Recognition for Service to America's Parks Movement

Handmade mosaic plaque presented at NRPA’s national conference, October 2023

“Start with the green parts,” Victor Dover is always telling the DK&P team as they work on plans, whether for a single neighborhood or a whole city. He advocates for reuniting parks planning, city planning and urban design. At the local level, Victor was on the board of the Parks Foundation of Miami-Dade for many years, ultimately serving as its President. This week, he wraps up a key phase of service to the parks movement at the national level as a member of the National Recreation & Parks Association board of directors. With more than 60,000 members, NRPA is the leading not-for-profit organization dedicated to building strong, vibrant and resilient communities through the power of parks and recreation. Victor has most recently led NRPA’s Advocacy Committee, to help champion legislation expanding access to parks nationwide. He’ll continue to serve on the committee, pushing Congress to enact the Outdoors for All act.

Watch this one-minute video about Outdoors for All.

Victor was honored by NRPA yesterday with a handmade, one-of-a-kind mosaic tile plaque. Presenting the plaque, fellow board member Jose Felix Diaz made these remarks:

“When [former NRPA board chair] Jack Kardys first identified Victor Dover for the NRPA board, he knew that he was recruiting a savvy advocate for parks and public space, who knew how to bring together people from all walks of life; elected officials, government agencies, private developers, and civic advocates, to name but a few.

If you have worked with Victor, you know that he always gets the facts, he listens to everyone’s point of view, and he can guide a group to consensus and action plans so skillfully that everyone thinks it was a completely natural process.

By now, we have all seen Victor in action, working to advance parks at every level, through his professional work and through his role at NRPA-- writing op-ed pieces, stepping up to chair the Advocacy Committee, and bringing his full heart, soul and mind to the table every single time.

We, his fellow board members, have benefited from his generosity, his experience, his wise and calm counsel, even his example for those of us willing to follow his lead and cycle a new path or trail, and to create one where none previously existed.

And this might be most important of all. Where other people see a blank wall, Victor creates a door; he is all about seeing possibilities and making possibilities realities.

So even as he leaves the board, we know that he will stay close to the NRPA and we thank him for giving us his door building hardware to carry on!”

To hear Victor Dover speak about the importance of Parks, Greenways and Blueways, watch this short episode of Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know.

Dover, Kohl & Partners reaches 36!

Today Dover, Kohl & Partners reaches 36!

Thank you to all our clients, patrons, fans, and current and past associates for your patronage and efforts.

City of Kingston unanimously approves citywide form-based code

Kingston Forward signing ceremony. Photo credit: City of Kingston

Last July, the City of Kingston, NY declared a housing emergency to help combat housing unaffordability. Last night, Kingston’s Common Council took a definitive step in addressing the limited housing stock by voting 7-0 to approve Kingston Forward, a new, citywide Form-Based Code drafted by Dover, Kohl & Partners to replace its outdated Euclidean zoning ordinance adopted in the 1960’s. The old code applied suburban standards to its treasured historic neighborhoods, paving the way for continued disinvestment in the city’s urban core and the degradation of the community’s naturally-occurring affordable housing stock.

By removing barriers to historic development patterns and building types in the city, the community is able to bring housing back online that may otherwise have been underutilized. Minimum lot sizes, parking requirements, suburban setbacks, etc. were all removed to support neighborhood-scale infill. ADU’s are now allowed citywide, as are “missing middle” building types like duplexes, triplexes, rowhomes, live/work units, and cottage courts. Neighborhood corner stores are now allowed within ¼ mile of almost all Kingston residents. Conserved lands, floodplains, steep slopes and other sensitive habitats are protected in accordance with the Kingston Open Space plan. DK&P is thrilled to see this level of community support behind efforts to increase access to affordable housing, historic preservation, and resilient urbanism.

A simple way to get smiles on the sidewalk

Often, I find myself at lunchtime walking the three blocks from my office to our “urban” Whole Foods to try to eat healthy. [Urban = no parking lots out front, with doors on the sidewalk]. Despite the heat in Miami in July, there was nothing unusual. There were plenty of others walking to or from the same place. But the other day I saw this cactus as I entered the store that was calling my name. I’m not one to buy plants, as anyone who knows me can attest. So I bought it along with food to go.

As I walked back to the office, with my brown paper bag in one hand and the small plant in the other, suddenly I noticed everyone looking at me and then the plant and then back at me with a smile, both men and women, sometimes with a big smile and sometimes a grin. At first, I felt really uncomfortable, but after the first block I was okay with it. It made me feel good seeing people who normally don’t smile doing so while walking in their daily routine. Go give it a try and see what response you get. If this simple plant generated that many smiles, next time I will try a bouquet!

—Joe Kohl

Olmsted Network shines national spotlight on "Lake Wales Envisioned"

Last year, Lake Wales scored two headlines on the same day: One lauded LW for reconnecting to its Olmsted roots (for the #LakeWalesConnected downtown plan). The other screamed that "one of the most imperiled Olmsted legacy landscapes faces new threats" (from ill-conceived sprawl). The followup #LakeWalesEnvisioned initiative is about getting the city’s big picture for future growth (and its form) back on track. Yesterday, I got to introduce #LakeWalesEnvisioned to the national audience of the Olmsted Network as part of their "Conversations with Olmsted" series! My short presentation begins at about 9:00 min in the video. —Victor

DK&P presents Lake Wales a vision for the future

Last week, Lake Wales, FL residents heard a compelling call to action on the community’s future. Lake Wales Envisioned is a momentous effort aimed at curbing sprawl along the rapidly developing Lake Wales Ridge in central Florida due to a collapsing citrus industry and continued development pressures. Warch the recording of the presentation:

Recording of the Community Update presentation

Residents were presented with an alternative vision for this special place; a vision that turned a very possible near future of endless cul-de-sacs, cars, garages, and asphalt into a lovable landscape of over 25,000 acres of newly proposed conservation lands, parks and open space, greenways, trails and community gardens interspersed with walkable neighborhoods connected to one another where residents have a chance to build relationships and live fulfilled lives.

The famous Olmsted Brothers planning firm advanced improvement plans for Lake Wales and nearby Bok Tower Gardens, and created a “city in a garden” for the enjoyment of future generations. Now is the time to make a determined effort to save the Lake Wales Ridge from rampant sprawl.

A variety of local, state, and national partners are supporting the City in this effort, underscoring the importance of the Lake Wales Envisioned plan to the city and region. Learn more at lakewalesenvisioned.com.

Victor Dover to Vero Beach: "You can have the town you want"

In the off-peak times, all that extra asphalt is a clear invitation to drive faster

On July 19, 2023, Victor Dover addressed 200 Vero Beach citizens in person and online as part of the “Let’s Talk Vero” events series. The City of Vero Beach and Florida DOT are considering what to do about its notorious “Twin Pairs” combo of wide, fast, one-way roads. Here are Victor’s remarks:

BIG PICTURE: YOU CAN HAVE A BETTER AND BETTER TOWN

Thank you for having us in Vero Beach. I always say, we have the best job in the whole world, traveling and helping communities decide what they want to be when they grow up, grappling with growth and change amid a changing world. It is gratifying work.

Like Vero, most communities have a confidence problem: Is the change making things better or worse?

Walking tour with Vero Beach citizens in advance of the Let’s Talk Vero event

Think of the places you’ve visited that you loved. How did they get that way? They were designed (and redesigned) that way. Great towns don’t occur by accident, or come from Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They come from putting in the work, building consensus, drawing lines on maps, trying things, doing more of what works, adjusting what needs adjusting…  Cities are great, collectively produced, collaborative, never-finished works of art.

Good news: You can have the town you want, if you’ll give yourselves permission to have it and work together to get it. In particular, it stands out that your most important shared spaces in the center of town—the downtown neighborhood, the twin pair corridors—are not yet evolved to the quality and vibrance that reflects your mostly-beautiful, affluent, well-educated, well-traveled community… at least not yet.

Google street view shows that Vero’s pioneers used unapologetically urban, street-oriented architecture, conveying their confidence in the future.

I look at the historic buildings and I can see that your founding families and early visionaries were convinced of this potential. From the days when the streets were just dirt or just had Model Ts rambling along them, those early mixed-use, Main Street buildings had this confident, upright architecture and a clear building-to-street relationship.

When in Vero Beach, look up: The early architecture was meant to shape a proud human habitat. It was meant to be experienced at walking pace.

I’ve learned you’re undertaking a downtown revitalization plan, and that is great to hear. It’s not necessary to figure out absolutely everything in advance, and it will not be a tool that has to boast 100% consensus to be useful. But it will be a great aid in building confidence. Where do great places come from? They come from you. They come from starter conversations like the ones you’re having in Let’s Talk Vero.

Blight is an often inevitable— but usually reversible— effect of America’s binge of road-widening and traffic-accelerating.

STREETS MATTER

Now, let me ask you: What’s the largest thing you own? Your city’s streets.

The subtitle of the book John Massengale and I wrote about Street Design is, “the secret to great cities and towns.” I became convinced that good street design is probably the one feature a city can least afford to get wrong, and yet it is the feature most often gotten wrong.

Tour group in downtown Vero Beach

It’s basically this: Streets are where we form our most lasting impressions of a place. It’s not just the buildings, although those matter a lot; it’s the spaces between buildings, like the parks and squares and streets (and especially the streets) that are the public rooms of the city. In Vero, your streets are your commons. Owned by everybody. Or perhaps nobody. I don’t mean to be too harsh, but in some of those streets one can see the Tragedy of the Commons playing out. They aren’t conveying the kind of confidence such corridors can and should convey.

I urge you: Don’t take the attitude that the streets are someone else’s problem. They are not just “transportation facilities.” They’re addresses.

When they work as they should-- at least in the part of the city where you care about economic vitality, about property value, about eight year olds, about eighty year olds, about small and large businesses, about public health and safety, and about environmental fitness—which is to say, every part of a beloved city—the streets should be designed as human habitats, places where people want to be.

Some of the things that need to be there include street trees, low-stress spaces for walking and biking, and good building-to-street relationships. You don’t have to be a wildlife biologist to size up these habitats-for-cars. You don’t have to be an anthropologist or sociologist to know that our species is repelled from places that have blank walls facing streets or have high-speed motoring with all its noise and violence, but we’re attracted to places with shade and artfulness and visual interest and, importantly, evidence that other people are around.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN

The great thing about coordinating your efforts on street design within a larger core-area master plan is that, since everything is connected to everything else, you can make informed decisions. As we walked yesterday I asked: What are this neighborhood’s basic economic and humanistic reasons for being? These change over time. Fort Pierce was once the place the cattle drives brought protein to market, to load on the barges. Now it’s evolving to 21st Century uses. Vero has been a citrus town, which is of course changing, and a holiday town for visitors and seasonal residents. Within that evolving mix, what’s going to be the core area’s root function?

I think as you ponder that, the street design decisions, the architecture decisions, the zoning decisions will all then become much easier. You might want to open up the options for more housing and more lodging in the core area, to bring more customers within walking distance of that great coffee shop, for instance, so it’ll have the customers it needs to be there when you, as a local fulltime resident, want to go there.

NEW TIMES, NEW RULEBOOKS

Last, I want to talk about something new, something you all need to know when working with your friendly neighborhood FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation). It’s this: the rules have changed. Over decades, it always seemed like the DOT was always saying NO to the things local government leaders wanted, like safer streets and saner, right-sized, appropriate-speed streets. They would say, Madam Councilmember or Mister Mayor, we can’t do that, our one-size-fits-all rulebook doesn’t allow it.

First: Think back to the Happy Motoring era, the 1950s or 1960s, when many of us were born, and we didn’t know it but in those postwar years we were living in the last phase of the Golden Age of the Automobile. There was this forceful, national, propaganda-fed idea that “wider, faster roads [were] better roads.” That plugged into everything: budgets, manuals, high-octane federal subsidies; that was the era of “what’s good for General Motors is good for America” and it was a public works juggernaut. Traffic flow was… everything. Many other community ideals—like safety and strong property values, to name a couple—were de-prioritized. And you can understand it; who wouldn’t want to flow? Road widening, highway-building, and rebuilding, and re-re-building was the order of the day, and the motoring public was okay with huge amounts of the national treasury being spent on it. Old gasoline ads said, “Drive more, it gets cheaper by the mile.”

The innovations like cloverleaf interchanges and the fads, like one-way pairs, came fast. Yours is not the only town that got the one-way-pairs-and-road-widening treatment. It was seen as a way to squeeze a little more flow out of the intersections during the peak seconds of the peak hour. And, it seemed like a good way to spend all that federal money raining down on the states, even if we didn’t really have the traffic numbers to justify such wide streets “yet.” (You still don’t.)

Ironically, speeding everything up was exactly the opposite of making it safer and more efficient.

These roads became less safe and less hospitable because, outside the peak hour, all that extra asphalt provides a clear invitation to higher speeds. Remember, humans tend not to drive the posted speed, but rather the speed that feels comfortable given all the visual clues coming into your eyeballs through the windshield—and so if it looks like the Indianapolis Speedway, we drive as if we’re on the Indianapolis Speedway.

In turned out that in many cases the one-way pairs were undercutting their own on-paper efficiency, too, because if you have to drive twice as far and go out of your way and drive through five or six intersections instead of two, you’re doubling up the vehicle-miles-traveled per person and, while you’re getting turned around to get to your destination, you’re in my lane, when I’m in such a hurry, for whatever reason. You’re messing with my flow! No happy motoring for me.

Note: Fads fade, and many towns have been gradually undoing their one-way pairs and repurposing unneeded lanes, rebalancing flow against the whole range of other issues.

Now, back to the manuals.

The many consequences of the road-building binge include a terrible safety record, especially in the relatively new settlements of the Sunbelt. The biannual report, called Dangerous by Design, shows Florida every time as the champion state… at killing pedestrians. And of course, it’s not just people walking and biking getting killed, it’s the victims of car-on-car violence as well. We’re at the point where we’re killing 40,000 persons a year in our mean streets, and it’s a major public safety crisis. A leading cause of death among those under 25, for one thing. And where are more of those deaths and injuries occurring than anywhere else? Florida.

So a few years ago, embarrassed by the latest headlines on Dangerous by Design, the state Secretary of Transportation said, let’s fix it. He challenged his department to find a way out of the number one Death Machine status. He ordered the FDOT to rework all its rulebooks--  and they’ve done it. More info here. ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

They now have permission to say yes to things they used to dismiss, like safer design speeds and better lane geometries and all the features that aid safety. So remember this: You can get familiar with the new rules, and bring the District 4 FDOT engineers along with you on your search for better street designs. That way when they come around to do their resurfacing projects every 25 years or so, you can work with them to settle on designs that aren’t just resurfacings but meaningful redesigns.

The new rulebooks can be your superpower. For the nerds like me who might want to Google this and get into the tech of it all, search for FDOT FDM (Florida Design Manual) and “context classifications.” To make a long story short, it means, they no longer have to follow one-size-fits-all--  so they don’t have to treat a core downtown like it’s out in the distant sprawl strip or I-95.

I’ll conclude with one important admonition:

You need to do your best to arrive at local consensus first, and then re-engage FDOT. The Districts have been burned before, moving forward on the road diets and lane repurposings that the manuals now allow and even encourage, only to have the local folks reverse themselves and back out. So have some sympathy for your DOT officials, and have the conversation now.

Just having the conversation will bend the trend! So congratulations on what you’re doing with Let’s Talk Vero.

Missoula awarded $25 Million Grant for Downtown Missoula Plan Projects

The City of Missoula was awarded a $25M RAISE Grant for safety, access, and mobility projects recommended by the Downtown Missoula Plan co-authored by Dover, Kohl & Partners.

“This is a huge accomplishment for both Missoula and Dover, Kohl & Partners!” said Linda K. McCarthy, Executive Director of the Downtown Missoula Partnership.

The funding for infrastructure projects will allow Missoula to adapt its downtown area to fit the changing needs of the community. On the Higgins Avenue corridor, a four- to three-lane conversion will separate bicyclists and motor vehicles. Front and Main Streets will be changed to two-way streets to address safety and circulation issues in the downtown area. The project will fund riverfront trail access from Front and Main and widen the trail. Additionally, an ADA ramp will increase accessibility from the Higgins Bridge to Caras Park.

New Video: Bruce Stephenson on Olmsted, Nolen, and Lake Wales

Distinguished scholar Bruce Stephenson, PhD is a Professor of Environmental Studies at Rollins College. A city planner by training, Dr. Stephenson is an expert on the life and work of John Nolen, the landscape architect who was the first American to call himself a professional city planner. Nolen, in turn, was the top student of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., designer of Mountain Lake, Bok Tower Gardens and the 1930 Lake Wales city plan for planting street trees and improving the town. Dr. Stephenson recently gave a lecture at Bok Tower Gardens in which he described the connections between Olmsted, Nolen, Lake Wales, and the current planning efforts of Lake Wales Connected and Lake Wales Envisioned, led by DK&P. We invited Bruce to go through his presentation for the growing Lake Wales Envisioned YouTube video library, and asked him some new questions. Highlights:

"...[The juxtaposition of Burnham's buildings and Olmsted's grounds and central park at the World's Columbian Exposition 1893] "became the vision for the American city, showing how to meld nature and urbanism."

 ..."Nolen in his first speech would even go on to say that the future, what Aristotle called The Good Life, is this: Can our consciousness, our ability to see the common good, match our private interests?"

 ..."Like Olmsted Sr., Nolen studied landscape paintings as the doorway to his practice of landscape architecture. "[The takeaway from the Mona Lisa] is not her smile, it's the background, nature in motion: the belief that if we could understand how nature moved, we could understand how the world works and become closer to God-- a radical idea at the time. Da Vinci's lesson was 'follow nature, then your imagination'..."

 ..."Nolen's chief concern [after writing the biography of Frederick Law Olmsted] was to take Olmsted's plans and finish them.  That's what Dover Kohl is working on today [in Lake Wales], taking Olmsted plans and bringing them to fruition."

 ..."The Olmsted/Nolen vision was that the best places in nature are to be preserved and enjoyed."  39:34

 ..."Today our goal in Winter Park is to become more like Lake Wales" [making the Genius Preserve more like Pinewood and Bok's Sanctuary] 40:00

 ..."The work in Lake Wales Connected, this downtown revitalization plan, takes that same idea of connection that John Nolen had in all his plans, and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., had in all his plans, and bringing it back to life."

 ..."When you look at the opportunities for defining the future of Florida, here it is, right along this Ridge [as Nolen observed a hundred years ago]. This is the challenge that Lake Wales has embraced: How do we take the natural, the rural, and the urban landscape together, and synergize them, to create a great community? The next steps will be difficult and challenging, but you have a wonderful set of principles to follow."  42:45

 "...Every time Nolen did a project, he would have a series of examples, historic exemplars. History does not lie; it gives us these principles. How you apply them now is the big test. But we all like human scale, we all like coherent architecture, we all like nature....What the end product is, if you are going to be truly connected, is when a developer comes into Lake Wales, he or she should expect that question: What are you going to do to make the pedestrian realm good, and how are you going to adapt [the principles]?" 44:11

 "...You want people to walk in Lake Wales and feel good. That can be done. The models are there, the principles are there. It's going to take an educational process." 46:05

 "...Olmsted was a genius. He wasn't a psychologist, but he called [walking in parks] "unconscious re-creation." He saw the cities as places of commercialism, but you needed to as he called it "unbend your mind" [with a twenty-minute walk in the scenery of one of his parks.] That's what Lake Wales has: If you walk through Bok Sanctuary for fifteen minutes, you're not the same person." 46:50

 "...I have two key points for the future of Lake Wales. One is the uniqueness of the landscape. Use native landscape, and bring it from the Ridge right into the center of town. Two is [to use] Bok Sanctuary, the design of that landscape, that crafted scenery; the Olmsteds designed it so as you move through the Sanctuary is almost like you're moving through a play or a movie, from one scene to the next, and along the way you're getting an increasing sense of beauty until you reach a prime space... I would do the same thing for Lake Wales, where there is a series of scenes, and I’m imagining the prime space would be downtown…and through the design of the neighborhoods and the parks and the connections you make a sense of scenery that is highlighted by the town center, like we saw in Nolen’s plan for Mariemont.” 48:42

 “…[Explaining how valuable Baldwin Park has become] The message to the developer is, if you build this way [the walkable, livable neighborhood], people will come. You could come to Lake Wales and have a real experience, it’s not going to be of a subdivision but of a neighborhood, connected to other neighborhoods.” 51:20

 “…One hundred years ago, one out of every three trips was by foot, one was by transit, and one was by car… We’ve lost that balance we had in Nolen’s time. We ought to have a mindset of creating communities of neighborhoods, of balance. The key is neighborhoods have to be walkable.” 53:15

 “…In Orlando, having neighborhoods and walkable places is so rare that on Halloween, every parent in Orlando drops their kid off in Baldwin Park, and the population quadruples. Having neighborhoods where kids can freely go trick or treating is as important as moving traffic at XX mph.” 54:19

 “…Lake Wales is important because they’re realizing the future is at hand. We can only expand so much. If Lake Wales fifty years from now is going to be competitive, and valuable, you want to grow those values over that time period… When Olmsted designed Central Park, he applied a fifty-year timeframe, knowing it would take that long for the trees to grow in. If you want to set a fifty-year vision, you can’t operate like it’s 1985. In 1985, the number one [real estate] amenity was a golf course. [Today] the number one amenity is a bike trail.” 55:20

 “…I saw Lake Wales Envisioned would be, as an opportunity for my students to see evolution of the planning practice, based on Olmsted plans and principles, amazing. It is a wonderful opportunity to see the past and the future melding.” 58:44

Planning for Resiliency as the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season Begins

Damage from back-to-back category 5 hurricanes in Cruz Bay, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands

While the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season is just around the corner, planning for resiliency is a year-round effort. Identifying how our communities could be better planned to withstand the impacts of a future of stronger storms and how better neighborhood design can support a more dignified recovery process in both the short- and long-term, has never been more important. 

Recently our team has had the privilege of working with the City of Panama City, FL as it has made continuous progress in its recovery from Cat 5 Hurricane Michael in 2018 which uprooted 80% of its urban tree canopy and damaged or destroyed 90% of the city’s buildings. Working with the City, we were charged with charting a course forward that would help the city rebuild in a resilient way that celebrates its relationship with the coast and improves quality of life for all. Focusing originally on drafting the Strategic Vision for Downtown and its Waterfront, DK&P worked closely with community members to identify a common goal of breathing new life into the Downtown core with updates to the zoning code, a redesign of the city’s main street, Harrison Avenue, with a curbless, pedestrian-oriented, tree lined streetscape and central plaza, as well as supporting further revitalization of vacant and underutilized sites. Our team then took on the task of bringing this effort to the surrounding neighborhoods of Millville, Glenwood, and St. Andrews in an effort to ensure that recovery resources could be shared equitably across the city. Find out more about the continuing recovery effort in Panama City here: rebuildpc.org. 

Next month, DK&P will be part of a team led by Horsley Witten Group working with non-profit leader Love City Strong and the community of Cruz Bay on the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands to assist in the ongoing recovery journey from the two back-to-back Cat 5 hurricanes of Maria and Irma in 2017. Building on its previous charrette successes in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas, the DK&P team will facilitate a public charrette June 11th – 16th that will continue to center the wisdom of local residents from a long history of living with hurricanes and identify key strategies to be implemented at the building, block, and neighborhood scales to allow the community to be better prepared for the next storm. Visit lovecitystrongvi.org to learn more.

Touring Cruz Bay, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands 

Touring Cruz Bay, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands