Planning with Vision
“New planning in Alabama is just basically different from the old,” says Darrell Meyer. “Even as recently as a decade ago a plan would typically be data, data, data with only four or five pages at the back with any kind of palpable image of what could be. The best new plans today begin with a vision and ask ‘How do we get there?’”
Meyer knows the field. Longtime chair of the planning program in Auburn University’s architecture school, he has worked across the state and for several years has directed planning and landscape architecture for KPS Group in Birmingham. Back in the 1960s and ’70s the emphasis was on gathering data and then projecting into the future. It led to a certain fatigue. But over the past few decades the climate has changed. The historic preservation movement brought focus on existing urban fabric. A much more sophisticated and dimensional approach to urban design developed. And the new urbanist movement that began in the 1980s led to a revival of town planning, first for greenfield sites but more and more for existing towns and cities.
More than colors on a map, the best planning now gets people thinking about places. What do you really want your town or neighborhood to look like? How do you make streets welcoming to pedestrians and cyclists as well as cars? And, as the questions suggest, the process is to engage everyone – residents, elected officials, developers – right from the start. We present here two major planning projects:
*The Downtown Montgomery Plan
*The University of Alabama Campus Master Plan
A portfolio follows with graphic presentations of recent projects for the cities of Auburn, Mountain Brook, Florence, Gulf Shores, Homewood and Birmingham. They are a mix of community-wide strategic plans and specific plans for parts of the cities.
