Urban Design Newsletter, Summer 2011

Letter from the Chair
This second Urban Design newsletter for 2011 comes because of an overflowing of responses to this year’s call for article submissions. We had enough material to consider doing several newsletters with different topics, but have chosen to present you instead with this sampling of the breadth of current issues in urban design
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Hidden Gems of NYC – Herald and Greeley Squares
The parks at Herald and Greeley Squares in New York City have become the not-so-secret treasures that are tucked right in the middle of Manhattan’s shopping district. Although the area is generally referred to as Herald Square, it comprises two triangular plazas facing each other.
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Elevating the Sense of Place: The First Impression of Urban Spaces
A professional in the urban design field is responsible for the urban environment. That responsibility is primarily to ensure the health, safety, and welfare for the people in that place, but also to create an impression or a “sense” of that urban space. So what makes a strong sense of place in the urban environment?
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That’s So Pedestrian: The Pedestrian Mall Still Succeeds in the American College Town
At the edge of many college campuses and downtowns a unique experience emerges: the pedestrian mall. It is where town meets gown and citizens and students intermix, celebrate, and unite as one social mass. Customers patronize specialty shops, children run through fountains, citizens walk on the way to work, and students meander through the space.
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Got a Great Idea for Moore Square? A Community Open Call for Ideas and Raleigh’s First Public Design Competition
In recent years Raleigh, North Carolina, created several new public spaces downtown including Fayetteville Street, City Plaza, and the Festival site. Since opening, these public spaces have attracted thousands to downtown Raleigh for high-profile public events including concerts, art events, festivals, parades, and regional celebrations.
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The New Urbanism/Landscape Urbanism Debate from a Landscape Architect’s Perspective
A “street” fight has begun between proponents of New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism. New Urbanism is a movement known for promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods and sustainable communities as an alternative to suburban sprawl. Landscape urbanism focuses on landscape as the organizing element for urban space.
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Walking the Walk - Getting in Touch with LID Design
In October 2009, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a new National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System municipal discharge permit that mandates the use of Low Impact Development (LID) treatment controls for all regulated projects, beginning in December 2011.
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Building Sustainable Places: The Earth Advantage® Community Standard
What makes a place sustainable? Neighborhood planners and green building advocates wrestle with this question. Increasingly, they look to voluntary certification standards to distinguish sustainable development projects.
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Shrinking Cities: Design Challenge on a Shoestring Budget
What most struck me about the urban landscape in the states of the former GermanDemocratic Republic (GDR) (commonly called East Germany), is the number of empty lots and unused buildings. Significant demographic change has occurred due to aging populations and emigration of residents to former West Germany since the fall of the iron curtain.
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Redefining Urban Design for a Barrio in Caracas
Sometimes your education, training, and experience cannot prepare you for a project, no matter how much expertise you believe you may have. Such was my circumstance when I first encountered the barrio of La Moran in Caracas, Venezuela. Instead of being the professional, I became the student who learned that a place with makeshift dwellings and an apparent chaotic fabric can actually be a functional and congruent neighborhood.
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