Member Profiles 2012: Urban Design (Part 1)



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This article is the sixth in a series profiling members of ASLA’s Professional Practice Networks (PPNs), based on responses to the 2012 Annual PPN Member Survey. Members of this PPN work on a variety of urban design projects ranging from urban agriculture to transportation alternatives to new housing projects in large and small communities. Here are some highlights of their work.

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Jack Crowley, FASLA, is a professor and program coordinator in the College of Environment and Design at the University of Georgia in Athens. During his 10-year term as dean of the college, a new professional graduate degree program was established in Environmental Planning and Design (MEPD). The program reintroduces the design studio culture of architecture, landscape architecture, and the Beaux-Arts style of architecture to planning education. The goal is for a new generation of students to enter the profession with greater skills to develop physical planning and design for human settlement. While not purely “urban design,” physical planning and design includes urban, social, economic, political, aesthetic, environmental, and other considerations in a comprehensive physical approach.

MEPD complements the two other graduate degree programs in landscape architecture and historic preservation with several collaborative courses and projects. The program is in its third year and will have the requisite number of graduates to apply for Planning Accreditation Board accreditation this spring. The program is at capacity with students from four countries and 12 different states.

Last summer, a team of MEPD students spent a month in Honduras doing planning and design for the City of El Jicarito near Tegucigalpa.

Brian McCarter, FASLA, is a principal at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects in Portland, Oregon. One of the firm’s major projects, the Portland Mall Revitalization, won the ASLA 2011 Award of Excellence and the 2012 American Institute of Architects National Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design.

Steven Jensen, ASLA, is a principal at Steven Jensen Consulting in Omaha, Nebraska. During the past year, he was part of a team selected by the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce to identify catalyst projects for four older, central-city neighborhood business districts (NBDs). The team worked with neighborhood residents and organizations to understand the needs of the neighborhoods. They analyzed the physical, historical, and land-use characteristics of the areas and conducted retail and housing market needs assessments to identify business and housing opportunities. The team used this information to identify a list of projects and actions that should be undertaken over a 10-year period to accelerate the redevelopment of the neighborhoods. From this list, they identified a catalyst project for each NBD.

Two NBDs included plans to construct mixed residential/commercial buildings and streetscape improvements, another plan was to rehabilitate a former printing company building into a crafts cooperative, and a third plan was to renovate a former community hall into a live music and performance venue. This third project spun off another effort to preserve the historic character of one of the business districts. Jensen’s firm is currently working on that project.

Shalae Larsen, ASLA, is a principal at Community Studio in Salt Lake City. Her primary interest is urban agriculture. In particular, she enjoys working on the design and management of community gardens. Larsen also deals with the big-picture issues of land use, sustainable agriculture, and food equity.

Jeffrey Trojanowski, ASLA, is a landscape consultant at Jeff Trojanowski Designs in Crestline, California. He worked primarily on residential projects in Southern California for 10 years. But in the current economic environment, there is a shift of focus to more meaningful and useful urban center designs, and he has worked on projects that have morphed into genuine urban redevelopment. He believes that this change presents a tremendous opportunity for landscape architects who can rethink small garden/plaza spaces and second floor or roof plazas and courtyards. These areas can become just as inviting as a typical at-grade courtyard or plaza.

Jane Grabowski-Miller, ASLA, is a vice president of urban design and planning at Erdman Development Group in Madison, Wisconsin. She is currently completing work on the first New Urbanist development in the state of Wisconsin. It is a mixed-use neighborhood on 150 acres called Middleton Hills. It has become a national model for neighborhood development as well as neighborhood retail design. Her next project is a 160-acre residential development that will address conservation, recreational, and agricultural needs.

Jeff Hou, ASLA, is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle. His primary areas of focus are public spaces, design activism, and Asian cities. He is the editor of Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (Routledge, 2010) and a coauthor of Greening Cities, Growing Communities: Learning from Seattle's Urban Community Gardens, with Julie Johnson and Laura Lawson (University of Washington Press, 2009). He is also a contributor to Companion to Urban Design (Routledge, 2011), Dialogos: Placemaking in Latino Communities (Routledge, 2012), Service-Learning in Design and Planning: Educating at the Boundaries (New Village Press, 2011), and Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism (Metropolis Books, 2008). He serves on the boards of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility and Association for Community Design, and coordinates the Pacific Rim Community Design Network.

Carmine Russo Jr., ASLA, is a landscape architect at Cawrse and Associates in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Much of his work involves designing “complete streets” to help provide pedestrian-friendly routes and using this streetscape revitalization as an urban economic development tool. Enhancements include adding landscaped medians and other green space, innovative stormwater management techniques, bicycle lanes, and a variety of sidewalk designs and widths to improve the physical appearance of a corridor and the public transit experience. These street transformations can lead to future business investments and community restoration opportunities. For example, wider sidewalks provide better pedestrian flow and allow room for outdoor cafés, which in turn provide opportunities to improve the lives of residents and property values. He believes that landscape architects can and should play a key role in reinventing how people view the urban environment and experience in their daily lives.

Jeff Richardson, ASLA, is the city landscape director for the City of Vicksburg, Mississippi. A major concern is the Mississippi River Flood of 2011 and the impact that it is still having on the city's image and economy.

Chris Sullivan, ASLA, is a planner for the City of Nashua, New Hampshire. A recent highlight was designing a park to replace a building that burned down two years ago. This park should be completed by the end of May.

Nik Swartz, Associate ASLA, is a landscape architectural designer at Ken Saiki Design in Madison, Wisconsin. He and a couple of other designers at the firm volunteer with the Architecture for Humanity Milwaukee Chapter in their free time. They are currently working on two urban agricultural/community gardens. One of the projects is for a middle school and the other is a neighborhood pocket park.

Swartz finds that there is growing support for urban agriculture projects. Many schools in the Madison school district now grow some sort of garden for student/community use. For example, the Center for Resilient Cities, a nonprofit organization working with communities to create healthy cities, has designed the new charter Badger Rock Middle School, which is targeted for LEED platinum. It will be totally surrounded by vegetable gardens rather than a parking lot.

He challenges other landscape architects to share ideas about how the profession can remain a leader of urban agriculture projects.

Suzan Hampton, Student Affiliate ASLA, is the owner of Suzan Hampton Architecture | Landscapes in Larkspur, California. A recent highlight was working on the installation of cao | perrot studio’s Bai Yun (White Cloud) art piece in Sonoma, California, and the Red Lantern conceptual gardens at Cornerstone Sonoma, a nine-acre public gardens and mixed-use complex, also in Sonoma. She has developed a blog and used other social media marketing and public relations to promote these installations.

Michael Delillo, Student ASLA, is a neighborhood development coordinator at Agape Community Center in Milwaukee. The center welcomes youth, adults, families, and seniors into its facility through a broad range of educational, social, recreational, cultural, health, and lifelong learning opportunities. The center is also active in community and neighborhood development. In his role, Delillo meets with members of communities to understand them better. He talks with residents, business owners, economic developers, grassroots block watchers, and members of churches and schools. Then he invites these individuals to neighborhood development meetings to meet each other and share thoughts about what is important about the neighborhood and what it needs to thrive.

Visit the Urban Design PPN webpage for more information about this group. To learn more about ASLA's other PPNs, go to the PPN home page or contact Dena Kennett, ASLA's manager of Professional Practice, at dkennett@asla.org.

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