Meet the urban designer running for mayor

Taryn Sabia earned her M.Arch from the Rhode Island School of Design, then moved to Tampa in 2006. Now, she is running to become the city’s next mayor. AIA caught up with her for a conversation on how architects and urban designers can help cities face their biggest challenges.

Answers have been edited for concision and clarity.

What drew you toward the urban design field?

In architecture school, I had a mentor named Anne Tate. For a time, she worked under the Romney administration in Boston. She was focused on sustainable and transit-oriented urban development. I was fascinated by how someone with a background in architecture and planning became civically engaged—and what that meant for leadership. 

Then, through a connection with a senior policy advisor, I became a Rhode Island Senate fellow. I got to give presentations to special committees, and I did studies on transit, energy, and fire and building codes. I started to see how all of those came together. 

That sparked my interest in the blending of design and civics. I began to focus on looking at architecture as a concert of buildings that come together in a city.

What made you want to run for mayor?

I moved to Tampa in 2006, shortly after I graduated from architecture school. I wanted to be engaged and involved in the community, but I found that conversations around design weren’t happening.

There was a small group of young professionals with backgrounds in architecture, and we started having those conversations. We really focused on transit, on housing, and on how we looked at sustainability at the time, which has become a much broader conversation on resilience.

For the last 20 years, those topics have elevated in importance because we’ve hit a crisis point. Tampa is growing fast. We’ve seen rapid development, and we haven’t had leadership that has set a vision and direction that the entire city could move forward with.

Nearly 50% of the city is living paycheck to paycheck, and that number has been steadily growing. I think that it is in large part due to decisions we’ve made about the built environment and development.

What unique skills does someone with a design background bring to public office?

Those of us who have architectural backgrounds are trained to be problem-solvers. We’re trained to look at things through a diversity of lenses to be able to generate a multitude of solutions. 

That’s important because we often ask different, new questions about challenges, which helps us get to solutions that envision different futures. The visioning piece—seeing potential futures—is unique to designers.

Which of Tampa’s challenges can urban design help solve?

We have major transportation challenges in congestion because we don't have a transit system. We’re the only top-30 metro area [by population] without one. Our transportation costs annually are about 25% of household income, which is high. The national average is about 19%. Cities with transit systems, like Boston and Portland, Ore., sit around 14% to 16%.

The compounding issue we have is housing. We have rapid growth, but we still have a majority of single-family housing. And we’ve lost a lot of our starter homes where you might see young professionals, young families, or even retirees looking to downsize go because they can afford those.

How does your background make you feel uniquely set up to address the challenges facing Tampa?

Education gave me a jumpstart, and I've gained experience within architecture firms, within the nonprofit sector where I cofounded an urban design collaborative [the Urban Charrette], and from my work as the director for the Florida Center for Community Design & Research at the University of South Florida. (I’m now the assistant dean for research and chair for the Bachelor of Science in Design program there.) These positions helped prepare me by letting me collaborate with local governments and the communities they serve.

I've worked with major agencies within the city of Tampa and the surrounding area, like the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission, Hillsborough Area Regional Transit, the Florida Department of Transportation, and the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council. 

I’ve worked with them individually and on projects where I’ve facilitated them working together. Those projects were some of my most favorite because they combined urban issues with community engagement. They were also the most challenging. 

When the local governments reach out to me, it’s not for the easy projects. It’s always for the hard ones, and I am proud to have gotten the call for those.

Tell us about your work with the Urban Charrette. 

The Urban Charette is a nonprofit in Tampa that I cofounded with my now-husband, who’s an architect and urban designer. We decided back in 2007 that we would do whatever we could to get the ship to turn. 

We were hoping that we could help create a shared vocabulary around design. The idea was to help residents, business owners, and elected leaders advocate for a better-designed city. We learned from other cities, and a Sustainable Design Assistance Team technical grant from Communities by Design (which is now with the Architects Foundation) helped launch a group of young professionals into the realm of working directly with local leaders.

The Urban Charrette is also a collaborative design resource. For example, we hosted a water taxi charrette with the Tampa Downtown Partnership back in 2008. We brought in experts from Chicago that operated water taxis, and we brought in some of our local teams who were operating different vessels along the waterfront. 

That was a significant project that took a positive turn. It led to what is now a successful water taxi system in Tampa. 

What’s an example of how public-sector planning can benefit communities?

I’ve done a heat resilience study in the city of Tampa. Extreme heat is a growing concern for us, and our energy costs are rising. It’s going to be key for the city to have an infrastructure of shade trees and cooling centers in place and to work with the design community about how we address heat. I’m hoping to work with the architectural community on some strategies for us moving forward.

One additional project was [a revitalization plan] with the community of Wimauma in Hillsborough County. This was a community with high poverty rates and a large migrant population. A couple of years ago, they were facing a lot of development pressure. 

We did a two-year engagement to bring together community members, property owners, land use attorneys, developers, and the county to determine what was the best course of action. The downtown area hadn’t really seen any growth or change in the past 15 years. 

While updating their community plan, we discovered that they were lacking the infrastructure necessary for commercial buildings. Even though downtown was zoned for commercial structures and multifamily housing, they did not have the sewer system code required for building those.

The community was asking for a laundromat, but they couldn’t get one because they didn’t have the sewer infrastructure. Understanding that let the county put money in the budget for it. During that project, we also created an entirely new land development code section for them, which incorporated guidelines for how the new developments would use different housing typologies and lot sizes.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

In Tampa, there’s pressure because the city’s permitting department has been behind. Our architecture firms, their subcontractors, and the allied professions are struggling because the permitting system is not where it needs to be to keep up with the type of growth Tampa is experiencing. 

There are many challenges that the design community faces, and I think that they are a key component of being able to envision a better, more resilient future for Tampa and for other communities that are struggling with similar issues.

Learn more about the Urban Charrette by reading this article or watching this video.

Danielle Steger is AIA’s senior manager, editorial & publications.