Summary: Six projects were selected for the 2009 Institute Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design. Two plans are located in China; two in California; and one each in Illinois and Arkansas. The projects focus on mixed-use density and sustainable strategies to renew once-vibrant areas or to make way for new populations and urban development. Two projects renew defunct military bases and transform them into community treasures.
Project: Porchscapes: Between Neighborhood Watershed and Home
Location: Fayetteville, Ark.
Architect: University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Client: Habitat for Humanity of Washington County
This 43-unit Habitat for Humanity residential project is a pilot LEED®-Neighborhood Development (ND) to be built for $60 per square foot plus infrastructure costs. The objective is to design a demonstration project that combines affordability with best sustainable practices. Porchscapes is a Low Impact Development (LID) project funded under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Section 319 Program for Nonpoint Source Pollution. LID is an ecological stormwater management approach that sustains a site’s predevelopment hydrologic regime with treatment landscapes distributed throughout the project, i.e. “parks, not pipes.” Neighborhoods are developed as sub-watersheds. The project introduces the “shared street” as a green infrastructure to amplify ecological services delivered by site planning. Based on the socially rich Dutch “living street,” shared streets are designed as multipurpose landscapes, combining pedestrian gathering spaces, parking, landscape systems, and stormwater facilities with traffic throughways. “Fresh ideas and concepts of sustainability are integral to the project, particularly in the way it incorporates the auto into the overall plan and includes landscaping, connections to surrounding environment,” stated the jury. “This project is a great example of a carefully considered shared street.”