Regional and Urban Design Committee

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  • 1.  Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 27 days ago

    Towards a New American Downtown 

    Amazon's is requirement to work from the office will not solve the problems of the American downtown that blew up with Covid, the need for cities as places of interaction and innovation notwithstanding. 

    "Amazon is reinforcing the importance of its headquarters' location in Seattle and signaling that its mission to embrace and foster innovation is not a spatially distributed endeavor but a socially dependent activity tied to a place" (Uwe Brandes, Director  Urban and Regional Planning Georgetown University).

    The issue isn't "the city" but the American Downtown

    Brandes is right, innovation is a socially dependent activity but misses the issue at hand. The future of cities is not in question but the future of the  American downtown is. As it is explained in Downtown: A Short History of American Urban Exceptionalism, the American downtown is not the same as centre-ville, Innenstadt or centro historico in France, Germany or Italy respectively. It didn't start of ancient ruins, had no protective walls and no particularly high density. It eventually morphed into what became a term for cities core areas worldwide,  namely a bunch of office towers forming a "financial district". Even US cities that have lots of space or

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    [Klaus] Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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  • 2.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 27 days ago

    Thank you for posting your thoughts on this! I'm in complete agreement as we are seeing a grasping at straws for a vision of the Honolulu "downtown." It seems like a reinvestment is underway as new ownership takes hold of failing business models, but the problem is that there is no unifying vision of the overall result. I guess we've been looking for this vision for a long time... at least 60 years since we recognized the mistakes of our city centers.


    The Case for "De-Building"

    In a way, the solution is in "de-building," where we may have overdone ourselves in the pursuit of "highest and best use." This approach calls for rethinking what we value in our urban spaces. It may be that a value change is needed first: one that switches from people-first to land-first principles.

    This shift in perspective means understanding that our very infrastructure (wastewater, stormwater, power, potable water) is under siege by climate change and being crushed by inequities in its design and implementation. For example, cities like Rotterdam have begun implementing water plazas and adaptive systems to manage stormwater and sea-level rise. These examples show how a land-first approach can lead to innovative solutions.


    Rethinking Infrastructure

    To truly address these challenges, we must rethink infrastructure from the ground up. Instead of buildings tied to centralized systems, imagine each structure equipped with its own decentralized utilities. Buildings could generate their own power through renewable sources, capture and clean rainwater for reuse, and process their wastewater on-site.

    Projects like the Bullitt Center in Seattle and the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at Georgia Tech demonstrate how decentralized systems can create self-sufficient, resilient buildings. These projects prove that we can achieve socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically regenerative communities by embracing decentralized infrastructure.


    Integrating Green and Blue Spaces

    Cities also need to prioritize the integration of green (vegetation) and blue (water) spaces. This could mean embracing the concept of "de-building," where we reduce the amount of architecture per acre to create more parks, wetlands, and natural systems that support biodiversity. Alternatively, high-density urban areas can adopt strategies like green roofs, vertical gardens, and water features directly integrated into their architecture to balance built and natural environments.

    Examples like Singapore's Gardens by the Bay and Bosco Verticale in Milan show how integrating nature into urban design can create environments that support both ecological health and human well-being. These spaces not only provide aesthetic value but also help mitigate urban heat islands, improve air quality, and manage stormwater naturally.


    Returning to Organic Principles

    Ultimately, cities thrive when they reflect the natural systems they exist within. Better living comes from fostering balance-more organics, less inorganics. As living, breathing creatures, we belong with other living, breathing creatures. This means creating urban environments where plants, animals, microbes, and humans coexist in sustainable proportions.

    Each planner and architect has the responsibility to understand their native influences and integrate them into their work. By drawing on indigenous land stewardship principles, like a city's watershed and ecology systems, planners can align their work with natural cycles and local values. True Modernism, in this sense, is about returning to our organic origins-embracing nature instead of constantly striving to conquer it.



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    Hale Takazawa AIA
    HALE DfRR LLC
    Honolulu HI
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  • 3.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 26 days ago

    Thank you for your detailed response which nicely complements that items I gave a bit short thrift in my article. 

    You are absolutely right, the new American City has to position itself vis a vis climate change and the challenges that come from energy, water, wind and fire.You addressed them all.

    The only place where I would have some doubt is the micro-grid or each building on its own energy suggestion. I think in a city we need networked energy solutions, redundancy and sustainable sources that work under all weather conditions such as geothermal district heating/cooling. 



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    [Klaus] Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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  • 4.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 26 days ago

    Thanks so much for this discussion!

    Yes, you bring up a great point, and it's something we see playing out in other infrastructures, like computing. For example, a decentralized computing model, like blockchain or distributed cloud storage, allows individual nodes to share resources and maintain operations independently, while still contributing to the larger system. Similarly, a self-sufficient building-a true living building-could share water treatment, power, communication, parking, and other essentials with its peers, forming a dynamic, decentralized network. It's essentially a peer-to-peer system, much like a microgrid, compared to a centralized infrastructure that relies on a single hub for distribution.

    The real power of self-sufficiency lies in resilience. Insurance companies-and let's not forget, FEMA is in the insurance business-prefer when people don't need to evacuate or can stay operational after a hazard event. Microgrids or similar solutions that make our cities antifragile are something I fully support.

    Getting to microgrids or other networked solutions really comes down to the approach. One way is to advocate for self-sufficiency first and then share or trade the excess-a capitalist perspective. Another is a centralized or mandated approach-a more socialist or communal philosophy. Either way, this is something we'll probably need to approach from both fronts for it to work in cities.

    Take water, for example. If a building captures and stores its own water, the uses go far beyond the basics - it might be used and stored for fire sprinklers, thermal mass, stormwater management, irrigation for food deserts, and micro-hydro power. And when there's excess, it could be shared through a network. There's so much potential in systems like this.  Imagine shared bioremediation pond systems in an urban downtown setting filled with native ecosystems.  Now that's an open space that might make William Whyte proud.



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    Hale Takazawa AIA
    HALE DfRR LLC
    Honolulu HI
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  • 5.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 25 days ago

    Local focus connected to a larger grid appears to me to be an excellent approach. The issues that can be help are numerous and so often shared by many. The idea of sharing the solution could in return assist the person sharing almost immediately and later as well. For example, If the individual were to save plenty of water and share it to help stop a fire close by, that could help stop its spreading and then returning to burn the house where the water was saved and shared. The ability to be helpful seems to be very great. 

       



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    Roy F. Knight, FAIA, NCARB
    Practitioner, Architecture and Urban Design Consultant
    Knight Associates
    Tallahassee, Florida, USA
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  • 6.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 25 days ago

    This is exactly the kind of thinking that I have been advocating for in the College of Fellows Community Forum.  I moved my career from pure architecture to urban design because I was given a perspective on architecture from my life long mentor, Carl Johnson FASLA from JJR in Ann Arbor.  Carl once said that in creating memories it is often the places between buildings, not the buildings themselves, that we remember-the plazas, streets, parks and courtyards that form the city fabric.  In my recent challenge to the Fellows, I suggested that architects are becoming more and more irrelevant in light of the life and death loss of our great cities to natural disasters from climate change, and that we must reform our profession so that architects and urban designers move toward new ideas and new kinds of solutions to tackle the real issues of city survival.  Today, architects only touch 10-15% of the built environment and yet that built environment and its construction accounts for approx 40% of the carbon additions to our atmosphere, brought about through every aspect of the life cycle of a building.  For starters, architects must take a hint from urban design to look, as you have, at the larger context of city building and to the infrastructure that serves our cities.  We must stop building mono-use structures and learn about resiliency.  We must see the larger impact and deal with transportation, materiality, and net zero design that reflects in buildings that are not just sustainable when built, but through reuse over centuries.  "The most sustainable building is the one that already exist"(ULI Urban Land Institure).  We must build without urban sprawl and avoid building in environmentally dangerous settings (LA fires), we must deal in the reality of water shortages (Colorado River), drought and depleting natural carbon sinks(forests of Amazon and New Orleans Delta).  We must understand our impacts on the species of the world that our actions are eliminating, reducing biodiversity in animal and plant life.  We need to find answers in regenerative design that replicates using less and less natural resources, and we must find new materials a methods that eliminate the use of fossil based fuels.   And it goes on and on.  It has been suggested that a lot of this rests with engineers but I submit that this kind of thinking is why architects are losing our seat at the table in addressing these all encompassing threats.  This is the reason why I am thrilled by this write up and to hear of your ideas on saving our cities. The first thing you have done is to think holistically and to posit ideas that go beyond buildings.  We as architects have been taught to solve problems. I also believe that we are "problem Seekers" as well (William Caudill-CRS).  
    I am suggest a new council be formed amongst the College of Fellows to think big and to generate a thoughtful manifesto that can guide the changed role of the architect and urban designers to be the "thought leaders " of the total built environment.  I am pleased that the urban designers Knowledge Community is already on its way to this approach in transformative design.   But it is one thing, and a first step to identify what needs to be done, but clearly another, and much harder, effort to identify how!   I submit that our profession is ideally positioned to be the thought leaders in both identifying the problems, but also the solutions to fixing the built environment for the next generation.   



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    Richard L. von Luhrte FAIA Emeritus
    Retired President
    RNL, now Stantec
    Denver, Colorado
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  • 7.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 24 days ago

    My simple response to what you have posted is that you and I are of the same one mind on this subject, everything you as just written

    tells me so. 

    It does required leadership and I agree that is something the College of Fellows should undertake to lead.

    Thank you for your leadership in this deeply serious matter.



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    Roy F. Knight, FAIA, NCARB
    Practitioner, Architecture and Urban Design Consultant
    Knight Associates
    Tallahassee, Florida, USA
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  • 8.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 12 days ago

    Bravo! Perfectly stated. As an architect and urban designer who has served in a nontraditional role advising on major projects in Philadelphia, I completely agree that architects and urban designers must be the thought leaders for our built environment. We must be at the table with politicians as early as possible before plans are made that impact the built environment.



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    Danielle Kim AIA
    Danielle DiLeo Kim LLC
    Philadelphia PA
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  • 9.  RE: Towards a New American Downtown

    Posted 25 days ago

    Such thoroughly clear thinking is truly admirable. Thank you. 

    First it has become increasing important to focus on the downtowns. Sprawl is truly our unrecognized enemy and is so hard to stop. Approaching it positively by making the center of the city more desirable and winning the cost competition should help. Affordability is a yet unsolved matter and pretty basic. 

    I think your example of the Bosco Verticale in Milan is an excellent example that should be followed. As we move ahead more examples of how to include vegetation in and on building should be seen. Having seen Bosco Verticale itself as we as the historic center of the city vegetation on buildings can be seen as a part of the city's culture. I was amazed at how many, it seemed it could be the majority of them, had rooftops absolutely covered and overflowing with plants. 

    Another aspect of this should be saving existing buildings and changing their uses. I have witnessed a truly remarkable renaissance of  Downtown Birmingham Alabama. Several spurs set that city onto a very positive path. The old four block long railroad yard was converted into a multi-use public park, covered with varied vegetation and trees and ponds. It won first place award by the American Landscape Architects, and yes over the High Line in Manhattan. Connecting to the other side of the remaining tracks in use the underpasses sense of delight and security were enhanced by placement of color changing lights inside, shining onto the cement ceilings. Police security was increased, making the area more inviting. As for repurposing old buildings, the State of Alabama provided a significant property tax reduction, statewide, on historic buildings that are saved and uses altered. An example is called the 'First Federal.' That is a 25 story tower that when built as a bank building and office tower was the tallest south of the Ohio Review. Then it was a bustling new iron and steel making city, the majority of the jobs in that industry.  Changes have been vast. The population in the city limits has decreased significantly while the center city once with hardly anyone living there now is moving toward and beyond 20,000. The largest employer now is the University of Alabama in Birmingham and its Medical Center. Meanwhile too much sprawl continues and has grown well beyond one and a quarter million, taking over far too much lovely natural land and farm land. We clearly need to promote central city development and improvement 

       



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    Roy F. Knight, FAIA, NCARB
    Practitioner, Architecture and Urban Design Consultant
    Knight Associates
    Tallahassee, Florida, USA
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