FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Community Design Center shows cities how to plan for the future in a project for Monticello, Ark., that has won a 2008 Unbuilt
Architecture Design Award sponsored by the Boston Society of Architects. Instead of dictating the usual laundry list of zoning codes, Monticello: Place-Based Planning in the Five Urbanisms of Every American Townaddresses all parts of the typical American city with a single rule and some guiding principles.

The Community Design Center's award-winning planning for Monticello, Ark. addresses the five urban patterns commonly found in American cities.

The rule is simple: property owners can build whatever they want, wherever they want, so long as they provide street frontage – the porches, terraces and arcades that make great public streets.

“You can build a gas station besidea church – we don’t care – but both have to address the street to create public space,” said Stephen Luoni, director of the Community Design Center. And the mobile home, which accounts for 25 percent of all housing starts in the Arkansas Delta?

“We say bring them on,” Luoni said. “But they have to take care of the street, with a porch for example. This system handles even the most meager architecture, because it relies on public infrastructure, not the architecture itself.”

The plan also stands out for addressing the five urban fabrics that characterize American cities built in the last 150 years, from the historic downtown grid to post-war suburbs to rural enclaves. Each form presents opportunities that cities can capitalize on as well as liabilities to be considered.

For example, rural subdivisions, often villainized as sprawl, may contribute to the development of scenic parkways if a 30-foot buffer of trees, meadow or floodplain is preserved or planted along the highway. The Monticello plan also recommends cluster development in rural areas to conserve natural areas and viewsheds. The downside of this type of development is the high cost of installing remote roads, sewer lines and other infrastructure.

“We try to fair cost each one of the pattern types,” Luoni said.

Regardless of pattern type, the plan applies the following principles:

• Mix land uses

• Achieve more compact development to promote walkable neighborhoods

• Integrate environmental and urban systems

• Enhance connections between city sectors

Most important, and most radical: the design center’s plan scraps the zoning map that underpins most city planning efforts in favor of a master street plan.

“It’s all about street designand the architectural frontage of the street,” Luoni said, noting the narrow streets and continuous arcades in New Orleans as one example where great streets make a great city.

As for Monticello, response has been positive.

“It’s a great plan. Now we’re trying to implement it – that’s the fun part,” said Bennie Ryburn, owner of a Toyota dealership who serves as president of the Monticello Economic Development Commission. The city of Monticello has cleaned up 60 to 70 lots downtown that are now available for infill development, and members of the Monticello Economic Development Commission are currently networking with other towns that have adopted place-based planning to draw up specific ordinances.

Monticello: Place-Based Planning in the Five Urbanisms of Every American Town is one of four projects selected from 64 international submissions to win a 2008 Unbuilt Architecture Design Award sponsored by the Boston Society of Architects. The four projects will be exhibited and discussed in a special forum at Build Boston, the annual design convention in Boston, Nov. 18-20. The projects also will be exhibited at the Architects Building in Boston in 2009 and included in the January/February 2009 design awards issue of ArchitectureBoston magazine. For more information visit the Web site for Boston Society of Architects at www.architects.org.

Monticello: Place-Based Planning is the fourthdesign center project that has won Unbuilt Architecture honors from the Boston Society of Architects, which hosts one of the top four national architectural design awards programs in the United States.

“Designers are looking for concepts that are transportable, that are models addressing environmental issues confronted by all, and not just a resolution for a single project,” Luoni said. “That’s probably why we have done well with the BSA’s Unbuilt Architecture award program.”