Regional and Urban Design Committee

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The Regional and Urban Design Committee (RUDC) aims to improve the quality of the regional and urban environment by promoting excellence in design, planning, and public policy in the built environment. This will be achieved through its member and public education, in concert with allied community and professional groups. Join us!

2024 Symposium

The 2024 symposium will be held in Indianapolis, IN in November. Stay tuned for dates and location. Registration will open in July.

2023 RUDC Symposium

The RUDC Symposium, held in Washington, DC October 19-20, covered emerging trends, theories, and technologies that are shaping the future of regional and urban design. Watch the engaging highlight and speaker videos >.

  • 1.  The changing face of urban housing

    Posted 05-18-2016 11:58 AM

    On behalf of RUDC I will be participating in the following Convention Sessions:

    SESSION CODE: TH405 | TITLE: Smart Digital Eco-Cities in the 21st Century: Resilient, Sustainable, Livable
    ROOM: Room 120

    SESSION CODE: FR405 | TITLE: Influencing Decision Making in Local Communities: Tips for Small Firms
    ROOM: Room 109

    See you tonight (Wednesday) at the EV  102, a welcome party by the Knowledge Communities (6-8pm)

    The Changing Design of Urban Housing


    Last week I reviewed student projects at the local architecture department. One half of the projects dealt with a dis-invested African American community in Baltimore with most of the design task involving housing. The other half of the projects were part of a design competition in an African American community in Los Angeles. The second program was a museum and a community center.

    The students with the civic project designed interesting structures and created existing places in the community. The ones with the residences, not so much. Essentially, they recycled rowhouses and apartment buildings of a kind that would have looked outdated and unimaginative in the seventies and eighties of the last century. Brick walls with small punched out windows, double loaded corridors, surface parking, more attention to traffic than to floor plans and elevations.

    Gehry New York
    What happened here? A colleague who was with me on the jury observed afterwards, "designing residential architecture is difficult." As one who has done townhomes, highrises, affordable apartments, luxury condos, renovations and new construction, I have never thought of it that way, but on second thought, I have to agree.

    The students may have been stumped... Read full article by clicking below:

    Community Architect: The Changing Design of Urban Housing

    Archplanbaltimore remove preview
    Community Architect: The Changing Design of Urban Housing
     
    View this on Archplanbaltimore >
    ------------------------------
    Nikolaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: The changing face of urban housing

    Posted 05-20-2016 02:54 AM
    Phillip I enjoy and often agree with what you have to say. In this piece I find a number of conventionally trendy comments that need to be examined.
     
    You criticize students for designing rowhouses that respond to what the community has requested with punched windows as inappropriate. Perish the thought of a larger bedroom called the "master" for the adult(s) in the house. Shudder to think of cities where density is not the inevitable.  Lament that housing is conservative in form.
     
    Lets start with rowhouses with punched windows and the suspicion that "students may have been stumped by interviews with residents who wanted no real change in their community".  Except in architectural competitions and for owners with aspirations to call attention to their significance with high design high cost infill, the case for well detailed and proportioned conventional urban housing seems to be an unmet need. Perhaps the students designed particularly dull examples of the sort that characterize the rougher streets of Baltimore- I can't say. However, the idea of owning or renting a piece of ground with a house that does not involve shared governance, HOA maintenance fees, elevators and window washers, provides privacy from the street and from neighbors, may include a large storeroom or garage, seems a pretty reasonable arrangement whether for a couple or a family.
     
     The "demographic trends" that separate families with children from enclaves of singles and couples is not sustainable or socially beneficial – not one that we as planners should feel compelled to reinforce unless for an expiring culture. Compared to multi-story elevator buildings, the row house (aside from the cost of land) is less expensive to construct for the space afforded and is more economical to maintain, does not require continuous space conditioning, and provides access to the streetscape in front and naturescape in the rear. It is also pretty flexible in accommodating a variety of living arrangements.
     
    Zoning for high density drives up underlying land values and among other outcomes results in displacement of the poor and middle class in favor of the wealthier and, when heavily subsidized, the very poor. Density is the tool of the corporate developer with a high cost to entry. That is not to say it is evil. No, strategically placed higher density provides choices that are clearly desirable for some. It should be evident however that it is desirable for a minority and will likely remain so. Density per se is not going to create happy, vital, brilliant, affordable cities. Density per se is not going to cure global warming and based on heat maps can make things worse. Despite the rhetoric or the reputation, most people in Vancouver (BC) live in single family houses not in the very high rent downtown or walkup dominated west end. In recent years the density is the result of large blocks of Chinese money looking for a place to park. Fortunately a good deal of that investment was well spent at least from the point of view of urban design. Probably not so much from the point of view of middle income families.
     
    The affordable housing shortage is the result of increasing population concentration in the most advantaged cities along with the wage disparity that has left many in the middle class and younger folks unable to keep up with the pressure- especially those wishing to live in their own space. New housing, single occupancy housing, and dense housing is expensive and new - not affordable. There is more affordable older housing that needs TLC and an owner willing to participate with sweat equity. But many such houses are being outpriced by developers who tear them down and build more expensive housing especially when the zoning allows them to build more densely.
     
    Perhaps to assuage their guilt over the displacement effects of advocating density, we have the same guilty parties declaring that our salvation is to have density everywhere. Of course the developers are on this train.

     
    Rod Merrick, AIA NCARB
     Merrick Architecture Planning
    Portland, OR 503.771.7762








  • 3.  RE: The changing face of urban housing

    Posted 05-20-2016 02:59 AM




    Nikolaus, I enjoy and often agree with what you have to say. In this piece I find a number of conventionally trendy comments that need to be examined.
     
    You criticize students for designing rowhouses that respond to what the community has requested with punched windows as inappropriate. Perish the thought of a larger bedroom called the "master" for the adult(s) in the house. Shudder to think of cities where density is not the inevitable.  Lament that housing is conservative in form.
     
    Lets start with rowhouses with punched windows and the suspicion that "students may have been stumped by interviews with residents who wanted no real change in their community".  Except in architectural competitions and for owners with aspirations to call attention to their significance with high design high cost infill, the case for well detailed and proportioned conventional urban housing seems to be an unmet need. Perhaps the students designed particularly dull examples of the sort that characterize the rougher streets of Baltimore- I can't say. However, the idea of owning or renting a piece of ground with a house that does not involve shared governance, HOA maintenance fees, elevators and window washers, provides privacy from the street and from neighbors, may include a large storeroom or garage, seems a pretty reasonable arrangement whether for a couple or a family.
     
     The "demographic trends" that separate families with children from enclaves of singles and couples is not sustainable or socially beneficial – not one that we as planners should feel compelled to reinforce unless for an expiring culture. Compared to multi-story elevator buildings, the row house (aside from the cost of land) is less expensive to construct for the space afforded and is more economical to maintain, does not require continuous space conditioning, and provides access to the streetscape in front and naturescape in the rear. It is also pretty flexible in accommodating a variety of living arrangements.
     
    Zoning for high density drives up underlying land values and among other outcomes results in displacement of the poor and middle class in favor of the wealthier and, when heavily subsidized, the very poor. Density is the tool of the corporate developer with a high cost to entry. That is not to say it is evil. No, strategically placed higher density provides choices that are clearly desirable for some. It should be evident however that it is desirable for a minority and will likely remain so. Density per se is not going to create happy, vital, brilliant, affordable cities. Density per se is not going to cure global warming and based on heat maps can make things worse. Despite the rhetoric or the reputation, most people in Vancouver (BC) live in single family houses not in the very high rent downtown or walkup dominated west end. In recent years the density is the result of large blocks of Chinese money looking for a place to park. Fortunately a good deal of that investment was well spent at least from the point of view of urban design. Probably not so much from the point of view of middle income families.
     
    The affordable housing shortage is the result of increasing population concentration in the most advantaged cities along with the wage disparity that has left many in the middle class and younger folks unable to keep up with the pressure- especially those wishing to live in their own space. New housing, single occupancy housing, and dense housing is expensive and new - not affordable. There is more affordable older housing that needs TLC and an owner willing to participate with sweat equity. But many such houses are being outpriced by developers who tear them down and build more expensive housing especially when the zoning allows them to build more densely.
     
    Perhaps to assuage their guilt over the displacement effects of advocating density, we have the same guilty parties declaring that our salvation is to have density everywhere. Of course the developers are on this train.


     
    Rod Merrick, AIA NCARB
     Merrick Architecture Planning
    Portland, OR 503.771.7762