Community Design
RPA is committed to strengthening the region's centers. The goal of redirecting much of the region's growth to centers is based on the principle that centers-places that provide housing, jobs, education, shopping, and recreation in close proximity-are the form of community that can deliver the largest number and greatest diversity of people. By providing for efficient use of land, energy, infrastructure, and other resources, centers also provide critical benefits to the region's economy and environment. Finally, the region's hundreds of city and town centers provide a permanent organizing framework for future growth in the region.
Physical planning and design is the centerpiece of this campaign. Design studies - models, drawings, "before and after simulations" - make it possible to test the physical capacity of the region's centers and to understand the impacts of new structures on the visual and natural environment. Even more importantly, design studies enable communities to understand the consequences of planning policy, and to articulate their own vision for how their communities should grow. In this way it is possible to link locally-based place-making with a regional smart growth agenda.
One of the centerpieces of our advocacy efforts for the Regional Design program is the New Jersey Mayor's Institute on Community Design, held at Princeton University to promote better planning and development in communities throughout New Jersey. RPA's work with the Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York has also featured the principles of the design program, most notably in the Planning and Design Workshop. In addition to these special projects, the Regional Design Program is built around four major initiatives, each of which combines research with place-based planning and design studies:
The Suburban Redesign Initiative: Much of the region's growth
takes place just beyond the "first ring suburbs" - not in centers but
in the loose agglomeration of retail and office uses called "edge
cities". These places have a critical mass of activities, but are
arranged in auto-oriented configurations that make them effectively
"built out" at low and inefficient densities. The Suburban Redesign
Initiative is devoted to demonstrating the ways in which the various
features of the suburban landscape - from regional malls, to gated
communities, to the latest generation of "edgeless cities" even farther
out - can be redesigned to absorb new growth. In cooperation with the
Lincoln Institute of Land policy, RPA has completed vision plans for
the Somerset County Regional Center, a 22 square mile edge city in New
Jersey, the Nassau Hub on Long Island, and several other prototypical
suburban sprawl landscapes.
Redevelopment, Mobility & Waterfronts
