Designing Vibrant Reflections of the Community

Urban design is the art of making places. It involves understanding, envisioning, transforming, and improving cities, towns, villages, and the public realm—those places in our communities we all pass through and often pause to enjoy and interact with each other.

Urban design is also the basis for all planning and code work that follows. In a design-based planning approach, our urban designers work integrally with other members of the design team—architects, landscape architects, planners, and civil engineers—to conceptualize, visualize, illustrate, and create places for people. Whether designing the urban pattern for a new town or focusing on a downtown festival street, we understand human scale, universal design principles, safety and security, and how places can be planned and designed to strengthen the sense of community and contribute to important community values of equity, diversity, inclusiveness, livability, and sustainability.

Through multi-dimensional integration of smart urban design principles, we champion the relationships and connectivity between people and all elements of the built and natural spaces in our communities—public and private areas, urban blocks and landscapes, and nature, active and passive uses, transitional, and stationary form. After all, places in the public realm belong to the people. They should reflect their cultures, values, and interests—they should be active, vibrant reflections of the community, instilling a sense of pride and becoming a lasting legacy and an important part of our collective memories.