Share Strategies for Rethinking the Burbs

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guest blogger: Valerie Berton

Throughout the country, suburban planners are grappling with how to handle pressures to adapt to demographic shifts, changing housing preferences, and growing infrastructure costs – all while making their communities more sustainable.

Be part of the solution! Join planners and smart growth experts by presenting at Makeover Montgomery: Innovative Strategies for Rethinking America’s Suburbs on April 14-16, 2011. Submit a proposal to present at the conference. (Deadline November 5)

Locating the conference in Silver Spring, with its rejuvenated, nationally recognized center, will focus attention on successful planning and policy tools and strategies.

Consider a presentation that ties into one of our conference themes, including: • Redesigning the suburbs • Suburban building typologies • Zoning for … Continue reading

See planning history in Greenbelt by bike

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When it comes to the built environment, the Washington region has long been one of the proving grounds for Planning.

From the first-ever National Planning Conference in 1909 to the demonstration of New Urbanism at Kentlands, Washington has benefited from planning ideas that often seemed far-fetched at the time.

Greenbelt, Maryland is no exception. It’s the best-preserved example of New Deal-era utopian town planning in the United States, and has been named a National Planning Landmark. This Saturday, I’m leading a bike tour of the community (details below). I hope you can make it.

About Greenbelt: Faced with housing shortages, a decimated economy, and deteriorating conditions in cities, the Roosevelt Administration, as a part of the New Deal, set … Continue reading

What does diversity mean to you? Tell us in 20 compelling images

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guest blogger: Valerie Berton

You’ve heard it before, and probably from us:  Montgomery County is becoming increasingly diverse. What do you think when you hear the word “diversity?”

Tell us at our upcoming Pecha Kucha contest, where you can demonstrate your vision of diversity in 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each. Anyone can join, and the winner – judged using on-site polling – will be featured on our Montgomery Plans cable show. Winning a Pecha Kucha contest could be a great resumé line!

Walk the sidewalks of Rockville, Silver Spring and any of the county’s downtowns and you’ll see a wide array of people. My kids’ class lists read like an assembly at the United Nations.

That’s more … Continue reading

Place-making art; art-making place

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Seattle’s Downtown Transit Tunnel was designed as a collaborative project between the project consultant (Parson Brinckerhoff Quade and Douglas Inc.), the architecture subconsultant (TRA), and 25 artists.  The team created what they have termed a distinct “art-itecture” for each station representative of the neighborhood it serves.

The result is a fantastic model for the stations along the proposed Purple Line and the Corridor Cities Transitway.

Even after just a couple days riding the light-rail or buses through Seattle’s stations, a quick glance out the window provides a distinct impression that tells, or shows, where you are. The collaboration is obvious in the integration of artistic details and the creation of a place. You … Continue reading

New Yards Park is dressed to impress

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This past weekend, the Capitol Riverfront area celebrated the grand opening of the Yards Park.

The new park is located along the Anacostia River between 3rd Street SE and the Navy Yard. It was built as a public-private partnership between the developer of the Yards, the government of the District of Columbia, and the General Services Administration. It’s managed by the Capitol Riverfront BID.

A festival marked the opening this weekend. It included bands, artists, vendors, and more. I had the opportunity to stop by, and I snapped some photos. The park is very well designed, and I can only hope it is an example of future waterfront parks in the area.

It has many features which help to … Continue reading

Harvest Time

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Though staff has been enjoying and sharing produce all summer long, this seemed like a good time for an official harvest, so at lunch today, gardeners presented a Lunch, Learn and Taste session to their colleagues.

We talked about how the garden was a way to make our own building more green, the volunteers that helped us (not only the gardeners, but our building crew who helped with watering, our parks crew who started us off by turning the beds, and American Plant Food, who generously donated seed and supplies), and how we plan to winter over the garden (soils amendments and some hardy crops like cabbage).

But the real point of the garden party was to harvest and we had … Continue reading

Bikes and Cars, Traveling Together

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New York continues to open its streets to all users, rethinking its infrastrcutre in a way that makes the city enjoyable for more people, and a bit greener.

There is hardly a more iconic street than Broadway and if you’re a cyclist, it’s where your dreams might in fact come true. After testing lane closures to make squares and bike routes, the city is making the closures official.

Two quotes in the article caught my eye: “You do these things incrementally, and over time they build.” and “I think it was their strategy to introduce this piecemeal, see if it worked, and then go further.”

These comments remind me of what Richard Layman said in our Rethink Montgomery speakers … Continue reading

Man vs. Nature on the Greenways

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The recently approved Germantown Sector Plan recommends greenways along Observation Drive and Crystal Rock Drive that would connect Black Hill Regional Park to the Town Center. It’s a good fit on streets that already have wide sidewalks, buffers, and stormwater management facilities.

Sounds like a great feature, one that creates a distinctive roadscape, creates a desirable recreation feature that also works for bicycle and pedestrian transportation, and can be implemented at the same time road and site improvements are made.

Fitting recreation into existing infrastructure and making that infrastructure do double duty is a sensible approach, given not only public sector’s fiscal limits, but our increasing interest in sustainability. Just google greenways and you’ll find lots of communities pursuing … Continue reading

Summer Streets

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It’s a cool morning, the first in a long time, and the frayed leaves are starting to look less lush, but there’s still time to think about Summer Streets, New York City’s program to create a temporary 6.9 mile car-free route to encourage bicycling in the city.

Free bike rentals and repairs, free skate rental, rest stops, maps, and yes–you can cool off in a dumpster pool!–remove barriers and excuses.

I like the idea of temporarily rethinking the city. Trying out parks and bike routes is not only a physical test of infrastructure, but a test of how we function as individuals in our environment. Certain things are hard–biking, recycling, walking–not because they are inherently difficult, but because the infrastructure isn’t set up … Continue reading

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

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guest blogger: Michael Brown

Imagine, in an effort to reduce spending, Montgomery County Public Schools has decided to reduce the number of students they will bus to school. As a consequence, more children will be forced to walk to school or more parents will be forced to drive them.

This is the reality of parents in Clayton County, Georgia, a suburban community south of downtown Atlanta. Just days before the new school year started, the school system announced that itwill no longer provide bus transportation to 4,600 students living within a mile and half of their schools.

After hearing this news my first thought was TRAFFIC!   As a reviewer of mandatory referral applications for school projects in Montgomery County, … Continue reading