Neighborhood Design Center, Inc.

The Carpenter-Ridgeway Neighborhood Association commissioned the NDC to conduct Neighborhood Design Walkabouts and design workshops in the fall of 2007 and winter of 2008. The goal of the Walkabout and design workshop(s) is to enable residents to better understand and apply urban design principles for neighborhood improvement. The existing neighborhood plan provides the framework for the Walkabout, as well as new identified areas by residents. The UW-Madison School of Landscape Architecture provides in-kind professional and student design assistance. Funding for this project came from a City of Madison Neighborhood Planning Grant, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The full report (5.7 MB) can be downloaded here.

WALKABOUT

At the Walkabout, neighborhood residents and design professionals walked around the neighborhood to identify, discuss, and photograph the physical assets, opportunities, and challenges. Residents and professionals shared their thoughts and ideas about what works, doesn’t work, and how areas could be improved, through design. Participants regrouped for food and to view and discuss thoughts and images (downloaded and projected on a screen) from the walk. Participants selected priority sites design workshops to visualize and design improvements. A report of the walkabout can be downloaded here. Walkabout participants identified two areas to focus on in upcoming design workshops. One area was the strip malls along the South side of East Washington Avenue just West of Fair Oaks (see map). The other area is also along the South side of East Washington Ave., but toward the West boundary of the Neighborhood (on the Frontage Road between Highway 30 and Rethke St.).

DESIGN PREFERENCE SURVEY

At the Carpenter-Ridgeway Neighborhood Association (CRNA) 2008 Annual Meeting in March, neighborhood residents participated in a Design Preference Survey (DPS) to identify what physical design elements residents like and do not like. At the exercise residents viewed a series of images showing a range of urban developments, of different scales, settings, and uses. Exercise participants first viewed the images to silently record whether they like or dislike the images, and their comments. The second time viewing the images, participants discussed what they liked or did not like about each of the images, and whether they thought the development in the image was appropriate for the sites targeted for E. Washington Ave. Written and verbal observations were recorded for each image.

BLOCK EXERCISE

In April neighborhood residents participated in a block exercise to engage neighborhood residents in a design process that increases their understanding of urban design, how to represent their community goals and design preferences in urban forms, and what urban designs are most viable in the market place. The intended outcomes are: physical representation of neighborhood design preferences that are based on market realities, and neighborhood residents and leaders with the capacity to articulate those preferences to developers, land owners, businesses and public officials to constructively guide future development.

The block exercise uses wooden blocks representing different sizes of housing and commercial spaces at 1 inch equals 20 feet scale. Participants work in small groups to place the blocks on an aerial photograph to create designs of redevelopments on designated sites. A design ?professional facilitates each group.

Information from each design, including number of units, number of affordable units, and square feet of commercial space, is recorded and fed into a financial feasibility spreadsheet. The spreadsheet includes market data based on area comparables for land cost, construction cost, unit sales and rents. It calculates an estimated bottom line for each development, which is reported back to the group. The financial expert provides feedback on changes that could make the groups design more financially viable. Graphic artists sketch drawings of each design to portray to the group what their design could look like from the street level perspective.

The Carpenter-Ridgeway Neighborhood Association block exercise focused on three sites selected at the Neighborhood Design Walkabout (see Figure 3 above). One table was set up for each of the three sites. Print-outs of the highest ranked images from the Design Preference Survey were available at each table. Participants rotated from one table to the next. They generated three or more designs for each site. The Block Exercises are summarized below.