Urban design in Washington, DC

"Pretty soon, you won't recognize the place. Promise." This is a curse and a threat as much as something to look forward to.

1. Fred Kent, president of Project for Public Spaces, prefers to not use the term "urban design" because he feels that it becomes all about design, with little emphasis on both art and the quality and intensity of the experience. That's why he uses the term placemaking.

2. I've always "compromised" on being that doctrinaire, believing that the principles and practices of urban design are important, and important to know. It's why in the label-index keywords, I use "urban design/placemaking" to tag these kinds of issues, to encompass the practical reality that these questions about both about design and placemaking experience and vitality.

3. But in DC, it too often is rote, not much about the art, just about design, which is what Fred Kent talks about.

I had a "spirited discussion"/argument with an architect at a meeting earlier in the week. She thinks she knows urban design inside and out. She doesn't. At least in terms of the quality of the experience and the overall impact on the built environment. (I will say she does have some good ideas, which were embodied in her presentation. But they were about design, not the quality of the place and the experience.)

Most architects focus only on buildings. And for the most part the buildings, even sites, don't reach out to, connect with, improve, and extend the quality of the overall built environment.

(Ken disagrees with me. He thinks that the best planners are architects. But I guess I have dealt with, through my involvement in DC stuff, so many architects who fail at context, that I think the best planners, and there aren't many of them, are the planners that also understand urban design, connection, and context.)

She has a great reputation. But when I pointed out a particular glaring gap in one of the projects she heralded and is heralded for, she was pissed, and huffed that there were good reasons for violating accepted urban design principles in that instance. I don't think she has a lot of experience with being questioned in pointed, direct ways. I said I figured that there must have been value engineering reasons for why they cut corners there.

Without offering any "good reasons," she claimed that "there were good reasons for ignoring urban design considerations" for that particular case.

In my experience, whenever a developer, architect, or planner attempts to justify ignoring urban design, that their proffered reasons never add up.

They are dissembling. (That's a polite word for lying.)

4. At last night's Zoning Commission hearing on Case 06-40, the Gateway Residences project at the Florida Market, this came up in a different way.

I really wonder if any of the staffers in the Development Review section of the DC Office of Planning know anything about urban design and the quality of place.

I mean it. They aren't very good.

If they did, I imagine that their recommendations and approvals would have been much different, and that much earlier in the process the developer would have been forced to be more responsive to urban design concerns as addressed by various stakeholders earlier in the process. Instead, almost to the point where it is too late, these concerns were ignored. (More about this in the next blog entry.)

5. In my processing-remonstration of the experience last night, I got to thinking about my testimony about the Comprehensive Plan back in 2006, during the public hearing process.

Like typical transportation departments which "serve all modes of travel equally" but treat the car as more equal than others, when you treat all of the Comprehensive Plan elements as equal, "land use" becomes more equal than all the others.

Over the course of the hearing schedule, I came to the conclusion that Urban Design should have been defined as the primary element, serving as the guiding force for the entire document.

#2 would be Land Use

#3 would be Transportation

#4 would be Economic Development (although I will say that the process also helped me confirm my belief starting in 2005 that there is a difference in focus between an element that would be titled "building a local economy" vs. "economic development; some day I'll write a journal article about it).

The Urban Design Element reads very well, but somehow, when it comes to executing the idea and concept of "urban design" when it comes to projects, something is lost, and the city is being reproduced into a bunch of monotonous glass boxes.

Rendering for the Washington Gateway project, which will be constructed just west of the Florida Market.


When all the elements are equal, land use is more equal. And when land use is more equal, zoning trumps all, and zoning is all about the requirements on the lot. Zoning is not about the overall impact on the quality of the built environment.

6. Maybe the design side of the Office of Planning, Neighborhood Planning and Revitalization/Design section, needs to provide reports on Zoning Cases independent of the Development Review section, on the design and transportation aspects of projects (although more and more, the Dept. of Transportation is providing reports, although they probably aren't all that groundbreaking either).

7. If you only have time to read one thing, maybe it should be this:

-- Close Encounters with Buildings by Jan Gehl et al.

If you have more time, you can read the Urban Design Compendium.

There are books too, especially Creating a Vibrant City Center, and the out of print City: Rediscovering the Center, although part of this book is available as Social Life of Small Urban Spaces.

To understand how it comes together, read this speech by Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston.