5 Architecture skills that apply to community design

If you’re considering a career pivot and looking to expand into the community design market, you most likely already possess skills that will set you up for success. 

The architecture-to-planning transition entails significant overlaps. Both disciplines derive from related design principles and aspire to enhance quality of place and quality of life. Whereas architects create individual buildings in a set environment, community designers create the environment surrounding and supporting those buildings. The synergy between the two gives rise to how our communities look, work, and flourish.

Just as planners guide the connecting urban framework, civic amenities, and in-between spaces among buildings, architects respond in kind to those contextual settings, and the process reciprocates over time as the two entities inextricably link and enhance each other. The more architects understand about community designers and vice versa, the greater the positive potential for this symbiotic dialogue. 

The following five attributes are distinctive skills applicable from architectural practice to community design. 

1. You’re already process oriented. 

Both architecture and community planning utilize similar iterative sequences of design, but community planning incorporates input from a wider scope of stakeholders, including public/private property owners, government agencies, and more. Both disciplines handle large amounts of information while balancing multiple objectives, competing priorities, and economic pressures that pervade complex design challenges. The disciplines utilize multiple software programs and, in many cases, AI. 

While buildings are relatively finite and stable, the city is continually reinvented. Community planning progresses along an incremental continuum that unfolds slowly and matures over years and even generations. 

2. You’re skilled in analytical examination.  

Architecture and community design require the ability to synthesize a broad range of data and dynamics, including physical, environmental, and demographic. Both disciplines also require shrewd judgment in connecting the dots of emerging patterns, systemic issues, and strategic nuances to identify hidden constraints and opportunities. Lastly, assessment is a key skill—the wizened discernment derived from past challenges yielding well-reasoned impressions, balanced determinations, and issue leadership clarity. 

3. Creative ideation comes naturally to you. 

You’re already skilled at applying fundamental design principles to project requirements that advance beyond formulaic cliches and generic solutions toward true design quality. You’re able to employ ambitious intent, prolific imagination, and vision refinement with an energetic aim and diligent focus towards delivering impactful benefits. 

Placemaking, much like architecture, is the disciplined craft of imbuing an inviting space with enriching purpose, multifaceted use, and lasting value. 

4. Strategic collaboration is something you’re well-versed in.

As an architect, you’re already used to taking an interdisciplinary approach to projects. This makes you well-prepared to expand the diversity of consultants on your projects to include specialized input applicable to the expanded civic scope and scale of community design. Aligning the creative output of interrelated environmental, economic, and political aspects of urban ecosystems leads to a multilayered approach. Community design often involves coordinating multiple stakeholders at all levels to realize a common aim and a shared vision. 

5. Public presentations? No problem. 

For many architects, public speaking to clearly convey complex issues is second nature. Speaking to inspire positive action is the key currency of leading successful community design through elevating public discourse, facilitating critical issue focus, and persuading civic opinion. 

Architects are also familiar with exacting project documentation, which comes in handy when developing 100-plus-page master plans rich in evocative images and text-heavy planning submittals as public records. Similarly, design professionals who have experience in press relations and deft handling of complex messaging already have what it takes to effectively promote a project. 

Rex Cabaniss, AIA, AICP, is the vice-chair of the AIA Regional & Urban Design Committee.