The Town Center Solution to the Livability Problem Featuring Geoff Dyer

While walkable mixed use town centers may not be the *easy* choice for the asphalt guy, the engineer, or even the developer who has to attract tenants to an environment they may not be as used to… they are certainly  becoming best practices for sustainable community development. More importantly, they are quickly becoming a market favorite and a valuable amenity to their adjacent (and integrated) residential neighborhoods. Too often, however, municipalities and developers choose only to commit to this model halfway, viewing it as a niche market with limited potential where quaint mom and pops struggle away (you know, that one-off new urbanist development at the edge of town), while the “real stuff” happens in large conventional single-use centers down the street.

Geoff Dyer has blogged extensively on the essential components of a healthy walkable town center: hotels, retail, multi-family residential, and offices. He’s illustrated the urban design elements that makes them sing on value capture. In this webinar, he’ll take it a step further with his Block&Building Studio. The walkable, compact, compete neighborhood is the fundamental building block of a healthy region. But places are not built at the increment of a neighborhood, they get built at the scale of the block, building, and street.  It is here where the value and economic development of growing great places is realized. PlaceMakers Block&Building studio gets to work at that critical nexus where great ideas and principles meet with on the ground implementation and construction necessary to realize great Places.

Geoff is a Calgary-based urban designer whose considerable international project experience has brought him to the table with some of North America’s foremost urban designers. Through this broad-based experience and drawing from an extensive design education, he has established his core competency specifically in urban design and physical town planning.

This event carries one hour CNUa credit.