Sustainable Urban Landscapes: The Surrey Design Charrette [Paperback]

Patrick M. Condon (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Univ of British Columbia Pr (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0888655355
• ISBN-13: 978-0888655356
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,432,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Vision for Sustainable Communities, November 28, 1999

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Alison Arsenault (British Columbia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sustainable Urban Landscapes: The Surrey Design Charrette (Paperback)

"Sustainable Urban Landscapes: The 1995 Surrey Charrette" is a new publication that deals with the issue of sustainability and sustainable communities. It may be of some use to educators and/ or those interested in the topic. Orders may be made to UBC PRESS 6344 Memorial Road Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada.

Telephone inquiries can be made to 604 822 5959.

SUSTAINABLE URBAN LANDSCAPES: 1995 SURREY CHARRETTE

Despite an emerging regional, state/provincial, and federal consensus on the paramount importance of sustainable community design, and reams of resultant policy goals to support this consensus, our new communities seem to be as unsustainable as ever. Perhaps one reason for our reluctance to change is that, while the policies exist, there are very few pictures of what a viable sustainable community might look like.

Sustainable Urban Landscapes: The Surrey Charrette helps to move urban landscape sustainability from the realm of abstract policy goal to concrete practical reality by showing exactly what a more sustainable community might look like. The book contains the complete catalogue of design ideas, literally hundreds of colour design illustrations, generated at an international design charrette hosted by the University of British Columbia's (UBC) Landscape Architecture Program. Top landscape architects and architects from all over North America teamed up with UBC architecture and landscape architecture students, to design a sustainable community for 10,000 persons on a 400 acre site in Surrey, British Columbia. The result is North America's most comprehensive vision to date of what a sustainable urban landscape might someday look like.

The five day brainstorming design charrette produced four complete design proposals, each supported by dozens of explanatory plans, perspectives and analytic diagrams. These proposals differ markedly from the conventional subdivisions of cul-de-sacs currently sprawling across the North American urban landscape, obliterating whatever natural environment lay in their paths. Instead, in these four proposals, the natural environment retains its ecological and functional integrity, most streets include a wide array of housing options, ecological systems extend virtually to the door of every home, streets are narrowed, the pedestrian and bicycle are accommodated, and commercial and transit services are located within walking distance to all dwellings.

The book is laid out so that the reader gets a sense of the evolution each design. Each design team gets its own chapter, within which numerous analytical diagrams chart the steps in their design process. In this way the book helps explain the method by which North America's most accomplished designers approached the problem, and provides four model design processes that may be useful others.

The forward is by Doug Kelbaugh, FAIA, one of the team leaders of the charrette, co- editor of The Pedestrian Pocket Handbook, and organizer of over a dozen major charrettes sponsored by the University of Washington.

The introduction is by Patrick Condon, the Charrette organizer and the holder of the UBC Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments.

The book also includes Beautiful Infrastructure, an essay by William R. Morrish, another of the team leaders of the charrette, and Director of the Design Center for the American Urban Landscape in Minneapolis Minnesota.

The other team leaders for the charrette were: Joost Bakker, Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia; Cheryl Barton, Landscape Architect, San Francisco, California; Catherine Brown, Landscape Architect, Minneapolis Minnesota; Patrick Condon, Landscape Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia; Roger Hughes, Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia; Ken Greenberg, Architect, Toronto, Ontario; Jennifer Marshall, Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia; Stacy Moriarty, Landscape Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia; Moura Quayle, Landscape Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia; Murray Silverstein, Architect, Berkeley, California; Ron Walkey, Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia; Bill Wenk, Landscape Architect, Denver, Colorado; Carolyn Woodland, Landscape Architect, Toronto, Ontario; Don Wuori, Landscape Architect, Vancouver, British Columbia

Largely descriptive rather than prescriptive, the Sustainable Urban Landscape Design Charrette is the first comprehensive work of its kind. The book provides readers with innovative and eminently practical ways of integrating nature with the city and, further, a compelling vision of what a more sustainable urban landscape would look like. It is available from the University of British Columbia Press, 6344 Memorial Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada. Telephone inquiries can be made to 604 822 5959.