Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Advocacy poster on the Purple Line and the University of Maryland campus

There are a couple of errors in this poster, because the student designer who did it needed a bit more guidance, but all in all I would call the final product a stand out effort by a member of the Youth Design Team at Rockville's VisArts visual arts education nonprofit program located in the Rockville Town Center in Montgomery County.

(The facility is interesting in another way. It's an example of co-locating public and nonprofit and commercial facilities in a mixed use project. The Rockville branch of the public library is located there as well, in addition to residential and other commercial components.)

The high-school and college students on the team make web sites and logos, print 1-color T-shirts, and produce other design work for local nonprofits and small businesses.
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The problems with the poster...

Technically...

1. It's not METRO, at least not yet. The planning and construction will be by the Maryland Transit Administration. Likely after it is constructed, WMATA will operate it, and at the very least, there will be a combined fare system, but because of WMATA's current problems, WMATA isn't in the position of being able to take this on, at least officially, right now.

2. It's not going to be heavy rail/subway, but light rail. Therefore, the iconic image of the subway car, while very strong, is not exactly accurate.

In the right top corner of the MTA webpage for the project
is an image of the kind of transit vehicles that MTA is considering, which are not the subway vehicles used by WMATA.

Still, I like the idea. Graphic support of evident advocacy needs!

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