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Maryland
Design Expert Says Working Within Community's Character and Context Are Primary Components of Successful Smart Growth Projects
''Smart growth isn't done by municipalities alone. The public has to be on board,'' said Colorado-based DTJ Design expert Thomas W. Kopf in his ''Smart Growth at the Edge'' presentation in Berlin, some five miles from Atlantic beaches, stressing that to prevent sprawl and create quality communities, developers should preserve and enhance local character.
''Respect the context,'' he told builders in the audience, while giving local officials and residents this advice: ''Developers who come in without that should be shown the door.''
Part of a four-event smart-growth series sponsored by the Maryland Coastal Bays Program and the Worcester County Commissioners, reports Salisbury Daily Times writer Charlene Polk, the presentation focused on contextual community-building.
''Community is about connections made between people,'' the presenter said, pointing out that each new development should include a core as its heart, provide ample open space, balance the needs of drivers and pedestrians, and offer mixed uses and different housing types.
That's exactly what his firm's designers had done at its project in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, while incorporating in its design traditional local elements and low-key signage.
''We felt,'' he noted, ''that if we created a strong enough place, people would stop by without a flashy sign.''
Ending his presentation, he highlighted a basic difference between true community builders and mere subdividers.
The former, the writer paraphrases, believe in best value instead of yield and they plan for the future; the latter have little concern for the future or the environment and quickly build ''too much of the same thing, which becomes sprawl.'' -- Daily Times 5/8/2007
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