URBAN DESIGN UPDATE

Parrish Museum to Bring More Cars? Southold Blighted with McMansions

Will Light-Rail Save East End?

Newsletter of the Institute for Urban Design September/October 2006 Vol. 22 No. 5 LONG ISLAND’S EAST END CHALLENGED BY TRAFFIC ON SOUTH FORK AND McMANSIONS ON NORTH FORK. COULD LIGHT-RAIL HELP? Southampton became a magnet for artists as early as the 1890’s when William Merritt Chase founded the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. It will remain a magnet for artists with the move of the town’s current Parrish Art Museum to a 14-acre site in Water Mill whose new plan will be provided by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron. The Parrish Art Museum reports that the Swiss team will design a network of barn-like exhibition buildings. Ascan Mergenthaler, the partner in charge of the project, may have as his greatest challenge the expansion of the four lane auto route into and out of Water Mill. Visitor parking may help. But not much. With housing prices on the South Fork more than double those on the North Fork, new home purchasers are buying on North Fork rather than South Fork. The North Fork, with a population of more than 54,000, remains primarily agricultural. Vineyards, were introduced some 20 years ago, and now account for 30-40 percent of land under cultivation, have lifted the economy. Southold’s Building Department says that 1,000 building permits were issued last year. Valerie Scopaz, who resigned as Southold City Planning Director last summer, says that the North Fork’s land use is still primarily agricultural. She says that the North Fork’s vernacular architecture of barns and bungalows reflects the democratic values of the residents. How much these values are threatened by monster-size houses can be seen on New Suffolk Avenue, where many houses have recently gone up, and for sale signs dot the road. An insufficiently addressed problem is that new homes in New Suffolk, for example, are permitted to go up on two-acre lots but without a design review process. The new homes are built at some four times the size of the modestly sized bungalows on Kimogenor Point, many of which remain in families who settled there in 1904. Among the most sophisticated views of East End issues are those of Richard Stott, Chair, Peconic Chapter AIA. He emphasizes that North Fork communities are 400 years old. Streets were meant to accommodate people and horse drawn carriages, not autos. The best way to reduce traffic is to upgrade zoning to allow only 2-acre housing he says. This results in half as many houses. Hence auto traffic should be reduced by half. Frustratingly, new larger houses also require staff. So auto traffic continues to expand with cars full of workers. “For the East End there is no silver bullet,” he says. A regional light-rail transit system supplemented by buses may be the best answer, he believes. But, traffic specialist Michael Fishman counter-proposes electric vehicles at LIRR Stations. An aid to tourists, but not to worker riders, who now outnumber tourists on the rails.

NEW PROJECTS Portland Seattle

New Orleans Baton Rouge PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Portland is again leading the way with a planning methodology that incorporates landscape into the planning process. In 2001 the city established a program that gives developers additional floor area ratio if at least 60% if the roof is green. A few years back the city implemented a program to disconnect downspouts. More than 44,000 homeowners disconnected the downspouts, which redirected one billion gallons of runoff into the local streams. Now the city has integrated a watershed management plan called Actions for Watershed Health. The program seeks to preserve watersheds and make improvements to the built environment. Rather than come up with one solution for the entire city, there are several watershed options. Some examples include: the purchase of vacant lots to turn them into storm water detention ponds and building curb extensions with vegetation in residential neighborhoods. Project Manager: Emily Hauth of the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, can be contacted for further information at: emilyh@bes.ci.portland.or.us. Seattle’s Planning and Development Department (DPD) is also setting an example with its “Green Factor” proposal, now under review, as early as January 2007. The program creates landscaping requirements for developments in neighborhood commercial districts. As part of the new building requirements, developers will need to not only create open space, but also vegetate it. The types of vegetation would vary on a point system for different types of trees, soil depths, water features, and green roofs. Project Manager Steve Moddemeyer can be contacted for further information at: steve.moddemeyer@seattle.gov. Reports on Portland and Seattle by Bettina Kaes. The United New Orleans Plan (UNOP) has identified the firms (selected by the residents of each neighborhood) that will carry out the planning process for the 13 districts of New Orleans as underwritten by Rockefeller Foundation, New York City. The chosen firms are: District 1: CBD, French Quarter, Warehouse District and District 6: Gentilly: Goody Clancy (District Team), Duany Plater-Zyberk (Neighborhood Team); District 2: Garden District, Central City: H3 Studio (District Team), Davis Brody Bond (Neighborhood Team); District 3: Uptown, Broadmoor and District 4: Mid-City, Gert Town: Frederic Schwartz Architects (District Team), now. (Neighborhood Team), HDR and HOK (Neighborhood Team); District 5: Lakeview: EDSA (Neighborhood Team); District 7: Bywater ACORN Housing (District Team), EDAW (Neighborhood Team); District 8: Lower 9th Ward: ACORN Housing (District Team), Williams Architects (Neighborhood Team); District 9, 10, 11: New Orleans East, Village de L’est, Venetian Isles: EDSA (District Team), KL&M/CHPlanning (Neighborhood Team), Torre Design Consortium (Neighborhood Team); District 12: Algiers: EDSA (District Team); District 13: English Turn: H3 Studio. Hargreaves Associates delivered the Baton Rouge Waterfront Master Plan to the City Mayor in mid-August Fellow Glenn Allen reports. “This Master Plan for 2 miles of the Mississippi Riverfront in downtown Baton Rouge is the central catalyst for the renaissance of the urban center of the capitol of Louisiana, says Allen. Mayor Melvin L. “Kip” Holden’s vision is to develop a riverfront which will reconnect the city to its historic waterfront and foster private sector investment. The River Terraces, with 10.35 acres of new waterfront will provide parkland, built on pier structures in the Mississippi River beyond the levee. The plan includes a historic brickyard to include a new ball park, two new hotel complexes. Christine Glavasich will enter the Urban Systems Engineering Program at Brooklyn Polytechnic. Her construction cost consulting firm, GZ, is currently working on Times Square Station and 34th Street Heliport . . . Ronnette Riley left her Manhattan practice long enough to join the August 19th Artists and Writers Charity Softball Game in East Hampton . . . Laurie Kerr, a regular contributor to the Institute’s publications, is joining the staff of Mayor Bloomberg in September, when she reports to Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff. Ernest Hutton goes often to Hampton Bays where he is updating an earlier streetscape plan for the Southampton Department of Land Management . . . Claire Weisz at Weisz + Yoes in New York announces that the firm has added a new partner, Laying Pew, a Yale graduate as are both of the original partners . . . Theo David gave a presentation on buffer zones in Jerusalem and Berlin at the Metropolis Architecture and Urban Culture program in late May in Barcelona. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk reports that she is writing a new form-based zoning code for the city of Miami.

EDUCATION Public Spaces:

Albuquerque Mexico City BOOKS Siena

Urban Design Center Roundup Albuquerque and Cleveland Urban Design Centers exhibit differences in goals and organizational structure. They continue a survey launched in previous newsletter.

University of New Mexico Design and Planning Assistance Center www.unm.edu Mark C. Childs, Director

Squares: A Public Place Design Guide for Urbanists is, in part, an outgrowth of Mark Childs’ experience as Director of the University of New Mexico’s Design and Planning Assistance Center. The book, in paper at $25.95, may be ordered from University of New Mexico Press: www.unmpress.com Kent State University www.cudc.kent.edu Steve Rugare, Director

Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaboration is working on reinvestment strategies for six key neighborhoods: Detroit-Shoreway, Cudell-Edgewater, Stockyards, Central, Buckeye and Ohio City, reports Steve Rugare, Director. In partnership with other non-profits, the urban design center aims to make most effective use of resources in framework of population decline and soft real estate market. Details on this work available at www.cudc.kent.edu. Mexico City tour of new landscapes will focus on recent work by Mario Schjetnan. Included will be Malinalco Golf Club and Schjetnan family house also in Malinalco. Recent work on Chapultepec Park as well as Xochimilco Park, for which Schjetnan won Harvard’s Green Prize for Urban Design, also will be included. Participants will be housed, January 4-8, 2007 at Hotel Camino Real at a charge of $1,100 per person for five nights. To register: www.toursdearquitectura.com. ’Scape. By Bauwe Kamer. Birkauser-Publishers for Architecture, Basel, Berlin, Boston, 2006. Subscription 30 Euros. Fax: 011-49-1805-539-000.

A new bi-annual magazine focuses on international landscape architecture and urbanism. Eye-catching graphics supplement detailed analysis and critique of proposed project under construction and also built projects. Included are interviews, essays, case studies, and book reviews. The first issue explores projects in Barcelona and China. Barcelona is discussed as an example of contemporary urban design. Rem Koolhaas reflects on the exponential growth of cities in China. The magazine is intended for professionals that work with the natural and built environments. It is created by a group that also publishes a Dutch magazine titled Fieldwork-Landscape Architecture Europe. For more information: http://www.scapemagazine.com/about.html. Design for Ecological Democracy. By Randolph T. Hester. 512 pages. Color plus black/white illustrations. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006. $39.95

Randolph T. Hester’s captivating watercolors of Siena’s Compo, for example, elicit three cheers for democratically designed public space. As the former Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley, Hester combines a knowledge of great public spaces with hands-on experience from his firm, Community Development by Design. At a time when free movement in streets and at airports is being curtailed, Professor Hester, in California, and Michael Kwartler, in New York, offer creative techniques for enhancing democratic decision-making for better public spaces.

BOOKS

NEW FELLOWS

Design on the Edge: The Making of a High Performance Building. By David W. Orr. 17 illus. 296 pages. MIT Press, Cambridge. October, 2006. $27.95

Although formatted as a case study of Oberlin’s Adam Joseph Lewis environmental studies building, the book is, in fact, a persuasive marker in “the green campus movement.” Professor Orr, Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin in Oberlin, Ohio, helped to move forward the dialogue on landscape urbanism with his earlier book The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics and the Environment in an Age of Terror. For Oberlin’s environmental studies building, Orr describes how waste water is processed for reuse, solar energy power and a landscape designed for fruit trees and vegetable gardens. Sprawltown: Looking for the City on its Edges. By Richard Ingersoll. Black/white illus. 176 pages. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, May 2006. $19.95

Richard Ingersoll was a leading editor of Design Book Review in the 1990s. Now teaching architectural history and urban design at Syracuse University in Florence, he sees sprawl as a new form of urbanism which has had “undeniable success as a social milieu.” Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America. By Alan Berger. 165 color illustrations. 265 pages. Princeton Architectural Press, New York. 2006. $34.95.

Ten cities, shown in superb aerial photos and information-filled charts, make the case that sprawl is the enemy and toxic waste is the challenge in redeveloping remaining land in cities for density. Metin Celik, Senior Associate, Hillier Worldwide Architecture, New York, NY; Diane Diacon, Director, Building and Social Housing Foundation, Leicestershire, UK; Philip Enquist, Partner, Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP, Chicago, IL; Axumite Gebre-Egziaber, Director, UN Habitat, New York, NY; Tomonori Matsuo, President, Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan; Dr. Suha Ozkan, Chairman, World Architecture Community, Geneva, Switzerland; Sumpter Priddy III, Sumpter Priddy III, Alexandria, VA; Achva Stein, Director, Landscape Architecture Program, CUNY; Maki Tabuchi, Biochemistry & Microbiology Dept., University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. UPDATE, published six times a year, welcomes contributions from members.