLS:

1. Celebrate Entrances – They welcome us to something new.

2. Celebrate Corners – They are important markers.

3. Celebrate Plazas – The comfortable places where we most enjoy community.

4. Celebrate Landmarks – They tell us where we are and welcome us home.



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