Every Neighborhood Should Have These Five Things

This one’s all about neighborhoods: Episode 5 of Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know reached screens Monday, May 11, 2020 via social media and our YouTube channel, and it includes some striking animations by Alex England, Kenneth Garcia, and Pablo Dueñas.

Neighborhoods are the basic building block of a city or town.

In 1929, Clarence Perry documented what he called “The Neighborhood Unit.” His classic diagram remains useful; it’s been updated several times since, including in the early 1990s by Gary Greenan and Lizz Plater-Zyberk for AIA Graphic Standards, and again in 2007 for Doug Farr’s book Sustainable Urbanism.

Clarence Perry’s “Neighborhood Unit.”

When you have one neighborhood standing alone among the farms or in the woods or the wilderness, that’s a village. When growth leads to several of these neighborhoods positioned tightly together, you get a town, and, with even more neighborhoods, a city. In this way, small towns and big cities like Paris or New York or Washington are all cities made of neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods: the fundamental unit of city building.

The five crucial ingredients

Neighborhoods vary a lot, but they have five basic characteristics. We keep these in mind when planning a new neighborhood or when carefully updating or restoring an existing one.

Compact, complete, connected, convivial.

First, a proper traditional neighborhood has an identifiable center & edge. You know when you’ve arrived at the heart of a neighborhood; large or small, it almost always has a deliberate, consequential public space, shared by all. You will typically find a square or plaza, and a noteworthy civic building or landmark (and in the best examples, some locally-serving commerce). Edges, on the other hand, vary greatly. While historically a fortified town might have had a wall for protection, that has thankfully evolved to more inclusive and welcoming physical identifiers. The boundaries between neighborhoods might simply take the form of a mixed-use main street shared by several adjoining neighborhoods, forming a “seam” instead of a seal. Or the edge can be a greenbelt of parkland, forest or farmland, or a water body, or a transit or greenway/trail corridor, or some other feature. All that being said, centers are arguably much more important to the neighbors’ well-being than the edges; the centers are where the bonds of community are most firmly formed.

Second, the neighborhood is limited in size, about five minutes’ walk from center to edge. That’s an easy distance to navigate without driving. It’s also an amount of territory that is easily mentally mapped, committed to memory in great detail, and in an area this size people come to know many of their neighbors. Parents in traditional neighborhoods tend to allow their children greater freedom to roam for these reasons. Five minutes’ walk results in a radius of about a quarter of a mile, but that’s a rough measurement only; neighborhoods are almost never circular! Perry’s neighborhood unit envisioned idealized neighborhoods at a size of about 160 acres, but in practical application we find traditional neighborhoods range from about 40 acres to about 300 acres. Larger sites are designed as multiple neighborhoods. Although there are many ways their edges are defined physically, real neighborhoods don’t extend endlessly across the horizon.

Next, it has a mix of land uses & building types & housing types and prices. That variety allows for some of life’s basic daily needs to be satisfied within the neighborhood. (More on this coming up in Episode 7, on mixed land uses.) An old rule of thumb says, if you can buy a quart of milk within 5 minutes walk, that’s a more livable neighborhood. That’s also a neighborhood where you’re more likely to walk or bike, burning calories instead of fossil fuels. We don’t use the term “neighborhood”to describe vast, standalone precincts of a single land use, like tract house subdivisions, apartment complexes, office parks, or shopping centers. Variety in the housing types and sizes welcomes a wider range of households and income levels, making it possible to blend generations, improve inclusiveness, and to avoid socially harmful concentrations of poverty.

Fourth, the neighborhood should also have an integrated network of walkable streets. Making the streets connected, beautiful and walkable are all key to fostering a healthy culture of physical activity, making public transit viable, creating great addresses that add value to real estate, and more. (Episode 8, on the public realm, and Episode 9, on walkable street design, will cover this in more detail.)

Last, the neighborhood should have some of the best sites reserved for civic purposes, like public buildings, places of worship, parks, squares, and gathering places. These sites are the ones which are lent significance by the artfully composed geometry of the neighborhood plan itself; for example, a civic building is lent prominence by positioning it at the end of a street vista or facing a public square, communicating the importance of the shared institution inside it to the society that built the neighborhood. Public buildings and civic gathering places are crucial anchors that lend certainty in an unpredictable world, precisely because they are more permanent than the private houses or everyday workplaces— so these sites should be identified, set aside and protected from private development right from the beginning.

Neighborhoods: They’re fundamental, and they’re #5 on my list of #townplanningstuff everyone needs to know. —Victor

"Connect the Dots" virtual lecture draws huge audience

On May 4, 2020, Victor Dover delivered a “virtual lecture” for the Civic Conversations series, hosted by the Pensacola News-Journal and the Studer Community Institute. Quint Studer introduced Victor as “the Michael Jordan of urban planning” at the start of this extraordinary event, streamed live for an estimated 6000 viewers. The talk features an in-depth discussion of what makes housing expensive, and what to do about it, including how the costs of housing and transportation must be considered as a composite number, and examples of innovation from around the United States. The event concluded with a live Zoom Q&A moderated by Lisa Nellessen-Savage, executive editor of the PNJ.

TPS Ep. 4, Visualizing Change

The fourth episode in Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know is about before-and-after thinking. To do planning and urban design you have to take a hard look at a place to see what’s there, and then imagine in your mind’s eye what it should be, in the future. And then, you have to draw it, somehow, and show it to others, and ask, “Is this what you envision, too?”

This is a visual process, it’s not just planning by the numbers. You have to make your visions visual to really communicate them. Advertisers have long known this; they love to depict the new and improved as compared to the old. Think of the TV commercials showing the dirty t-shirt “before” it’s washed in the new detergent, and how great it looks “after” their product gets used or their advice gets followed! Professionals and policymakers have long needed to apply that kind of communication more often to the big decisions about our built environment.

Historically, some of the most influential thinkers about design understood this well. Landscape architect Humphrey Repton painted garden scenes on two layers of canvas, gluing a hinged top layer depicting “before” conditions over a bottom layer depicting his proposal, so he could show the impact of changes with the turn of a canvas flap. John Nolen, the first American to refer to himself as a professional city planner, titled his book “New Towns for Old,” capturing the before-and-after essence of his visions.

Way back in the 1980s, Joe Kohl, Erick Valle and I saw a TV news report about surgeons who were using crude video imagery to show trauma patients how their faces might look after reconstructive surgery. Before, and After. We thought, what if we could do the same thing to help heal the disfigured American city? That few seconds of television changed the course of our lives. We launched our “Image Network” company— the outfit that over time became our town planning practice— with an emphasis on visualization. We got pretty good at it. Those early contracts to produce electronic simulations and communication tools thrust us in front of the whole range of influencers who really decide what happens in our designed environment, from mayors, planners, architects, developers, and engineers, to preservationists, environmental advocates, economists, housing experts, retail experts, and community activists. We quickly got exposed to how all these folks think, and had to learn to translate among them.

But in those first years we gradually realized, and had to confront, a few key things. One was that most decisionmakers, including architectural designers, are terribly unskilled at envisioning how their abstract plans and elevations will actually turn out once built in the real world, such as how big or small the buildings would be, how the streets would feel, and how their new construction fits (or doesn’t) with its context. Another finding: Once we created effective simulations that showed their projects in the cold light of day, warts and all, they often weren’t sure what to do about it to fix the flaws. We felt the need to transition to leading the design and planning process, rather than just reacting to it as illustrators, after all the big decisions had already been made by someone else. Influential teachers like Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Mark Schimmenti, Geoff Ferrell and Jaime Correa taught us about urbanism, and we set out to rebuild our practice around the principles they introduced into our studio.

Today, whenever we propose changes to a street scene or a neighborhood, we use drawings and computer imagery to show how the place you know could be transformed over time, new and improved into a better place. We urge planners to think of plans less like a static map and more like a movie, which changes as you go along. It’s about thinking through change over time, whether the changes are gradual or dramatic and disruptive. This helps community leaders and investors make better choices.

Visualizing Change Before it Occurs: It’s #4 on my list of town planning stuff everyone needs to know. New episodes post each week; please share them, subscribe to the Dover Kohl YouTube channel, and let me know what you think. —Victor

TPS Episodes 3 & 13: Designing in Public (In Person and Online)

A new two-episode block of Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know is now on our YouTube channel. These are about engaging the public in planning and urban design--  even now, during the Great Confinement of COVID-19. Episode 3, “Designing in Public,” was filmed just before our successful charrette for the plan for downtown Panama City last year. Given the astounding events since, we decided to revamp and post Episode 13, “Online Engagement,” months early, to discuss ways of keeping public participation and collaboration going even while we are all practicing social distancing to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Here’s the gist:

#3: Designing in Public

Once upon a time, it might have seemed normal for a few insiders to get together in some smoke-filled room to figure out the future plan for the town. But today, an interactive, citizen-driven process for city planning is essential. Changes in the built environment can be controversial, to say the least. Education and a shared sense of authorship are essential to creating consensus. We therefore need to get the planning process out of the back rooms at powerful agencies and out into the sunshine, designing in public, where everyone who’s interested is invited to participate right alongside the authorities and technicians and experts. That’s because the best plan is made by many hands.

One good approach is a public design charrette, usually about a week long. It’s a combination of on-location storefront design studio and interactive town meetings. It’s like an old-time barnraising, except instead of erecting a barn, we’re getting the community together for a compressed period of time to build a plan. Early on in the week, that includes a major public hands-on planning session, in which small groups each tackle the map and debate alternative futures. Then, each group presents to the others, to compare their big ideas. As the charrette week unfolds, the designers and planners work to make the many plans into one, testing scenarios and producing illustrations of the ideas. The doors are open all week, so Citizen Planners are invited into the studio to offer feedback. Then, at the end of the week, we typically gather everyone again for a Work in Progress Presentation, when we’ll put the draft work up on a big screen and ask, “Is this what you meant?”

Designing in Public is more fun, and quicker, and more effective. That’s #3 on my list of Town Planning Stuff everyone needs to know. For more information, check out the info from the National Charrette Institute.

#13: Don’t Stop Public Engagement – Just Move it Online

As a followup to Episode 3, I recorded #13 in March 2020, as we entered the era of coronavirus. A lot of us have been working from home, keeping our distance in one way, while maybe, growing closer in others, via our digital screens. But we don’t have to stop public participation in planning decisions, or stop designing collaboratively & interactively. We just need, for now, to use the amazing array of digital tools already available to us, and move the process online.

For instance, in the past month we’ve staged two virtual charrettes, combining quick online collaboration, surveys, polls, building and comparing scenarios, videoconferencing, and webcasting. It’s a little like the rapid prototyping-and-feedback process that industry has been evolving for decades—but now we’re relying on it for city planning.

Parts of our office team have been telecommuting for many years now, so we’re used to this way of working. With collaborations underway with teammates and clients five or six different time zones apart at any given moment, in our practice we’ve grown accustomed to working with a lot of the cool digital tools. But now the occasion of the COVID-19 outbreak has pushed us to combine those tools anew, just one way we’re keeping our projects going.

Understanding the Limits

There are certainly limitations to online communication, so there will always be a place for in-person events once we can get back together. One of those limitations I call “the negative tendency of the internet.” We’ve all seen how not looking folks in the eye when you’re saying something or writing something is tempting to the less wholesome parts of human nature—so snarky comments, pile-ons and trolling can start to accumulate.

The antidotes to that tendency toward cynicism or negativity aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty straightforward. First, we brief our participants on the constructive criticism rules for our online brainstorming space. One good rule is, “Build up ideas, don’t just tear others’ ideas down.” We ask participants to tell us what you do like and tell us your solutions, not just what you see as problems. Next, we give them lots of information, posting resources on the website about the project at hand, and refer back to those resources as questions arise. Third, there are plenty of nooks and crannies on the Internet for anonymity. But this is not one of them. So we make it a requirement that for town planning projects, people must post and comment and webcast under their real name. Everybody has to introduce themselves, just like they would in the City Council chambers or when passing a microphone around in those traditional public meetings at the school cafeteria. Last, we respond fast, but once. We answer the questions and clear up misinformation, but don’t get into a never-ending back-and-forth.

A Crucial Moment

Right now, getting together in civic engagement and thinking about your community’s future can be a reprieve from the cable news and TV shows. Let’s make the most of it. Let’s use this time to educate, and re-ask the question, what do we want our communities to be?

There’s a lot of innovation now underway in this space, and I’m sure we’ve barely scratched the surface. Future generations may look back and see this decade as a turning point in the history of city planning, a time when we made it all more relevant and more accessible.

Sometime soon, eventually, when we get the all-clear to return to in-person public meetings and to go back out into the all-important public realm, we’ll need to be extra-ready to move town planning projects forward and create the places where people want to be. We’ll have a local and global economy to rebuild, in new and better and more inclusive ways. The worlds of real estate and infrastructure and city management will need to be better and smarter, too. We’ll need strategies for pulling together, and for executing on small and sensible incremental-growth projects that add up to real progress.

So we won’t stop envisioning, planning and collaborating... we’ll just be doing more of it online. To learn more about how we’re using “virtual charrettes,” videoconferencing, and other kinds of digital collaboration, subscribe to the Dover-Kohl YouTube channel.  --Victor

Ep. 2, The Importance of Design

The second episode of Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know is now on the Dover-Kohl YouTube channel. This short new installment introduces a crucial topic: why we can’t overestimate the importance of design, versus mere policy planning.

If you only know the land use or the density or the setbacks or the required number of parking spaces, you won’t know whether a development is good for the neighborhood or bad. In the video, we compare two places. The density? The lot size? The land use? All are exactly the same. But I’ll bet you’d prefer to live in one of them, and not the other.

The design is even more crucial than the land use. The character of a street scene comes from the building-to-street relationships, the landscape, the shape and quality of the public spaces, and the texture and proportions of the architecture. If your little lot or parcel presents a blank wall or a parking lot as its face toward the public realm, that will make everybody less likely to walk or bike or use transit—so small decisions have regional implications.

Design matters. That’s #2 on my list of town planning stuff everyone needs to know. Let us know what you think of the episode, watch for another one next week, and please subscribe to the Dover Kohl channel on YouTube. —Victor

Town Planning Stuff, Ep. 1: The Benefit of Planning

We’ve now posted Episode 1 of Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know on the Dover-Kohl YouTube channel. Subscribe & watch the whole playlist; new episodes are being posted weekly.

The benefit of planning

Ever wonder whether city planning meetings and zoning hearings are a colossal waste of time? They aren’t, as long as your town isn’t just going through the motions. Ask: What do you want your neighborhood to be like? Every community should set out to create its ideal. That means not just talking about it, or writing policies, but making maps, designing the future.

Towns, like people, have to choose what they want to be when they grow up. Every place people love has resulted from some level of planning. Those places didn’t come from the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. If they’re nice places to be, they probably haven’t always been that way. People drew lines on maps, deciding what kind of neighborhood this should be.

All the little decisions matter. So give some of your time to help move planning along in your town.

Planning brings benefits. And that’s #1 on my list of Town Planning Stuff everyone needs to know.

—Victor

New Video Series: Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know

Greetings friends and colleagues! Today, we’re introducing “Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know,” a new playlist on our Dover-Kohl YouTube channel. Please subscribe to the channel! Over a series of super-short videos, we’re going to take a journey into big ideas, about cities, that should matter to everyone, not just the professionals or experts. Watch these and you’ll be a ready citizen planner.

We’ll look at the root purposes of city planning, the importance of design, and designing in public—and, along the way, we’ll visit topics like architecture, street design, downtown revitalization, historic preservation, green building, lowering your neighborhood’s carbon footprint, the public health impacts of the built environment, and setting  your town up for walking, biking, and transit— plus some other surprise topics!

One target audience is the time-stressed, easily-distracted local elected official! So the videos are very quick, bite-size intros to best practices and key breakthroughs. Tell your mayor or councilperson to take a look, even if it’s just for one or two minutes at a time.

We’ve mounted an at-the-office and at-home team effort to create the first season of episodes, with Kenneth García, Pablo Dueñas and my daughter Theresa Lee helping film, animate and edit sequences, and my son Thomas composing and performing original background music. So, welcome to Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know! Share the clips, and let me know what you think.

—Victor Dover

Dover, Kohl and Partners receives Mizner Award in the Research and Documentation category

On February 8, Dover, Kohl & Partners had the pleasure of attending the Eighth Annual Addison Mizner Awards held at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach. At the ceremony, Xu Zhang, Adrianna Rivera, and Adam Bonosky were honored to receive a Mizner Award on behalf of the project team in the Research and Documentation category for The Mission Trail Comprehensive Plan in El Paso County.

Group photo of Mizner Award Winners

 A plan that aims to improve the lives of its residents along Mission Trail while celebrating the history of the diverse people of the region, the Comprehensive Plan extended the reach of development guidelines in harmony with the heritage of the Mission Trail with the goal of achieving UNESCO recognition. The Mission Trail Comprehensive Plan is the result of documenting existing historic structures and urban development patterns and engaging with over 500 participants from the Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elizario communities. Because of the hard work from the entire team, including Gallinar Planning & Development, Daedalus Advisory Services, and Hall Planning & Engineering, Inc., the plan was unanimously approved, and the community has been energized through the implementation of initial goals.

 The Dover, Kohl & Partners team enjoyed the evening at the Mizner Awards and congratulate all of the winners on their inspiring work!

To learn more but about the Addison Mizner Award click HERE

DK&P has been awarded the Addison Mizner medal for the El Paso Mission Valley Comprehensive Plan in the Research and Documentation category

Dover, Kohl & Partners is pleased to announce that it has been awarded the Addison Mizner medal for the El Paso Mission Valley Comprehensive Plan in the Research and Documentation category. The award is given in recognition for excellence in Classical and Traditional Architecture and related fields done by firms within and from Florida and the Grand Caribbean.

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San Elizario Mission

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Veterans’ Memorial Park

The El Paso Mission Trail project began in 2018 when El Paso County embarked on an ambitious project as a part of their comprehensive plan – to establish documentation and guidelines that would be used to submit the El Paso Mission Trail to UNESCO for consideration as a World Heritage Site. An important aspect of this was to balance the tensions between preservation of historic areas, and the development of these places that benefits the community. The solution to this was to establish development guidelines that are informed by the study of the vernacular design of buildings and settlements of the trail, and through community input.

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San Elizario Illustrative Plan

Throughout the project, the Dover, Kohl & Partners team spoke with over 500 participants including residents, municipal staff and representatives, UNESCO representatives, and other stake holders. Regional architectural and urban precedents of nearby Mesilla, New Mexico, historic El Paso, and Juarez, Mexico were studied to create a framework for the historic areas, build on the cultural heritage, and establish guidelines for future development.

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Rendering of Potential Development at Socorro Plaza

The result of this effort is the unanimously approved comprehensive plan that establishes the historic and cultural significance of the El Paso Mission Trail. By addressing development while pursuing UNESCO World Heritage designation, the comprehensive plan establishes a path forward for growth that celebrates the unique architecture and urbanism of El Paso and enables future generations to engage with the history of the region and its peoples.

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Socorro Road Proposed Streetscape at Southside Road

This year’s jury included Mr. Rafael Portuondo, Principal of Portuondo & Perotti Architects, Coral Gables, FL; Ms. Sarah Magness, Principal of Sarah Magness Design, New York; and Mr. Jonathan Taylor, Principal of Smith and Taylor LLP, London and Faculty Member of Kingston University, London.

Dover, Kohl & Partners is excited to attend the Addison Mizner Awards ceremony and accept the cast bronze medal on February 8, 2020 at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. Congratulations to the entire team including Gallinar Planning & Development, Daedalus Advisory Services, and Hall Planning & Engineering, Inc.!

To learn more but about the project click HERE

To learn more but about the Addison Mizner award click HERE



Smart City Expo Miami 2020 – Launch

On November 7, 2019 Xu Zhang and Rob Piatkowski from Dover, Kohl & Partners presented at the launch event for the Smart City Expo Miami 2020.

Looking at case studies in their own work, as well as new emerging technologies in transportation and telecommuting, they discussed how planners and designers are shaping the neighborhoods of the future. Exploring the principles of smart growth, adaptive reuse, and complete streets in neighborhood planning, their presentation touched upon a broad range of ideas about what constitutes a “smart” city. With one eye towards the future and one eye towards this past, they demonstrated how new technology, data, and tools can enhance age-old urban design practices to create places that people want to be.