Victor Dover

Talking about streets on Carie Penabad’s "On Cities" podcast

Professor Carie Penabad hosts the weekly podcast On Cities

On March 22, 2024, architect and professor Carie Penabad interviewed Victor Dover for her weekly podcast On Cities. The theme of the conversation was that there’s so much we can learn from the streets built in our past that is still relevant for the streets (and cities) we need to build today. Somehow, in under an hour, Victor talked with Carie about lessons learned from streets in Hickory Grove, Charlotte, Blacksburg, London, Dublin, Miami, Alexandria, Washington, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Coral Gables, New York, South Miami, Beijing, Paris, West Palm Beach, Charleston, Kendall, Kingston, and from little villages, from megacities and from movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, and from TV, including Miami Vice… Give a listen and send us your comments on the conversation.

Naturally, Church Street in Charleston came up in the conversation. Photo by Victor Dover

The in-depth conversations on Carie’s show explore the many ways the designed world affects our daily lives.  Thought leaders from wide-ranging professions talk with her about modern challenges in the built environment and innovative responses to them, covering climate change, housing, infrastructure, art, public policy and much more. 

VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network is the leading producer, distributor, and online broadcaster of original live and on-demand talk radio programming worldwide. Tune in each Friday for On Cities at 11:00 AM EST, 8:00 PST on the Voice America Channel; and find all previous episodes on Spotify, Apple iTunes or your favorite podcast platform.

Victor Dover to Kick off 2016 Speakers Series "Design for Living"

Victor Dover will kick off the 2016 Speakers Series presented by the Venice Museum & Archives: “Design for Living; John Nolen and the Renaissance of New Urbanism." Victor will speak on “The Streets of Livable Cities” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Venice Community Center, 3236 Nokomis Ave. S., Venice.

Victor Dover Closes NACTO 15 Conference with Great Streets, Great Cities

Dover, Kohl, & Partners is honored to have Victor Dover serve as the closing plenary speaker at this year's NACTO  conference.  The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is a non-profit association that represents large cities on transportation issues of local, regional and national significance.

This year's Designing Cities conference, held in Austin, Texas from October 28-31, allows transportation leaders and practitioners from across the country to discuss key trends in urban street design and transportation policy. Also, local leaders  can exchange best practices with major city transportation, and private-sector, stakeholders  committed to a common vision toward more vibrant, sustainable cities of tomorrow.

Victor will present "Great Streets, Great City," asking the question 'How can we elevate our cities by creating streets that are not just transportation corridors, but also beautiful and memorable places?' Through his closing remarks, Victor will be share inspiring images and examples from the great cities and boulevards of history. Showcasing the specific design elements that add up to great, inviting streets and cities, he’ll challenge city transportation engineers to expand their role toward moving beyond signage, striping and bollards to thoughtfully create handsome streets that generate civic pride.

Walton Family Foundation Announces Design Excellence Program

 

A new initiative, the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, was recently announced by the Walton Family Foundation. The foundation aims to promote the highest level of design excellence for public buildings and spaces. 

Victor Dover, principal of Dover, Kohl & Partners, is among the distinguished panel of professionals who form the program’s selection committee. The panel will review the submissions of local, national, and international designers to be considered for future work within the program.

Designers interested in the Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program will be able to apply through Sept. 16. The program expects to support up to three projects per year. 

You may read the foundation’s complete release, and also visithttp://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/design to learn more.

In Production: Video Courses on Form-Based Codes

 

Victor Dover and colleagues were in Los Angeles last week, filming an upcoming series of educational videos for the Form-Based Codes Institute (FBCI) and Planetizen.  

Victor and Joseph Kohl were co-founders of the non-profit FBCI, which started operations in 2004 and has become a leading think tank and an effective educator on reforming land-development regulations. Form-based codes are an alternative to conventional zoning; they help communities build more of the places people want (and less of what they don’t).

For more information regarding FBCI’s upcoming courses and webinars, visithttp://formbasedcodes.org/courses-webinars.

Victor Dover to Serve as Moderator for the Streetsmarts: 2015 Transportation Summit

Victor Dover will be this year's moderator for the StreetSmarts 2015 Transportation Summit. 

The summit is a regional event focused on creating safe, livable, connected, sustainable streets for people of all ages and abilities. The event allows participants to collaborate with elected officials, regional experts, and industry leaders to exchange best practices, share innovative ideas. 

Hosted by the City of Fort Lauderdale, the summit will showcase a variety of transportation influencers from multiple disciplines who will host important discussions on topics such as improving pedestrian and bicycle safety, aligning policy, stimulating behavior change, and sharing tri-county successes. 

The Streetsmarts summit will take place on Wednesday, May 20, 2015 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and will be held at: 

The Broward Center for the Performing Arts | Huizenga Pavilion
201 SW 5th Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312

For more information about the event, visit: 
StreetSmarts Summit

Victor Dover's Essay "Seven Dials" in New Book by Jared Green

 

The following is an excerpt of "Designed for the Future: 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable World" by Jared Green, published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2015. Save 30% (plus free shipping in the U.S.) when you purchase Designed for the Future from papress.com. Enter promo code GREEN at checkout.

Seven Dials

VICTOR DOVER

Show how cool it can be to live in the city.

Revitalized historical places are emblematic of a sustainable future. It’s been said that “the greenest building is the one that has already been built,” when considering the embodied energy in the materials that we’d otherwise have to ship, throw away, or reuse in the structure.

The preservation movement began around the idea of protecting places because they are rich in character. We develop attachments to places because of their architecture and feeling, not from their machinery. Historical buildings tend to be low-tech but often feature a smart useof resources. For example, those old thick walls have thermal mass, which helps the building stay cooler on summer days and warmer on winter nights.

Old buildings often have a great building-to-street relationship, too. Their fronts—doors, windows, storefronts, balconies—face the street and the public.

Seven Dials in London is a curious intersection not far from Covent Garden. In the 1600s the developer built it with diagonal streets, which, in plan, vaguely resemble the Union Jack. At the center, the diagonal roads converge, intersecting in a square with a column in the middle.

There are no signature works of architecture around it, and the column is very simple, but there’s a bench at its base, where people gather. There’s something about the size, proportion, and pace of the space; people love being there. The scale feels comfortable, and the intersection slows everyone down. You can watch the human parade go by, on foot, on bikes, in cars.

Seven Dials is preserved as a national heritage site, and as is often the case, historic preservation points the way. If we had more places like it, people wouldn’t need to feel like they’re stuck in their cars. If people felt that good in every city, we’d have a stronger, smarter planet. Once you see the place, you know ideas fly back and forth there.

Seven Dials makes the city a place where you want to be. One no longer needs to retreat from the city to hide in backyards in the exurbs or little houses on the prairie. With this kind of urban living, there are fewer burdens on the planet because there’s no impulse to flee. With more places like Seven Dials, more forests and farmland would be saved.

As Parris Glendening, former governor of Maryland, once said, “People hate sprawl, but they hate density more.” But that’s exactly what we need if we are going to create a sustainable future. We need more places that show how cool it can be to live in the city.

Victor Dover is a planner and principal at Dover, Kohl & Partners.

 

Photo caption: Seven Dials, London; Photo credit: Aurellen Guichard, Creative Commons, Cropped,https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

A copy of the book can be purchased through the following:

Twenty Questions for Victor Dover

This article was originally written by Lee Stephens and published in the April 14-27 edition of the Cutler Bay News

During the past 10 years or so, the so called “new  urbanist” planning movement has garnered a great deal of national and even international attention. In Florida, many new urbanist communities, such as Seaside, Rosemary Beach and Alys Beach, have become synonymous with sound urban planning.


Victor Dover was one of the early and most fervent proponents of the new urbanism design principles. Today, he remains quite active on the national and international stages.


Despite the best efforts of the county and several municipalities to promote and implement the new urbanist design principles in their land development regulations, local examples of new urban design communities are quite rare. We sat down with him recently to discuss his work and Dover-Kohl’s latest project, Old Cutler Village, 18551 Old Cutler Road in Cutler Bay.

Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?
Dover: I grew up in North Carolina, studied architecture at Virginia Tech, and then first started my career as an exhibition designer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Soon, I moved to Miami with my schoolmate and future business partner, Joe Kohl, and we both ended up studying urban design at the University of Miami.

What attracted you to town planning and urban design? 
Dover: Going from living in walkable, comfortable Old Town Alexandria, VA to living near Dadeland, where in the 1980s it seemed you were expected to drive everywhere and it was all unsightly, was a blunt reminder of just how much difference the built environment makes in our everyday lives. We could tell right away South Floridians deserved something better, something more practical, more beautiful. Design matters.

How long has the firm been in business? 
Dover: Dover, Kohl and Partners Town Planning evolved from our first business venture in 1987, and we’re still at it. We were motivated to establish the practice by the idea that if people could better visualize change before it occurs — the essence of planning — they’d make better decisions and build better communities. For about 20 years we’ve also been lucky to work alongside James Dougherty, director of design at Dover-Kohl, and his touch is evident on the new micro-village proposed for Cutler Bay.

What is the typical project your firm works on? 
Dover: We get to work on a big range of assignments, from citywide and regional plans, to revitalization strategies for historic places, to retrofitting suburbia, to new towns, to close-up urban design on small infill developments. These assignments take us all over the country and abroad. Every week, the job’s different.

What are a couple of the projects you are currently working on? 
Dover: Right now we’re planning a big section of Oklahoma City, designing an eco-village for Antioch College in Ohio, writing rules for the reuse of a closed military base on Monterey Bay in California, and designing the Jupiter Inlet Village here in Florida.

What are the central tenets of “new urbanism?” 
Dover: That’s a big subject, but the gist of it is this: How and where we build and rebuild determines whether the resulting town is walkable and connected and inspiring and sustainable, or not. Urbanists advocate for compact, complete, connected communities where people can get to know their neighbors, places where people love to be. The emphasis starts on creating great addresses by design, and that ends up extending into subjects like street layouts, zoning, architecture, real estate, engineering, economics and ecology.

What are some of the benefits of a mixed use community? 
Dover: To start with, when a few more of life’s basic daily needs are close at hand, we don’t have to drive so much. Just a small amount of modest neighborhood-scaled commercial space and some workplaces among the residential development can dramatically shorten some car trips and even eliminate others, replacing them with walking or biking. That cuts traffic congestion, saves time, saves energy, reduces emissions, and makes life more fun.

What are you working on locally?
Dover: Over the last couple of years, we led the effort to create the “Seven50” plan for Southeast Florida. It’s both big-picture and long-term; it lays out prospects for our seven county region for the next 50 years. Lately we’ve been busy writing regulations to control the Mediterranean Village on behalf of the City of Coral Gables, and refining the Old Cutler Village plans.

Tell us about the Old Cutler Village. What is the vision for the project? 
Dover: It’s a micro-village, really, on a very special site well suited for that. It will add a small dose of variety to its surroundings, and it will become a favorite stop along the Old Cutler bike trail. It is designed to have a laidback bed-and-breakfast inn, a café, some townhouses and condominiums, and a little office building, all grouped around public green squares and a nice expansion of the bike trail into a proper linear park. The architecture is inspired by the nearby Deering Estate and it will have an Old Cutler vibe.

Who is the owner/builder?
Dover: The company is called Fortune International, founded by local investor Edgardo deFortuna. He and his partners are known for very prestigious, high-quality residential developments and careful design. This time they get to show their skills with lowrise, low-key, street-oriented development.  

How long have you been associated with Old Cutler Village? 
Dover: We’ve studied this site off and on for nearly a decade. It’s been a worthwhile journey, and I’m glad the owners have been patient, because this last small development could make a lot of difference to the surrounding neighborhood. It will add benefits for everybody through placemaking.  

Is it a good example of urban planning? 
Dover: It’s very site-specific; the design grew out of a really long look at the context and from studying the town’s Old Cutler Charrette documents. It is all about adding a handful of things that will really be good neighbors. The Town of Cutler Bay will get a proud architectural entrance, and the existing sewer pump station will finally be screened from view. The development will add a gentle kind of polish to that part of the Old Cutler Road corridor and boost the surrounding property value, but without undoing the tranquility we all love about the area. We think it will be very popular with cyclists and birdwatchers, too.

Isn’t the land too small for it to work as a mixed use community? 
Dover: Don’t think of it as a standalone community unto itself. It’s going to be a seamless part of the surrounding neighborhood, and will spatially tie the separated subdivisions and parks together. This part of the neighborhood will add some missing ingredients to the mix, give the existing neighbors a new place to walk. I think someday it will show up in the postcard pictures that tell what Cutler Bay is all about, not something isolated and separate.

Will the project be green certified?
 Dover: Yes. Thankfully, Cutler Bay and the developers share a strong greenbuilding ethic, and that is going to be very evident in the village layout and in the architecture.

There has been a lot of discussion about the impact of the proposal on the wetlands restoration project to the east. How are you as the planner handling the interaction with the restoration project? Does the proposal affect any of the wetlands? 
Dover: The whole thing is designed to protect it. It will frame the beautiful views and make those views accessible to the public, to complement the adjacent restoration area and the national park beyond. The little “birding belvedere” tower is to be made open to the public, so people can go up and look at the restoration area at treetop level, without intruding on it. Meanwhile, the development itself is tucked away from the wetlands, and its footprint is kept small, to avoid impacts on the ecosystem restoration. The engineers are carefully controlling every drop of stormwater, too, to insure the restoration area remains healthy.

As part of the design and planning process, did you meet/consult with the area’s residents? Does the proposal reflect their input? 
Dover: Yes. Before we ever put pen to paper on the latest draft, we had really productive, interactive meetings with neighbors. A couple of us spent some weekends going door to door, too, interviewing neighbors one on one. We learned a lot and their ideas are in the drawings. They suggested the small restaurant, for example. Some neighbors seemed to sense immediately that one more gated enclave of cookie- cutter houses would be aiming too low, and they urged a very open, civic-minded design instead. They’re right.

What can be developed on the property today?
Dover: Current zoning would allow for about 30 or 40 single-family detached homes in a 1970s-style, suburban, cul-de-sac format, with backs of buildings up against Old Cutler Road, and no public spaces. That would be a colossal missed opportunity, in my opinion.

Why is the proposal superior to the plan that could be developed under the current zoning? 
Dover: The micro-village proposal will indeed allow for a few more dwellings — about 79 total — and add in things like the 12-room bed-and-breakfast inn. But in the process, the neighborhood also will get more housing variety, deep setbacks from Old Cutler Road, and with the fronts of buildings facing the public instead of the backs. But that’s just the start. The public also will gain open parkland, places to walk along the restoration area and view it, a much better bikeway, the screening of the pump station, some trip-capturing mixed use, and many other benefits.


Do you plan to have additional meetings with the community? 
Dover: Certainly, yes. The next one is Apr. 21 in the meeting room at Palmetto Bay Village Center (the former Burger King Headquarters) at 7 p.m. We’re looking forward to showing the latest drafts and answering questions.

What are the next steps in the approval process? 
Dover: The crucial steps are for the Town of Cutler Bay to confirm that this vision fits within the town’s goals, expressed in their official Comprehensive Plan, and make the necessary adjustments to policies and regulations that will make it possible within strict quality controls and limits. That all will be done with ample opportunity for public comment and input, and the town’s elected leaders will be the decision-makers. Call me wonky, but it’s exciting, and historic; this kind of local control was one reason Cutler Bay citizens incorporated the town to begin with, and this project will be a symbol of the good things that came from that.