Features

Older and Wiser: Creating Communities for Life
By Randolph Jones, AIA, AICP
Americans are growing older, in the largest numbers ever. By the decade ending 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates six million persons, ages 16 to 54, will have been added to the working-age population. Over the same period, the 55-and-over age bracket will swell by 18 million baby boomers, raising the question, Where will we all work, live, recreate, and retire? To answer the question, the author offers some steps necessary to create new communities for a quality future.

Resources

Designing the Future of New Orleans
Architectural Record, in partnership with the Tulane School of Architecture, announces two international competitions to generate housing proposals for New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The dual competitions are New Orleans House Prototype, open to current architecture students; and High-Density on the High-Ground, open to everyone. Click here to find out more.

News

Conference Focuses on Gulf States Recovery Effort
In November, the Disaster Preparedness Task Force of the AIA New York Chapter sponsored a conference, Gulf States Recovery: Reports from the Front. The conference, held at the Center for Architecture in New York City, featured "reports from the field" from various organizations, conferences, and initiatives to better understand where there are common objectives and needs for assistance. The goal of the conference was to determine how design professionals can help in the recovery effort. Click here to read the component's Gulf Coast report.

AIA Assembles Assessment Team for Sri Lanka
After the December 2004 tsunami, the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects requested the AIA create a team of professionals to visit Sri Lanka. The AIA assembled an experienced team comprising five members of the AIA , two members of the American Planning Association, a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The team visited Sri Lanka in May 2005 and traveled for nearly four days along most of the country's devastated coastal areas, studying the varying coastal landscape, damage to the homes and businesses, and the difficult issues of building thousands of new homes for displaced people.

Communities Conference Connected the Dots
The Communities on the Line Conference, literally and figuratively, connected the dots, linking transit with land use and creating a dialogue between those who have successfully delivered transit-oriented development (TOD) and those who are struggling to do so. Arlington County (Va.) was featured at the conference, with its 20-year history of transit-oriented development. The conference also featured in-depth presentations by planners (Peter Bass) and elected officials (Chris Zimmerman) who accompanied workshop tours of the county's five-station transit development results. Plenary speakers, including Bill Millar of the American Public Transportation Association, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, and David Vozzolo of the Federal Transit Administration provided enough excitement and electricity to power the Red Line's third rail, while breakout sessions focused on TOD's expanding role in place-making throughout our urban regions.

Roger Lewis, FAIA, noted architect, columnist, and educator, explored America's changing attitudes toward community through his cartoonist's lens—a most evocative and entertaining session. The final morning provided conferees the opportunity to visit TOD sites on the Red and Green Lines. The afternoon session, billed as the Tyson's Corner Charrette, turned into a fascinating "how to" session with Arlington, once again, serving as coach and mentor for Tysons Corner officials actively engaged in creating a strategy (overcoming legislative hurdles, addressing land assembly issues, selling the urban design vision, and hammering out the development costs and sources of funding) to recreate Tysons Corner as a full-fledged transit-oriented development.

This Year's Venice Architecture Biennale Will Focus on City Planning
The 10th Venice Architecture Biennale will be staged from September to November, with the theme of transformation of cities and regions. The exhibition will be under the artistic direction of Richard Burdett, professor of architecture and city planning at the London School of Economics (LSE). Titled The Meta-City: Issues in City Planning, the exhibition will focus on innovative proposals and directions needed in response to changing populations and working habits.

Burdett, born in London in 1956, founded the Cities Program at LSE and has more than 20 years of experience in staging exhibitions and competitions. He advises London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, on architecture and urban issues, and is director of Urban Age, a two-year sequence of conferences on urban development. The Italian Pavilion will for the first time be in the Arsenale exhibition complex.

Learning from Lower Manhattan Proceedings Published
Almost two years have passed since the Learning from Lower Manhattan conference, and the debate over reconstruction and redevelopment of the World Trade Center site and its environs is as spirited as ever. Click here to read the suggestions and recommendations from the conference.

Fall Conference To Focus on Livable Communities
Planning is under way for Livable Communities: Walking, Working, and Water, the 2006 fall conference collaboration between the AIA Regional and Urban Design Committee, AIA Housing Committee, AIA Committee on the Environment, and AIA Seattle. Stay tuned to the AIA Regional and Urban Design Web site for future details. Conference topics include

• An assessment of the Pacific Northwest region
• Urbanism and livability
• Environmental issues
• A vision for the future

There will also be workshops at various sites in Seattle, including Gas Works Park, Pike's Place Market, Seattle Public Library, and Buchart Gardens.

Planning Under Way for Smart Growth Conference
Smart growth attracts many people from multiple endeavors. Some are regulators, some are doers, and some are users. The fifth annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference, to be held January 26–28, 2006, in Denver, is about coordinating the needs and activities of this diverse group to help us all begin to speak the same language.  

The program will feature cutting-edge smart growth issues, the latest research, implementation tools and strategies, studies of successful cases, interactive learning experiences, new partners, new projects, and new policies. Most important, this event offers an opportunity to network and coordinate with your peers and practitioners from many different disciplines with the same goal—building safe, healthy, and livable communities for all.

Submissions Open for 2006 Charter Awards
Submissions are now being accepted for the annual Charter Awards. Sponsored by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU),  the  Charter Awards set the gold standard for urban design and development. Instead of recognizing projects in isolation, the Charter Awards honor exceptional designs that complement, enhance, or even repair their built and natural environments. Honored projects serve as powerful examples for future development.

Each year the CNU convenes a jury of the highest caliber to review submissions and select the winning entries that best embody and advance the principles of the Congress of the New Urbanism. In 2006, jury members include foremost urbanists such as designers Leon Krier, Jacque Robertson, and Barbara Littenberg and development analyst Todd Zimmerman.

The CNU welcomes professional submissions in three categories:
• The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town
• The Neighborhood, District, and Corridor
• The Block, Street, and Building

Student and faculty submissions are welcome in all three categories. The submissions deadline is January 31, 2006.  

Closing Words from the 2005 RUDC Chair
By Lance Jay Brown, FAIA
The importance of regional and urban design has never been more apparent than it is today. Not since the end of the second world war has our population experienced the radical relocation that was produced by the combined hurricanes of Katrina and Rita. We are still in shock from the combined effect of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the tsunami, and the hurricane season on our global, national, regional, and local landscapes.

In New York, my home town, the immediate response to the September 11 tragedy was just short of miraculous. However, the obvious failings in early warning and preparedness, from September 11 through Hurricane Rita, were totally unacceptable and the recovery and rebuilding efforts, especially in the Gulf Coast region, leave enormous room for improvement. Please, lest any of the many true heroes in all of these disasters be offended, please understand that we all have done our best in all ways to prepare for and respond to the challenges illuminated by these disasters. As professionals, however, we must now look at ways we can do better. 

This is a special moment for urban designers. The occurrences mentioned above both illustrate and illuminate the importance of advocacy as a task of urban design. Urban designers have always played an important role in the profession as "advocates." At no other time has this role been more important. Urban designers, as the recognized synthesizers of all the elements that comprise our ever urbanizing landscape, have both the opportunity and the responsibility of informing decision-makers of the manifold physical design issues that need to be addressed and, ultimately, engaging the decision-making process directly to influence it.

This is a special moment for all the design professions. The door is open for all of us to think broadly about how we go about our business. Disaster issues can transform previously limited opportunities into broad new initiatives. Why shouldn’t we be able to reverse the flow of traffic in our cities? Why was this a problem in Texas? Do we really need a calamity like Hurricane Katrina to encourage us to carefully design and build a sustainable Gulf Coast region? If so, we had one. Let’s take this opportunity to do it right. Let’s take this opportunity every place we can while the public and the politicians are still aware of and understand the reasons for doing it right.

I have seen, with my own eyes, the physical destruction caused by war, terrorism, and natural disasters. I have met the people affected by disasters. The biggest lesson to be learned from bearing witness to such events is that of putting people first. Putting people first, in the best sense of the idea, would be keeping them out of harm’s way from the beginning. Regions and cities and hinterlands with balanced economies, affordable living conditions, rational movement systems, and in healthy, sustainable landscapes is putting people first. Smoke alarms and fire stairs exist in buildings because we put people first. Let’s start putting people first at the global, continental, regional, and urban scales. Good design is putting people first at all scales.