Research at Sasaki: 2016-2019

RESEA RC H AT SASAK I

2016-2019

A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Martin Zogran is a principal and urban designer in Sasaki’s urban practice. With over 20 years of experience designing urban centers across the globe, Martin’s work with mixed-use districts and largescale framework plans spans many scales, from small urban infill sites to large-scale regional plans. He searches for creative methods to combine economic goals, regulatory requirements, and ecological systems thinking into exciting and innovative places that foster long-term value.

Research at Sasaki is a critical endeavor that advances Sasaki, and to reach out to external partners, experts, our collective knowledge of the built environment and thought leaders in the design fields to push the and helps to fuel creative innovation to expand envelope on how we think about design. our capacity to problem-solve. From prototyping permeable pavers, to conducting ethnographic The results of these research grants take many forms, field research with underserved communities, to from informational websites and web-based opengenerating data visualization from vast public datasets, source tools, to publications, exhibits, and built to tracking thermal efficiency in building envelopes, prototypes. Sasaki also sponsors exhibitions that Sasaki advances research encompassing broad delve into timely thematic issues such as approaches spheres of inquiry that span design disciplines. to resiliency and the importance of play; we publish white papers, articles and blog posts; present at This publication highlights many of the efforts that conferences and panels across the globe; and nurture fall within the larger umbrella of research at Sasaki new voices inside and outside the Sasaki community over the last five years. The following pages highlight to contribute to this broad endeavor called research. outputs of our annual sponsored grants, internship program charrettes, and long-term investigation on More than ever, the competitive advantage of design critical topics, as well as exciting investigations that firms relies on innovation, creativity, and deep bubble up outside the bounds of project work. It is technical knowledge on a wide variety of topics. both a celebration of past research efforts, as well as Research—in its many forms—is foundational to a prompt to forward these critical efforts in the future. our collective success at Sasaki. It complements and The exploration of new ideas is fundamental to our deepens our work, helps to build bonds and expertise process and outputs; we design better, together, when firm-wide, and gives us an invaluable platform for research is step one. engaging in dialogue with the broader design industry and the communities and clients we serve. Research Research takes many forms at Sasaki, falling into is necessary for fueling the creativity and ingenuity both more formal, academic approaches, and lessthat is a hallmark of our practice. structured investigations that emerge from projects and other sources of inspiration identified by our This document captures the enthusiasm, innovation, varied teams. Sasaki continues to sponsor research and hard work of many at Sasaki in the past few through annual grants—providing teams the time years. We hope that the contents within excite others and resources, outside of project work, to pursue a and propel future research that enables continuous wide array of topics. The issues they touch upon are evolution in the approaches we take toward planning essential to the broader design fields that shape and and design to shape the environments and societies inform our work; these research endeavors give teams in which we live. the chance to collaborate across disciplines within

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WITHIN THIS PUBLICATION:

RESEARCH GRANTS

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Each year, Sasaki awards three grants to teams of staff who have designed a research project and applied to pursue it. Past research projects have explored topics such as autonomous vehicles, playscapes in parks, and the United States’ homeless population. This publication features the 2019 grant recipients, who conducted research on designing affirmative spaces for black women (A Voice at the Table), creating a typology for American small towns (Townology), and visualizing inequities in parks access (Parks and Equity Access).

Sasaki designers often write for, or are featured in, external publications. These articles not only tell the narrative of a research project, but also serve as public recognition of the dedication each team puts toward their work. This publication includes three thought leadership pieces from external venues that have featured Sasaki research projects.

INTERNSHIP CHARRETTES

EXPLORATIONS

Each summer, Sasaki recruits a talented cohort of interns from across disciplines to contribute at the firm. The program begins with an interdisciplinary charrette, where the interns engage with a real-world client on a two-week project utilizing the strengths of their many areas of expertise. The work from these charrettes often continues into the rest of the summer and beyond. This publication summarizes the past four years of project work from these charrettes.

Research at Sasaki extends far beyond formal programs like sponsored research grants or internship charrettes—initiatives often stem from everyday project work or personal interests. These projects are captured as explorations and are interspersed throughout this publication. They speak to Sasaki’s culture of curiosity and innovation which helps advance our work and the field of design as a whole.

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A Voice at the Table E X PL OR AT IONS

Landscapes for Lehigh

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T HOUGHT L E A DER SHIP

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E X PL OR AT IONS

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RE SE A RCH GR A N T

Can Data Have a Heart?

Revit Planning Prototypes RE SE A RCH GR A N T

Townology E X PL OR AT IONS

Jiading Post-Occupancy Evaluation RE SE A RCH GR A N T

Parks & Equity Atlas

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E X PL OR AT IONS

Live Oak Pavilion

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T HOUGHT L E A DER SHIP

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E X PL OR AT IONS

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Practice Makes Permeable Custom Metal Panel Capturing at Colby College E X PL OR AT IONS

Creating Space for Women in Kabul IN T ERNSHIP CH A RRE T T E S

Resilient Mystic & More E X PL OR AT IONS

Akamai: a Mile-long Pattern

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T HOUGHT L E A DER SHIP

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E X PL OR AT IONS

Embracing Disruption

WinterLight Pavilion

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2019 RESEARCH GRANT

A VOIC E AT T H E How can we better understand the value affirmative spaces play in promoting community building, empowerment, and resilience for Black womxn*?

Recognizing the intersectional framework that Black womxn hold in our current society, the research seeks to empower the Black womxn’s narrative in the realm of urban planning and design both in Roxbury, MA, and the design practice at large. Furthermore, the intentions of this exploration seek to unpack how planning and designing for communities on the margins of society helps us better tackle the deepseated challenges we must address to create the most inclusive outcomes.

Our research process sought to elevate communal narrative and history into how we conceptualize design principles, processes, and future developments. Between surveys and interviews collected over the winter and spring of 2019, this project speaks to the cumulative voice of 125 black womxn stakeholders in Roxbury, whether they live, work, organize, or frequent spaces in the community.

The voices shared through this effort reinforce that Black womxn are diverse and multidimensional, and therefore the design of our communities should reflect this nature as well. Our findings teach us to push forward a conversation around how we better embrace eclectic and diverse design standards, challenging existing norms that foster exclusivity through homogeneous design approaches.

Our research team shares our deepest gratitude to all the womxn who shared their stories and voices throughout this project. *Womxn: a spelling of women that is more inclusive of marginalized people, including transgender womxn and womxn of color 6

ABOVE Collage featuring all the popularly mentioned spaces within the Roxbury community

SASAKI

TABLE

MEL ISIDOR BREEZE OUTLAW, ASLA ELAINE LIMMER NAYELI RODRIGUEZ

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WHY BLACK WOMXN? This research seeks to bring the Black womxn’s narrative to the forefront of the design industry.

While the urban planning and design field faces an uphill battle in diversifying its practitioners, current action must work beyond just diversifying the bodies but rather also diversifying our thinking, values, and processes towards planning and design. This research proposes that intersectionality serves as a key framework for how we approach design for more inclusive and equitable outcomes.

Intersectionality, n.

The interconnected nature of social categorizations (i.e., race, gender, class, sexuality) that create interdependent systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination

The design and planning industry has a lot to learn from Black womxn and the intersectional frameworks they are conditioned in through their daily global existence. Black womxn’s narratives consistently consider multilayered systematic challenges, yet their voices are consistently unheard.

Popular affirmative spaces in Roxbury: Black Market (top) and Frugal Bookstore (bottom)

ROXBURY IN CONTEXT Roxbury is situated in the geographic heart of the City of Boston. At the root of Roxbury’s rich culture is a lasting legacy of activism over generations of Black residents. It is a community with great pride, history, community, and resilience—but with challenges around wealth and resources, poverty concentration, and racially-motivated disinvestment.

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Roxbury is a gem of Black arts and culture in the heart of Boston.

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ROXBURY

— Kelley Chunn

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Black space is where the multidimensionality within Black identity is celebrated. Within Boston and the country at large, spaces that are not intentionally Black or brown-centered uphold a presence of white domination. Black spaces are essential to create spaces of empowerment for Black people by Black people. As identified through our interviews and surveys, key benefits of community spaces within Roxbury provide the following: Mental health and wellness Cultural expression and preservation Economic justice

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As Black and Indigenous people, we need to create and hold space to decolonize our minds and our bodies. Too often people don’t know what that means because we normalize our oppression. So you actually have to provide that space of knowledge and safe expression for people to address this issue.

Addressing of issues within the community

— Arirá Adééké

WHAT MAKES A SPACE AFFIRMATIVE? Affirmative space for Black womxn is grounded in the notion of representation. Representation, in this context, refers to spaces that recognize a multitude of Black narratives. Through this research, we found that these spaces are predominantly held or organized

by Black womxn or other womxn of color where individuals can own their narratives while finding support through collective experience. While not topically diverse, these spaces are significant in that diversity extends beyond political identities and recognizes diverse experience.

“

BLACK SPACES MATTER

WHO WE REACHED Between surveys and interviews collected over the winter and spring of 2019, this project speaks to the cumulative voice of 125 black womxn stakeholders in Roxbury, whether they live, work, organize, or frequent spaces in the community.

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1-ON-1 INTERVIEWS

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SURVEY RESPONSES 9

S PACE US E & D ES I G N FLEXIBLE & MULTI-USE

ACTIVATION

Across many of the popularly mentioned spaces in Roxbury, common characteristics were that the spaces were dynamic, flexible, and evolving with the community. These are spaces that are accessible via various avenues beyond their inherent utility. Whether a marketplace, cafe, or bookstore, popular spaces also served as meeting spots for organizers or have served as venues for music, spoken word, visual art, or other creative programming.

Programming spaces serve as junctions of economic and cultural exchange. Black-centric programming and events are crucial for promoting community building and economic investment within community.

Within Roxbury, programmed spaces often serve a dual purpose as market spaces, including pop-up vendors featuring entrepreneurs from within the community. Inclusion within such spaces creates accessible marketing and growth opportunities for micro-businesses and artists where vending spaces are otherwise too costly or non-existent.

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Programmed spaces provide opportunities for networking, allowing community members to meet like-minded organizers and creatives seeking to connect and grow collaborations.

From the beginning I was reaching out to different Black owned businesses and even if they did not fully understand my vision they would still take a chance and open up their space. — Priscilla Azaglo

r op

wned o omxn o w k c la B

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oxbury

es in R

spac erated

“

These activities create symbiotic benefits between businesses and community by providing space for communal gathering where it may be otherwise lacking, and in turn building awareness about each respective business as organizers and creatives bring new faces through their doors.

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ECLECTIC & EXPRESSIVE

Materiality serves as a form of storytelling and selfexpression. Here, we feature a collection of design elements shared in interview commentary as well as present in Black-womxn owned spaces across Roxbury.

Wood Elements foster natural and earthy tones

White Walls & Surfaces create lightness, openness, and flexibility of space arrangement

Dark Accents provide a grounding nature on floors, ceilings, or detailing

Bold Colors bring warmth, energy, and liveliness into space

Mirrored Surfaces add reflective elements for enhanced light and openness

Patterns & Tapestries offer softened edges and cultural expression

Murals make bold statements that highlight local artists

Flowers & Plants enhance connection to nature

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CANDELARIA SILVA-COLLINS

CHANEL THERVIL

DESTINY POLK

EKUA HOLMES

KELLEY CHUNN

JESSICAH PIERRE

JHA D WILLIAMS

KAI GRANT

BRIDGETTE WALLACE

LANISE COLON

NAKIA HILL

ALESSANDRA BROWN

NIA EVANS

PRISCILLA AZAGLO

SAM CASSEUS

TYAHRA ANGUS

Over the course of four months, we held interviews and conversations with Black womxn stakeholders across the community identifying as artists, organizers, or entrepreneurs in any capacity. The diverse group we spoke to spans multiple generations, representing the voices and experiences of womxn in their 20s through 60s.

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SASAKI

is at the root of

As a culmination to this study, our team developed a design framework through Black womxn’s narratives that considers both the PRINCIPLES and ACTIONS to inspire how we build more inclusive approaches towards design and planning processes.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES These four principles serve as a conceptual framework to build more mindfulness and conversation around the values driving each project. Within a hyper product-oriented environment, it is crucial build space for deeper questioning around what drives our work, and who is it truly for.

RETHINK Ownership Recognize that the work is larger than ourselves, our teams, or a given site. Understand planning and design as a tool to co-create liberatory spaces with communities.

UPLIFT Underrepresented Voices Challenge standards of expertise to build teams that represent diverse narrative, thinking, and identity to help foster more innovative design solutions.

HONOR History Build strength and resilience through honoring, reconciling, and healing from past successes and struggles to develop more informed solutions moving forward.

GROUND Intention Establish consensus and collective understanding before collaboration unfolds.

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DESIGN ACTIONS These four themes as depicted below serve to illustrate actionable strategies that demonstrate affirming spaces for Black womxn in the future. The depictions captured within this framework were largely derived through defining affirming space for Black womxn based on interview and survey feedback from the womxn who participated in this study. As a collective, we practice in this realm of Black futurism as exploratory. This implies that there is no one way that Black futures can be predicted; however, there are elements necessary for Black futures to thrive.

RECLAIM History & Legacy

TRANSFORM Health & Wellness

INVEST in preserving and building key physical sites of Black & Indigenous histories.

BUILD flexible spaces to integrate diverse practices towards health and wellness.

SUPPORT past and present movements into future developments.

BRIDGE approaches to encompass mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.

MEMORIALIZE communal journeys in physical spaces, honoring both the successes and struggles that are rooted in place.

ELEVATE spaces that promote connection to the earth to promote self-care and healing.

INTEGRATE history and education into the public realm to foster more accessible platforms for knowledge sharing.

LEVERAGE new technologies to bridge the gap between neighborhood history and future progressions.

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HONOR evolving practices of religion and spirituality within the Black community.

DESIGN public spaces and connections that promote physical activity and movement.

SASAKI

CREDITS CORE TEAM Mel Isidor Breeze Outlaw, ASLA Elaine Limmer Nayeli Rodriguez ILLUSTRATIONS Zulay Holland

LEVERAGE Economic Collectives & Collaborations

REINFORCE existing spaces, programs, and organizing efforts.

DEVELOP infrastructure to promote collaborative approaches towards communal wealth building.

INTEGRATE scaled economic models inclusive of micro businesses and informal pop-up ventures.

ADVISORS Mary Anne Ocampo Courtney Sharpe Sabrina Dorsainvil Brandi Blessett Kai Grant

ELEVATE Art & Culture

UPLIFT local artists and creators as key leaders to understand culturally sensitive dynamics in place.

SUPPORT local artists in developing works that bring community together and foster connection within the public sphere.

ENVISION long-term interventions that promote generational growth over short-sighted gains.

INCENTIVIZE interventions that activate underutilized spaces to foster momentum around community-driven investment.

EMBED culture into economic strategies to innovate more sustainable and place-based solutions.

PROMOTE cultural spaces that support the past, present, and future preservation of place.

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E X P L O R A T I O N S

2019

LANDSCAPES FOR LEHIGH TEAM: Andrew Sell and Caroline Braga, ASLA, PLA, in collaboration with Richard Burck Associates

Tree-filled higher education campuses play a pivotal role in maintaining ecological corridors and regional biodiversity amid rapid urbanization.

Sasaki’s ecological study for the Lehigh University New Residential Houses (NRH) project in Bethlehem, PA, aims to enhance campus-wide ecosystem services while addressing new methods for native plant installation and principles for sustainable maintenance.

Informed by a Lehigh graduate thesis on regional floral ecology, the design team confirmed and expanded upon this research through transect surveys at a nearby control site, campus field observation, and a literature review of new restoration techniques.

The compiled report serves as an ecological primer and maintenance manual detailing design strategies and opportunities for Lehigh University’s campus landscapes. These strategies will be put into practice at the NRH project, opening in fall 2020.

The research’s key takeaways include the following: Î Reduce chemical-intensive lawn maintenance by implementing low-mow native meadows in low-use naturalistic or steeply sloping areas. Î Utilize locally-native plant species adapted to Lehigh’s soils and climatic conditions with proven deer browse resistance. Î Design plantings to utilize mature plants near outdoor gathering areas, and plugs and seed mixes on the periphery for cost effectiveness. Î Support pollinators by specifying plants with ecological-provisioning services for yearround access to resources, such as habitat structure, nectar and pollen resources, seasonal food resources, insect host plants, or nesting materials.

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2016, PARKS AND RECREATION

CAN DATA HAVE A HEART?

BY GRETCHEN KEILLOR Gretchen is an urban planner who is intrigued by the intersection of information structuring and aesthetic design. She is especially passionate about community development and engagement, lending her skills to empower those who may not otherwise have a voice.

Explore the full data for this project online at understandhomelessness.com.

In the midst of the complex societal issue of homelessness, urban parks can often be the visible and symbolic front line. The ability to provide accessible public spaces for all means park and recreation departments across the country are stuck— between methods of empathetic compassion versus those of policy enforcement. Many communities are struggling to find the right balance, where all people feel welcomed and free to share in the joy and respite provided by public space.

Park and recreation staff are often presented with the physical and perceptual challenges associated with homelessness in city parks, yet do not have the tools or the clear charge to engage with the underlying causes. As Danielle Taylor noted in “Taboo Topic: Homeless in the Park” on NRPA’s Open Space blog, “Homelessness is an incredibly complex social issue with innumerable factors contributing to it. It’s not easy to address on a wide scale.”

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At the same time, all across the country advances in technology and data have made possible new ways of looking at this wide scale, and cataloging, assessing and addressing all forms of urban conditions. While technology and data can’t offer a panacea on their own, access to more accurate information can help us better imagine and assess potential policy, design or cultural changes. We have seen an explosion of big data in the past 10 years, capturing everything from tweets to urban environment metrics. The design and planning practice for which I work, Sasaki, develops data-analysis tools, for instance, that can help park and recreation departments evaluate things like park accessibility, value creation associated with park resources, and the effective prioritization of investment. This exploration has proven beneficial for many problems; again and again, we see that better data translates into better solutions.

SASAKI

At the heart of these tools is a belief that alleviating a problem necessitates knowing more about it: defining its edges, identifying its heart, understanding its complexities. Recently, we initiated a study to better understand how homelessness data can more effectively be captured and leveraged toward more customized and effective solutions.

and compiled by HUD, is released for public use through the HUD Exchange site. HUD also releases an Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) that summarizes and analyzes this data. There’s even a site called Homelessness Analytics (last updated 2012) that maps HUD’s data against various other metrics.

Alleviating a problem necessitates knowing more about it: defining its edges, identifying its heart, understanding its complexities.

Today, there are homelessness datasets available for public use. Most notably, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) leads an effort to collect data on homelessness. Annually, it conducts a volunteer-driven point-in-time count (PIT) of the homeless people in shelters and on streets. HUD also creates an annual inventory of housing options (HIC) that serve these populations and coordinates a homeless management information system (HMIS) that stores client-level information. This data, reported

by Continuum of Care (CoC) districts nationwide

HUD does a great service by collecting and sharing a considerable amount of data and information. Still, we need to build on this to paint a more complete picture of homelessness. By enhancing the level of detail collected, integrating data consistently and comprehensively, and thinking creatively about data collection methods, data could be shared and compared more easily, and work toward alleviating homelessness could be better coordinated. Here are a number of dimensions to consider in building on HUD’s already robust data collection infrastructure:

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This map shows where homelessness is most prevalent in the United States

This graphic elaborates on the definition of homelessness

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Location specificity. Where current systems aggregate the count of homeless populations in varying scales (from a portion of a metro area to an entire state in some cases), more specifically geolocated data—using a tool like Fulcrum or What3Words, for example—would better provide a more nuanced and useful understanding of homeless population distribution and relationships to other urban factors.

Tailored service provision. Imagine if a community could better understand the needs and challenges of a localized homeless population. Knowing, for instance, that the majority of the homeless population within a 10-block radius was composed of single mothers, parks and recreation staff could focus on providing specialized child care or customized job-training.

Integration. Where current information systems are maintained by distinct CoC districts, a single nationwide system could enable services to be better coordinated and would allow for easier comparative benchmarks across geographic boundaries.

Symbiotic relationships. Imagine if a community could better understand the condition, skills, and backgrounds of its homeless population. Like the city of Albuquerque, that hires its homeless as city workers, park and recreation departments could create programs to seasonally or permanently employ readily available homeless workers.

Accessibility and transparency. Where current methods include the capture of many different demographic data points and metrics that can quickly become complex to interpret, a streamlined and interactive interface could allow broader access to and easier exploration of the data.

Scope. Where current data collection is largely driven by volunteers conducting headcounts (with inevitable potential for error), strongly incentivizing selfreporting as a collection method may help to capture more complete information and sub-populations not included currently.

A powerful tool for strategic planning and resource allocation can be created through the improvement of data collection methods for homeless populations, the ability to better visualize and interpret the information, and the integration of disparate information systems into a unified whole. Most importantly, there are a number of ways these improved datasets can help park and recreation departments—in close collaboration with other departments and agencies—better address issues of homelessness and the associated conflicts and negative perceptions.

Homeless addresses. Imagine if homeless individuals—traditionally migratory and hard to locate—had a geolocated address (for instance, by using a technology like What3Words which creates a named location for every 3 square meters on the planet). Communication and communitybuilding could be much improved, allowing for greater collaboration.

Public engagement. Imagine if a community could better access the stories and profiles associated with existing homeless individuals or families. Care for the city’s homeless could be shared more communally if local residents were engaged, inspired, and able to help in direct and tangible ways.

In addition to the myriad innovative approaches being tested across the nation, the strategies outlined here are the beginning of a data-driven approach to thinking differently about the challenges of homelessness.

REFERENCES Danielle Taylor, “Taboo Topic: Homeless in the Park,” NRPA Open Space Blog, January 22, 2014.

James Manyika, Michael Chui, Brad Brown, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, Angela Hung Byers, Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute Report, May 2011.

Array of Things website.

Brad Barnett, “Making Sense of Accessibility Metrics,” Sasaki blog, 2016.

Using Data at Park and Recreation Agencies, National Recreation and Park Association, 2016.

HUD Exchange, Continuum of Care webpage.

HUD Exchange, 2015 AHAR: Part 1 - PIT Estimates of Homelessness in the US webpage.

The 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, The US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, November 2015.

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E X P L O R A T I O N S

R E VI T P L A N N I N G P ROTOT Y PES TEAM: Robert Sugar, Yasmin Maura-Orihuela, and Ben Zunkeler

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2019

Revit Planning Prototypes are intended to be plug-and-play blocks for programming, conceptual design, and space planning projects. Based on trends and best practices across our campus projects, these prototypes can help our clients better visualize a variety of space types, from offices to labs, to classrooms, and more. An added benefit is simple, efficient families that easily can be used moving forward to the design phase in Revit. Sasaki Strategies has even developed some into augmented reality visualizations that can be used for testing concepts on the fly with our clients.

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2019 RESEARCH GRANT

TOWNOL OGY GRETCHEN KEILLOR JUSTIN KOLLAR KAI YING LAU PATRICK MURRAY VICTORIA FISHER

HOW CAN WE DEVELOP A MORE NUANCED UNDERSTANDING OF SMALL TOWN AMERICA?

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Townology explores the varied character in small town America by using demographic, economic, environmental, and place data to define a set of town types. This typology set was then applied to each small town in America, resulting in a unique personality profile for every town.

Out West Outpost Rustic Retreat Shrinking Stead Provincial Patch Vibrant Village Blue Collar Burg Bucolic Burb

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BELOW Small towns of America, colored by Townology type

PURPOSE America loves its small towns. In American culture, these places are often held up as the bastion of American values, full of momand-apple-pie images like cheery storefronts, quaint homes, and heart-warming community pride.

Countless books, movies—even a recent presidential campaign— have celebrated and capitalized on this classic image of America.

At the same time, many of these small places seemingly do not embody that ideal. Urbanization movements have shrunk populations; economic and industry shifts have left limited job prospects for those that remain. Media often portrays small town and rural areas as backward thinking, inhabited by distressed populations. A rich complexity is present in these small places just as there is in urban, more developed areas.

Which of these conflicting images of small town America is more accurate, and for whom?

Those of us who live in cities find this complexity especially difficult to sort out. Over the last century, two different Americas have emerged—one of urbanites, another of ruralites—and there is a gap in understanding between them. Without actually living in a small town, it is difficult to truly understand the nuanced

differences among these places.

This understanding is made even more difficult by the fact that many studies previous to this one often examine these places at the county level, rather than specifically assessing the towns themselves.

As designers and planners who create places for people, we have a responsibility to understand the complexities of the places for which we design. It was imperative for us to explore these places well outside the hustle and bustle of urban life to understand how ecological, industrial, and demographic trends play out in small town America.

The Townology project aimed to unpack the nuance of small town America by providing a new set of cultural images upon which to rely.

This nuance is organized as a set of town types, representing seven unique small town characters in America. The team then applied this typology set to every small town in America, resulting in a unique personality profile of every town. As an urbanite, use this typology set to educate yourself on the nuance and variety of small town America. As a small town resident, think about the familiar towns you know and tell us how it compares. And as a human, pause to acknowledge the valid and mosaic experiences of your fellow humans.

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METHODS The research process included five steps: 1.

Defining small town

2.

Gathering data Developing types

5. Applying the typology

DEFINING SMALL TOWN There are a number of ways to define places that are small, starting with the question: what is a place? And then, what is the definition of small? Using existing categorical hierarchies from the Census Bureau and others, the research team defined small town as an incorporated area or census-designated place with a population under 50,000, resulting in a dataset of roughly 29,000 places.

GATHERING DATA Data for these places is available at varying scales, depending on the topic area. In addition to censusdesignated place data, the Townology research team pulled data at the county and ZIP scales and then joined this data to the places using a weighted average method, and also created additional metrics (such as distance to airport) using geographic calculations, gathering over 150 metrics in total.

SPECTRUM INDEX

VIBRANT

Includes metrics related to the following: Î Vacancy Î Unemployment Î GDP Î New business starts Î Self-employment

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Î Grouped these metrics into thematic indices (e.g., vibrancy, connectivity) Î Examined correlations and a principal component analysis (PCA) to remove any metrics that were having a duplicative effect Î Assigned weightings, informed by the PCA, to each metric (e.g., food access was weighted more heavily than the number of nearby logistics facilities) Î Standardized the indices using z-score method so that each town was measured relative to the average score across the entire dataset Î Tested a number of clustering options to determine the ideal number of clusters Î

DEVELOPING TYPES Using this refined weighted set of metrics, the team iterated through several rounds of k-means clustering analyses, adjusting metric weightings to tease out variability of indices between clusters, to result in the seven unique types. The types were then described using the index scores as well as demographic, economic, and physical characteristics, and branded using memorable names.

APPLYING THE TYPOLOGY

Vibrancy STAGNANT

To make sense of this large dataset, the team performed the following: Î Selected the top ~40 metrics that seemed most meaningful according to discourse

3. Analyzing data 4.

ANALYZING DATA

Finally, these unique types were applied to the dataset of small towns, to result in a personality profile for each town. For each town, the Euclidean distance of its index score from the cluster average was compared to the total Euclidean distance of the index score from all the cluster averages. This means that for every town, the dataset can describe how strong of a match it is to the types (e.g., 20% type 1, 30% type 2), identifying not only its primary type, but the other types that it also closely matches.

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We wanted to provide a bridge of connection for urbanites and ruralites, to encourage them to acknowledge each other’s mosaic experiences as valid.

It’s never as simple as black and white.

BELOW Average index scores for all town types

2.5

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1.5

0.5

-0.5

-1.5 Connectivity

-2.5

Environment Vibrancy Quality of Life Adaptability

-3.5

Diversity

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Types of Townology

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Out West Outpost

Provincial Patch

These towns are almost entirely

While politically conservative

located west of the Mississippi,

and culturally homogenous,

in remote places with strong ties

these towns are otherwise

to the land.

strikingly average across many variables.

Rustic Retreat

Shrinking Stead

Blue Collar Burg

With natural beauty, slower

These towns are shrinking,

Primarily located in the

economies, and older

occupied primarily by black

heartland, these towns rely

populations, these towns

or two-race residents who

on manufacturing and offer

represent a quieter pace of life.

experience a difficult

residents a middle-class

quality of life.

economy.

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FINDINGS The seven unique town types of Townology are shown in overview here.

Each type profile includes the following: Î A summary description

Vibrant Village These towns are highly connected to metropolitan areas, with politically liberal and culturally vibrant characteristics.

Î Three key themes with narratives explaining the defining characteristics of that type Î The top 10 most representative places that match the type profile Î A profile of the type’s index scores (e.g., connectivity, quality of life, vibrancy) Î A profile of the type’s town composition (e.g., mostly rural towns, metropolitan towns, or micropolitan towns) The team also applied these type profiles to each small town in the United States, to result in a unique personality profile for each small town; for example, the town of Kent, OH, is primarily a Vibrant Village but also scores highly as a Bucolic Burb. This results in a nuanced picture of the uniqueness of each small town.

Bucolic Burb Located in suburban areas, these towns are defined by affluence, with a high quality of life and post-industrial economies.

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E X P L O R A T I O N S

2016

JIADING POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION TEAM: Tao Zhang, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP ND, SITES AP, in collaboration with East China Normal University Regional Ecological Lab Jiading Central Park is a 70-hectare urban park in Shanghai designed by Sasaki to stitch together originally fragmented open spaces, degraded canals, and their surrounding urban fabric in the rapidly growing Jiading district. Ecological improvement was set as one of the primary goals since the launch of design in 2008. Upon the park’s opening in 2013, 100% of native tree species on carefully graded terrains, constructed wetlands, and naturalized water edges have nurtured diverse habitat and intimate outdoor spaces.

Three years after its completion, Sasaki collaborated with East China Normal University Regional Ecological Lab to conduct a full-year post-occupancy evaluation for the park. Water quality, air quality, biomass, and microclimate were assessed monthly. Visual proof of the environmental improvement was supported and quantified by consistent measurements throughout the year. The independent research provided critical scientific evidence to validate the original design goals and ecological hypothesis, as well as offered valuable lessons to inform future practice.

A student from East China Normal University collects samples for water quality lab analysis

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Water quality analysis result of nitrogen and phosphorus removal

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2019 RESEARCH GRANT

PAR KS & EQUI TY ACROSS URBANIZED AREAS IN OUR COUNTRY, WHO ARE THE COMMUNITIES BEING SERVED BY PARKS, AND WHO IS LEFT OUT?

The Parks & Equity Atlas uses data analysis to create tools to ensure equitable access to great parks for all communities, especially those that are majority people of color or low-income.

Parks are an essential part of a city’s social life, supporting health and wellness for communities across our country.

In park system planning, the traditional measure of equitable access to parks has been the 10-minute walk circle or isochrone, determining what percentage of residents live within a short walk of a park. Both the Trust for Public Land (TPL)’s Park Score tool and the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA)’s Park Metrics take this type of level-ofservice analysis as a baseline for determining equity of access.

However, these metrics do not capture inequities in parks access for different demographic

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groups, nor do they consider the quality of parks to which communities have access.

This research establishes a meaningful discussion and visualization of equity in parks access by exploring the following questions: Î Across urbanized areas in our country, who are the communities being served by parks and who is left out? Î How can we visualize inequities in park quality for different demographic groups, especially for communities of color and low-income communities?

Y AT LAS

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JILL ALLEN DIXON, AICP LAURA MARETT, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP ELAINE LIMMER KAI YING LAU RAJ ADI RAMAN KEN GOULDING

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ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY MEASURING EQUITY OF ACCESS Traditional measures of park access consider whether an area has access to a park within a 10-minute walk. This research project explored a methodology to layer in considerations of park size, population density, and demographic characteristics to allow a more nuanced look at the equity of park access in urban areas across the United States.

Demographics

METHODOLOGY SUMMARY 1. Park Access by Census Block: Quantify the total park acreage accessible within a 10-minute walk of each census block.

Who has lower rates of park access?

CENSUS BLOCK

Population Density How many residents are sharing parks within walking distance?

2. Add Population Density: Divide total park acreage by the census block population to determine total park acreage access per capita.

Park Acreage 10-minute walkshed

3. Analyze Underserved Census Tracts: Considering park access per capita throughout the metropolitan area, identify statistically significant concentrations of underserved parcels.

How many park acres are within a 10-minute walk of census tract residents?

Urbanized Area Within each urbanized area, which areas are underserved for park access?

4. Demographic Factors: Layer in considerations of demographic characteristics. Who lives in the statistically underserved areas? Factors considered include race/ethnicity, age, percent of population below the poverty line, housing units with no vehicles, and housing unit density (i.e., does the neighborhood have large lots that may also be contributing to meeting open space needs of residents?)

United States What is the national outlook for park access, taking park size, demographics, and population density into account?

DATA SOURCES Î Demographic data: American Community Survey Î Park polygons and 10-minute walksheds: Trust for Public Land, US Parks Shapefile 36

Î Urbanized areas: TIGER/Line Shapefiles, US Census Bureau

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MEASURING PARK QUALITY Our team tested different methods for analyzing park quality, including social media data and open-source data about park amenities. Park quality is an inherently subjective, complex issue, and these methodologies help shed light onto the possibilities and limitations of different data sources. We found that national data sets are currently limited in analyzing these issues, with greater promise coming from agency-level assessments.

SOCIAL PLATFORM RATINGS

LESSONS LEARNED: Î Social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yelp) have quantitative ratings for a large number of open spaces. Î However, the data represents a selective sample of people who voluntarily rate parks they have visited. This results in an inconsistent number of ratings for each park and introduces external factors of whose opinions are included in the dataset.

SOCIAL PLATFORM REVIEWS

LESSONS LEARNED: Î Qualitative reviews of parks reveal how personal and subjective opinions can be for what makes a quality park. Î In an example of a park in Hartford, CT (left), graffiti leads some users to leave rave reviews, while others point to it as a reason for avoiding the park.

PARK AMENITIES

LESSONS LEARNED: Î Measuring what types of amenities are available in a park is a possible way to measure quality (e.g., an open lawn versus a playground and fountain). Î Crowd-sourced data (like Open Street Map) is inconsistent across cities and often is missing features. Î Machine learning methods to identify amenities via aerial photography (left) is promising for amenities that have a consistent physical form (e.g., golf courses, basketball courts), but more limited for other types of amenities (e.g., playgrounds).

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VISUALIZING PARKS & EQUITY Our research explorations have demonstrated that reliable national-level data sources on the quality of parks or the location of specific recreational amenities do not exist today. We find that the best source of data about park quality comes from on-the-ground assessments that geolocate park amenities and record their condition. These park assessments are sometimes initiated by municipal employees, and in our park system planning projects, Sasaki also performs these assessements in partnership with cities, towns, and counties.

Utilizing open-source park quality data for Los Angeles, we piloted a Parks and Equity mapping tool, pictured on the right. This digital interface allows users to add a need—such as “walk no more than 10 minutes to any park.�

The needs can be narrowed to include only certain amenity types (soccer, basketball, playground, etc.), distances, modes of access (walk, bike, transit, etc.), and level of quality. These areas of access are linked with demographic data about median income, median rent, and race/ethnicity to reveal patterns of who has access to quality parks and amenities and who does not.

As we scale to the national level, we believe this tool will enable municipalities to target park investments in the areas of greatest need, through the lens of the demographic factors of greatest importance in their communities.

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NEXT STEPS As we advance our research, we will be scaling our interactive mapper to the national level, creating a tool that will allow users to visualize patterns of park access relative to population density and other demographics in urbanized areas across the country.

We also feel there is a need for standardization in park quality assessments nationwide. While specific amenities, like a court or play structure, can be assessed fairly easily based solely on their condition, metrics of overall park quality are much more nuanced.

High-quality parks provide a mix of programs and experiences, from quiet to social; they are welcoming and culturally relevant; they foster human comfort and environemntal resilience; and they connect to and complement the activities in their surrounding neighborhoods. We aim to continue the conversation aroud the establishment of park quality standards with national groups like TPL and NRPA.

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When we have good data, we can visualize relationships between parks, multi-modal access, the location, type, and quality of amenities, and population demographics.

ABOVE Pilot of Parks and Equity Mapper Tool 39

E X P L O R A T I O N S

2018

LIVE OAK PAVILION TEAM: Christine Dunn, AIA, Lucca Townsend, Bradford Prestbo, FAIA, CSI, CDT, Chris O’Hara (Studio NYL), Aubrey Fan (University of Buffalo), Zach Fields (University of Buffalo), Brett Laureys (WJE), and Matt Shiles (Ceramic Artist)

At the 2018 Architecture Ceramic Assemblies Workshop (ACAW) in Buffalo, NY, a team of Sasaki designers, engineers, and University of Buffalo students spent a week exploring the structural properties of terra cotta. As a material for sculpture, pottery, and other water-tight vessels, terra cotta dates back nearly 6,000 years. The Sasaki-led team deliberately wanted to expand that definition of the material and also experiment with its structural integrity, doing so by designing a freestanding shade structure entirely constructed of terra cotta.

The research team took their shade structure design inspiration from live oak trees. Modeled in a similar fashion to a bundt cake, the branches arc out from a central trunk and rest back down on the ground to create a grand canopy that is wider than it is tall.

Setting the terra cotta in an arch forces the material into a compressed state, at which its strength is comparable to concrete. Beyond structural integrity, terra cotta offers several unique benefits for use: it is more environmentally-friendly than concrete, can be set in many forms, and can be glazed to take on any appearance.

The team’s prototypes informed the design of Live Oak Pavilion, a shade structure developed for Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, FL, a new 200-acre ecological park that the team is currently designing, scheduled to open in 2021.

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2018, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE (LAM)

PRACTICE MAKES PERMEABLE

BY HANIYA RAE

COURTNEY GOODE FEATURED IN LAM Courtney is a landscape designer who completed research on permeable pavers while at Sasaki. The research was funded by Sasaki’s yearly research grant program. Also mentioned in the article are principal Zachary Chrisco, PE, former principal Gina Ford, FASLA, landscape designer Breeze Outlaw, ASLA, and principal Ken Goulding.

Courtney Goode was working on a project in Houston when Hurricane Harvey hit. Buffalo Bayou, one of the slow-moving rivers that Houston relies upon to hold stormwater, flooded, and the waters would end up spilling out over the city’s aging infrastructure and impermeable surfaces, exacerbating the problem.

“My heart was in my throat,” Goode says. “We had been working on these super-detailed axonometric drawings of all angles of the city—we knew the city like the back of our eyelids. It was a total shock to see the bayous obliterated and murky, debris-filled water covering the walkways, roads, and even ground floors of the buildings near the bayou. The flood just engulfed everything we had been designing.”

For Goode, a landscape designer in Sasaki’s Urban Studio and a Fabrication Studio coordinator, the disaster afforded her a very real account of how the city managed stormwater and led her to think

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more about how low-impact development can divert stormwater from streets during flooding. She describes a scenario in which a city like Houston could divert some of the excess water by excavating 40-foot-deep gravel dry wells (the size of a typical four-story parking garage) topped off with permeable pavers that could hold excess rainwater until it’s able to seep back into the ground.

“Houston didn’t need water to soak into the ground and be redirected to the already-flooded bayous,” Goode says. “It needed for the water to be held in place right where it fell.”

Permeable pavers are not an obvious choice, given the scale of the urban flooding problem in Houston.

Many cities must consider problems of maintenance cost when it comes to laying down anything other than blanket applications of asphalt or concrete.

They’re also only as useful as the setting bed on which

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they’re placed—and the dry well below the paving stones must be correctly sized to adequately contain excess floodwater. Furthermore, there is less attention to what pavers are made of and what they’re going to look like on a project—which means there’s ample opportunity to design new pavers that serve multiple functions and still look good.

Taking advantage of a competitive grant program at Sasaki that allows employees to work on research projects as part of their billable work hours, Goode proposed a project to use Sasaki’s fabrication lab to create a paver prototype that could help with urban flooding. The lab, which includes 3D printers, vinyl and laser cutters, a CNC mill, and a wood shop, would be key to finishing the project in-house without needing to take it to an outside shop, which would certainly be an extra cost. She also wanted to enlist colleagues who were interested in learning fabrication methods to aid in research for their own projects, but

didn’t have much experience working in a fabrication lab. She estimated a budget for the project of around $10,000, which covered the raw material costs of concrete and the molds for the pavers (but did not include billable hours).

As part of the grant process, she took her proposal to Sasaki principal Zachary Chrisco, who would oversee her efforts and provide feedback when necessary.

She also enlisted the critical advice of the landscape architect and then Sasaki principal Gina Ford, FASLA, as well as fellow landscape designer Briana Outlaw, Associate ASLA, who helped her research and organize the construction of the pavers.

Given that these pavers were designed for urban areas, concrete was chosen as the paver material because it’s widely available and would be familiar to most design professionals and installers at a relatively inexpensive price, should Sasaki choose to market

“One of the things that surprised me in a good way was the potential for it to build a community here at Sasaki.”

Initial foam prototypes with a more porous surface proved difficult to remove from the mold

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them. “We wanted the pavers to be economical and responsible in terms of material use, which helped keep costs down, but for us this was a best practice design measure to not use excessive amounts of concrete if we don’t need it for strength,” Goode says.

“We were drawn toward pentagon 15 for a number of reasons,” Goulding says. “It’s a single repeating geometry, so that means fewer molds would be needed. It features no sharp angles that would chip or crack in concrete, as the sharpest angle is only 60 degrees on this pentagon.” Any less than 60 degrees on an angle and the integrity of the concrete paver would be challenged.

She borrowed the design methods put forward by Tim Brown of IDEO in the book Change by Design. “At the core of IDEO’s design thinking toolkit is iterative prototyping and the ethos that you should aim to ‘fail Goode began to build the prototype of the pentagon early and fail fast’ so that you are able to improve your 15 paver in Rhino. Because the final product would design equally as fast,” Goode says. Encouraged by be made of concrete, she had to consider its size and Brown’s writing, Goode started to sketch a number of weight as she modeled the form. options for potential pavers. Since concrete itself can’t be made permeable, Goode decided to enlarge the “One cubic foot of concrete weighs 150 pounds— holes within her designs so that water could easily fall which is kind of mind-blowing,” Goode says. “A through to a reservoir below. block of concrete the size of a toaster weighs more than I do.” Goode needed to make sure that the final pavers would be easy for manufacturers and installers to move around and put in place by hand, so she kept the final weight to slightly less than 20 pounds per paver.

“I want to have a fail-safe product.”

As she sketched, she shared her ideas with Ford and Chrisco, who critiqued the sketches and helped Goode hash out the scope for the project. Through this process, Goode figured she wanted a simple shape that could be tiled, more interesting than a square or rectangle, but not a complex polygon.

Goode thought a pentagon could work, and once she had an idea of the size she needed, she took her ideas to Ken Goulding, a principal in the strategies department of Sasaki, which specializes in coding, mathematics, and technology.

“While it might seem like there are endless ways you can arrange tiles, geometric constraints impose limits on the options available,” Goulding says. “The mathematical study of tilings for a flat plane, or tessellation, is very well documented, so we simply needed to unearth a tiling solution that suited the goals of the project.”

Goulding looked at the range of known pentagons that could create patterns, especially those that can tile a plane as a single shape. There are only 15 such pentagons that exist, the most recent being pentagon 15, which was discovered in 2015. Interestingly, pentagon 15’s angles are all round numbers—150 degrees, 60 degrees, 135 degrees, 105 degrees, 90 degrees—which would make it easier to measure and fabricate. Goulding explains that unlike other pentagonal tilings, its angles can’t be altered or it would ruin the tiling pattern.

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In total, Goode modeled about 40 different forms with pentagon 15. For some of the forms, she wrote a Grasshopper Voronoi script to generate spongelike holes within the pavers. She also wrote a second script to generate a gradient tiling design tool, a tool that can quickly create a repeating pattern with her paver design using the pentagon 15 shape, so that she could make renderings for projects.

The pentagonal form didn’t come without its drawbacks, though. Convex pentagons, Goode explains, only tile through mirroring—depending on what the interior of the paver design looks like, there needs to be an “A” unit, then the mirror of the “A” unit placed next to it for the design to express itself properly. As well, no fewer than two and no more than four pavers would need to come together at a corner— if the angles aren’t exact when the pavers are molded, there might be issues with the fit.

From the 40 shapes created in Rhino, Goode took those designs and looked over them again with Ford.

Then, she took 36 of the 40 to be milled on a CNC machine with cheap, white foam. Within two days’ time, Goode was able to see the shapes in real life.

The foam paver prototypes were put on display, and Sasaki members were able to vote on their favorite iteration. Two designs were selected from this group.

Goode was able to make a working polyurethane mold for one of the designs—a paver with a single hole, an aperture, through the center. The second

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design ended up being too complex with too many holes, and got stuck when trying to release it from the mold.

At this stage, Goode enlisted Outlaw’s help to set up and manage a fabrication demonstration in Sasaki’s lab for the staff. More than 30 colleagues from different disciplines at Sasaki, many of whom had never worked in a fabrication shop before, showed up to learn how to mix concrete for the pavers. “One of the things that surprised me in a good way was the potential for it to build a community here at Sasaki,” Goode says. In total, more than 36 of her colleagues donated a collective 330 hours of labor to help create the pavers and to learn more about the design iteration process Goode used.

“Often we create models that aren’t at human scale to get a sense of quality of design,” Outlaw says. “But this project allowed us to make things quickly at human scale to understand how it’s going to work or what doesn’t work. We can see that it’s possible to do this for other projects in the future now.”

Once the concrete had cured, 240 finished pavers were installed at the Sasaki office in Boston so that clients and other visitors can get a sense of how pavers can add to the design of a landscape and also offer a way to divert excess rainwater.

Goode is working with Anuja Kamat, an assistant professor of civil engineering and technology at Wentworth Institute of Technology, and her students to chemically test and develop the pavers further for compression and tensile strength. The batches Goode and her colleagues made had a one-day cure time, though additives were used for such a fast-setting concrete. Kamat and her students will eventually compare 7-day and 28-day cure times to see which might be best for the pavers, though the final outcome of these tests isn’t available quite yet. Once she has a firm idea of the concrete mixture that would provide the best result at the best price, Goode plans to create the ultimate paver. “I wanted to create these super pavers that could withstand the weight of a fire truck and city plumbing and be ADA compliant,” Goode says. “I want to have a fail-safe product.”

The batch of pavers was installed on top of a gravel reservoir, in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines

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TYPICAL INSULATED METAL PANEL ATTACHMENT

PROPOSED HYBRID ATTACHMENT

E X P L O R A T I O N S

CUSTOM METAL PANEL CAPTURING AT COLBY COLLEGE TEAM: Gerry Gutierrez, AIA, CDT, Chris Sgarzi, AIA, LEED AP, Justin Finnicum, NCARB, AIA, LEED AP, and Christopher Winkler, AIA

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2 0 1 9 A team led by Sasaki and Hopkins Architects worked with Colby College in Waterville, ME, to develop an entirely new way of utilizing insulated metal panels to more efficiently and beautifully construct a new 360,000-square-foot athletic complex. Due to open in 2020, the venue will be home to a range of program types, including a field house, ice arena, 50-meter pool, gymnasium, squash courts, and strength and fitness center. Large programs like these can too often result in big metal box designs, but the design and construction team had higher aspirations for the project.

With input from Arup, Consigli, Total Wall Systems, and Kingspan, the design team was able to improve upon the standard insulated metal panel installation

method by developing a new way to capture the panels by custom extrusions. This allowed for cleaner detailing, a reduction in structural steel facade support (25 tons), better thermal performance and moisture management (90% less fastener penetrations), and simplified panel replacement.

Through innovative approaches to facade design, the team achieved an ideal outcome of elevated aesthetics, high performance, good value, and timely delivery—ultimately expanding the possibilities for the humble insulated metal panel and setting the Colby College Athletic Complex apart from similar large-volume facilities.

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E X P L O R A T I O N S

CREATING SPACE FOR WOMEN IN KABUL TEAM: Mary Anne Ocampo, Einat Rosenkrantz, Mikela DeTchaves, Wajiha Ibrahim, Alykhan Mohamed, Kira Sargent, Dennis Pieprz, and Victor Eskinazi

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Students attending the second shift of Nur Muhammad Shah all-girl school attend their classes on a Monday morning | photo by Kiana Hayeri

The Kabul Urban Design Framework, developed

by Sasaki in 2018, covers a range of issues that are shaping Kabul’s form today: infrastructure, housing, mobility, and sustainability. After a conversation with President Ashraf Ghani where he expressed the concern that “Kabul needs dedicated spaces for women, families, and youth,” the design team made it a priority to investigate how well the city serves the needs of its women.

They advocated for unique research methods in this endeavor, including interviewing local women and working with a photojournalist to fully understand the reality of women’s lives in the city.

2018

The interviews allowed the team to gain perspectives from residents who played roles as women’s rights advocates and community leaders. Using methods like these was uncharted territory for a project in this cultural context, but ultimately made for a deeply informed result.

The toolkits and strategies proposed in the design framework were entirely based on what was heard in these interviews. Beyond that, this project holds an even more profound significance: the voices of the women interviewed are now embedded in a formal document that will shape the future of Kabul.

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I N TER N SHIP C H AR RET TES

Each summer, Sasaki welcomes a group of talented and diverse interns from around the world. In the first two weeks of the program, the cohort collaborates across disciplines on a design charrette.

The first week of the charrette consists of client engagment and research. During the second week, the interns develop design ideas in preparation for a final presentation.

Paired with real-world clients and addressing design and planning challenges, the interns develop an understanding of what it’s like to work at Sasaki.

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2019 interns present their final work 51

RESILIENT MYSTIC: MAKE WAY FOR WATER SUMMER 2019

“We love our watershed. It’s at risk.

We can do something about it.”

In the 2019 internship charrette, the client, Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA), asked interns to research site-specific resilience strategies for areas within the watershed. Through policy advocacy, coalition building, and educational programming, MyRWA has worked across municipal boundaries to shape an equitable and resilient future for watershed communities.

During their site visit on the Mystic River, the group of interns learned the story of the watershed from Julie Wormser, MyRWA Deputy Director, and Amber Christoffersen, MyRWA Mystic Greenways Director.

They emphasized the importance of shaping a story about the watershed alongside analyses, and expressed their aspirations for content that would

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make their constituents motivated and hopeful. “We love our watershed. It’s at risk. We can do something about it,” Julie told the group.

Examining factors like land use information, demographic data, and drainage systems, the cohort developed an understanding of the watershed’s 22 cities as five distinct character zones. These five zones focused on grouping over municipal boundaries, expanding on MyRWA’s previouslydefined three zones.

Interns focused on highlighting existing resilient assets and identifying vulnerable areas within the watershed. They identified open green spaces, like the Middlesex Fells Reservation and Belle Isle Marsh

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Reservation, as existing resilient assets, managing stormwater and extreme heat, while identifying the commercial centers in Woburn and the coastlines of Revere as sites vulnerable to climate-intensified hazards, like extreme heat and coastal flooding.

They concluded their analyses and research with sections revealing an imagined future of the Mystic; a future which, despite the impacts of climate change, demonstrates an understanding of the watershed’s histories while centering the public through riverside spaces.

Moving into the second week of the charrette, the group compiled local and global precedents of On their last day, after multiple pinups and runresilient infrastructure. Studying the watershed zones’ throughs, the interns presented their work, titled Make unique building typologies, assets, and challenges, Way for Water, to Sasaki principals and Julie Wormser the interns identified precedents specific to each zone. for a juried design critique. The interns captured the These precedents ranged in scale from community essence of Sasaki’s interdisciplinary approach to stormwater barrel giveaway programs and green roof design and planning. “It was impossible to tell the initiatives to large-scale projects that transformed architects and planners from engineers and graphic industrial sites into public marshlands. designers,” said Martin Zogran, Sasaki principal and urban designer. Mentored by Sasaki staff, interns from each discipline lent their unique skills and backgrounds to a collective goal.

Interns kick off the charrette with a boat tour along the Mystic River

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AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES: SHIFTING GEARS SUMMER 2018

The 2018 intern cohort focused on the potential of shared autonomous vehicles (AVs) to free up valuable urban space in Somerville, MA—a city with a significant lack of green space. While much research around AVs has remained in the abstract, Shifting Gears sought to imagine how AV technology could be harnessed in the context of a diverse urban neighborhood, benefiting residents of many ages, cultures, and incomes. Informed by conversations with the city’s transportation department, community organizations, residents, and local businesses, the team explored strategies to repurpose surface parking lots, reduce the amount of impervious surface within the right-of-way, and create a network of mobility hubs and community spaces.

A main street typology where autonomous vehicles interact safely with pedestrians around mobility hubs, allowing the to blend into plazas and green spaces 5roadway 4

The result is a toolkit of policies and design interventions that envisions Somerville Avenue as a multifunctional corridor defined by green infrastructure and community uses, rather than impermeable surfaces for vehicles.

REIMAGINING PARKING On average, 31 percent of urban space is devoted to parking. AVs bring the potential to free up valuable urban space by reducing the amount of parking needed and increasing the flexibility of its location.

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CURRENT

FUTURE

NEW SPACES The rise of AVs has the potential to transform large urban spaces that are currently occupied by standard cars. Interns took spaces like parking lots, unused alleyways, and garages, and reimagined them as centers for community-gathering and green space.

Eliminating the use for parking transforms places like cut-through alleyways into potential mixed-use areas that combine retail, restaurants, night life, and residential spaces.

CHANGING STREETSCAPES The potential for smarter mobility networks through platforms that find the most efficient routes, facilitate ridesharing, and coordinate how AVs interact could be an opportunity to reimagine how urban streets function. The interns envisioned how space for cars and on-street parking could be redistributed more efficiently to create safer, more sustainable streets that better respond to the adjacent neighborhoods.

This research was in collaboration with the City of Somerville’s transportation department and the Union Square Main Streets.

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CULTURAL DISTRICT: ROXBURY LOVE SUMMER 2017

Early in 2017, Sasaki worked with residents, artists, and community groups in Roxbury, MA, to support its designation as a cultural district by the Mass Cultural Council. Sasaki interns returned to Nubian (formerly Dudley) Square that summer to explore the vast potential for the cultural district to flourish with the collective leadership and input of its existing community ecosystem. The interns divided into three groups to generate recommendations that would creatively enhance existing conditions while speaking to the real concerns and aspirations of the district’s community.

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Placemaking: This group was tasked with cultivating a sense of place for the district by knitting together the neighborhood’s rich arts and cultural assets.

The interns saw opportunities to create arts plazas, sculpture parks, pop-up art installations, and community gathering spaces, utilizing public spaces as outlets to express Roxbury’s diverse identity.

A vision of the cultural heart of Roxbury

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The interns presenting their final work

Working/Showing: This group was charged with supporting artistic production and exhibition by considering a toolkit for activating underutilized spaces essential to the cultural fabric of the neighborhood. They explored how these spaces can be enhanced through design strategies to foster the natural growth of artist communities and local businesses over time.

Housing/Living: This group was asked to generate ideas for increasing the supply of affordable, functional space for local artists to live and work in the district. They envisioned a modular system of design with three different unit sizes, keeping in mind that some people would prefer isolated work and living spaces, while others would thrive in a communal setting.

With Roxbury’s new designation as a cultural district, Sasaki is committed to continuing to work with the community to research and envision the future of the Roxbury Cultural District through an inclusive and iterative process.

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PLAY: GROUNDSWELL SUMMER 2016

Although play may seem elementary, it is a complex process that enables any person’s physical, emotional, and mental development. The 2016 internship charrette explored the future of play through research, site visits, design, and play itself. The intern team developed a vision to reactivate a portion of the Charles River Park in Watertown, MA, with Groundswell, a series of interventions including an inventive playscape that promotes adventurous, intergenerational, and accessible play. In conjunction with site visioning, the group generated iterations of a full-scale prototype to test how the play structure could be adapted and replicated at other sites.

Interns designed and built a prototype for Groundswell, a flexible play structure that can be incorporated throughout a park, improving a typical park journey and complementing existing features

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E X P L O R A T I O N S

2017

AKAMAI: A MILE-LONG PATTERN TEAM: Ilaria Giardiello Tasked with designing the offices of Akamai, the world’s leading content delivery network service, Sasaki’s interiors team drew inspiration from the idea of network connectivity to tie the office space together.

The team sought to incorporate a randomized line pattern throughout the building to create a continuous strip that unwrapped throughout each floor, physically connecting the client’s collaborative and social gathering spaces.

Through initial studies of random line patterns, the team extrapolated the rules for a successful and aesthetically pleasing composition to inform the logic of their script, incorporating rules to define the desirable pattern density and orientation of the lines, as well as material and construction tolerances.

Each line is impacted by the previously drawn line, adapting as the pattern evolves to achieve the desirable pattern density.

Using the script, the design team was able to quickly generate and apply the pattern, investing the time saved by the application of the script to fully explore the design. The pattern spans the entire building, from top to bottom, stitching 19 floors together along a onemile-long path, cleverly dubbed the Akamile.

Ilaria Giardiello, the Sasaki team member who created the pattern’s script, spoke 60 about her work at Autodesk in 2017

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The intersecting line pattern is customized based on density and randomness

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 2019, AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY

EMBRACING DISRUPTION

BY ALYKHAN MOHAMED Alykhan is an urban planner with experience in transportation planning in the United States and abroad. He conducted research on autonomous vehicles in 2018 and has since lead discussions on the topic within Sasaki and beyond. His research was a foundation for Sasaki’s 2018 internship charrette (see page 54).

Explore the full research online.

As autonomous vehicle (AV) technology rapidly improves, the reality of AVs taking to city streets is making its way into public consciousness. From Audi to Volvo, almost every major auto manufacturer has begun to invest signicant resources in AV research.

Many are developing in-house expertise through dedicated R&D groups, such as Audi’s Urban Future Initiative and Nissan-Renault’s Future Lab. While the technology is starting to take clear shape, the question of just how AVs will be integrated into our cities and lifestyles is less certain. Will autonomous cars contribute to an urban dystopia of endless commutes through sprawling cities, or a sustainable future where convenient and affordable mobility contributes to the vitality of our cities? The reality is likely to be somewhere in between, but it will take a collaborative approach between municipalities, urban planners, entrepreneurs, and engineers to harness the potential benefits of AVs.

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PROMOTING EQUITY AND SUSTAINABILITY Urban planning grew from the need to organize the populations of large cities and a desire to provide a high quality of living. Today, the profession is grounded in a set of ethics that promote equity and sustainability. Most cities are eager to embrace innovation that clearly supports these core principles, but are reluctant to base long-term policy and investment decisions on an idea or technology that may look entirely different in just a few years. Looking back at the initial years of groundbreaking startups like Uber and Airbnb, the disruptive approach that these companies took may have enabled quick and early growth, but the lack of early engagement between cities and startups certainly left potential on the table. Many cities, such as Austin, and Boston, have hired chief innovation officers and are enthusiastic about partnering with innovators and disruptors.

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A network of mobility hubs and AV shuttles could be ideal for connecting urban neighborhoods

In the short term, innovators may question the advantage of partnering with cities, rather than moving fast and breaking things. In the long term, however, constructive public-private partnerships can lead to regulations that do more to support AVs than restrict them, integrated infrastructure that works with the vehicles rather than pose obstacles, and a smoother transition to SAE Level 5 autonomy.

So, what are the key conversations that entrepreneurs and engineers should have with urban planners?

What are the issues that urban planners and city leaders are most excited and concerned about when it comes to AVs? What are the big design and policy decisions that need to be thought through to realize the highest potential of AV technology and the places where we live?

SAFETY Creating a safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists is a growing priority at all levels of government.

Cities across the country are embracing programs like Vision Zero and investing in roadway and intersection redesigns that calm traffic and create safer, more comfortable streetscapes. Almost 95 percent of serious automobile accidents in the US are caused by human error. This fact alone has generated significant enthusiam for AVs and their potential to create safer streets. Mapping, sensors, and intelligent algorithms will, of course, play a key role in realizing the safety benefits of AVs. But what about the geometry of roadways, and the integration of intelligent infrastructure that facilitates communication between AVs, pedestrians, and cyclists? A new generation of roadways designed specifically for AVs could help realize the saftey goals of city leaders while faciliating a smoother transition to full automation.

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EQUITY Whether in Singapore or San Diego, there is a growing global aspiration to build cities for all by providing equitable access to jobs, housing, education, and transportation. Discussions about equity frequently revolve around ensuring access to transit for low income households, as well as older and younger residents who are unable to drive. While this strategy works well in the densest urban neighborhoods, most American cities lack the population density to support subways, light rail, or frequent bus service. As poverty in rural and suburban areas outpaces urban poverty, planners are seeking viable mobility solutions for these communities, like Houston’s on-demand transit program. By including low-income and elderly residents as part of a core target demographic, AV providers could expand their market while supporting the efforts of municipalities to provide equitable access to transit in the urban core.

MULTIMODAL INTEGRATION In dense urban areas, mass transit will almost always be the most efficient and affordable means to connect people with destinations. As transit expert Jarret Walker states, this is simply a matter of geometry. Transit lines in these contexts are often the ones that break even financially, allowing cities to provide service to less central, lower density, and lower-income areas that depend on public transit.

The fear that AVs may undercut service on profitable

AVs have the potential to make regional commuting patterns more efficient

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downtown lines is one reason why many urban planners and city leaders are reluctant to embrace AVs. However, lower density areas that are less suited to mass transit are ripe for innovative and disruptive ideas. Many transit planners would be happy to embrace AV shuttle providers that might bridge lastmile connections to commuter rail stops to increase overall ridership and allow underperforming bus lines to be replaced by affordable and equitable AV shuttle services.

OWNERSHIP MODELS AND TRAFFIC Underperforming bus lines are often in neighborhoods that are urban enough that many residents might be happy to go car-free or perhaps give up their second car given a viable alternative.

These are the neighborhoods where Uber and Lyft are often the most convenient ways to get around but remain too expensive as a daily commute option for individuals, and they have led to increasing traffic congestion—think East Austin or Outer Sunset in San Francisco. These neighborhoods might be ideal for the type of minibus service often seen in Asia and Latin America, but has not penciled out in Europe and North America because of high labor costs.

With a strong consensus that shared-ridership and -ownership models are a natural fit for AV technology, AV shuttles could be an ideal addition to existing transit systems, helping to reduce car congestion in areas that are neither squarely downtown nor totally suburban.

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A vision for how AVs could allow cities to transform car-spaces into people-spaces

Perhaps what excites urban planners and designers the most about AVs is the potential to transform car spaces into people spaces URBAN GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY Commuting to downtown while living in a roomy suburban house with a backyard is definitely a lifestyle preference for many, but it is objectively inefficient from an environmental, fiscal, and transportation standpoint. Municipalities often struggle to break even when providing services to low-density suburban neighborhoods. The lower densities of these areas can’t support convenient mass transit, necessitating each family to own two or even three cars; this leads only to increased traffic and congestion, no matter how many lanes of highway are built. Almost half of the land area in most cities today is devoted to roadways and surface parking lots. If shared AV shuttles become widely adopted, the space we now use for driveways could instead be used for backyards and larger houses, allowing suburban comforts with urban convenience and efficiency.

Rather than tentatively wait to find out whether AVs lead to a dystopia of sprawl and endless commutes, urban planners and AV researchers can proactively collaborate on more compact, sustainable urbanism.

THE PUBLIC REALM Perhaps what excites urban planners and designers the most about AVs is the potential to transform car spaces into people spaces, by reducing traffic, increasing safety, and encouraging more compact development. If door-to-door transportation were

replaced with a network of carefully spaced designated pick-up and drop-off spots, we could see a more efficient overall transit network, activated neighborhoods, and healthy local business communities benefitting from increased foot traffic.

The reduction in traffic would mean that, rather than designing every street around cars, cities could include wider sidewalks, green alleys, and pedestrian streets.

To sum it up, AV technology is quickly approaching maturity, with increasing investment in both hardware and software development. However, the success of AV adoption at scale depends as much on the ability of planners, designers, and policymakers at the federal, state, and city levels as getting the technology right.

Realizing the highest potential of AVs will require significant legislative changes and coordinated investment in infrastructure. The innovators and entrepreneurs developing AV technology are at a critical moment to capture unprecedented change, but their ability to seize the moment depends on engaging in conversations with these groups to define shared goals and build partnerships with cities from the outset of integration. It is these collaborations that will unlock the full potential of AVs to transform the future of mobility and lead to more vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities.

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E X P L O R A T I O N S

2017

WINTERLIGHT PAVILION TEAM: Christine Dunn, AIA and Lucca Townsend, in collaboration with Studio NYL and Klimaat

WinterLight Pavilion is a conceptual urban winter warming hut or glowing igloo designed to be a temporary installation in Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway. The installation serves as an inviting, responsive, and dynamic public art piece that could function as an intimate meeting place, a social gathering space, or a wintertime venue for public events and performances.

Constructed of hexagonal concrete modules, the porous structure shields from prevailing winds, becoming increasingly open as it faces toward the sun.

During the day, this airy structure is designed to take full advantage of the limited winter daylight, serving as both a solar energy collector and dynamic shadow caster. At night the structure literally glows in the dark—as modules embedded with glow-in-the-dark aggregate emit light they harvest from the sun over the course of the day. The structure surrounds a fire pit that serves to activate the space at all hours of the day.

During the process the team worked from a 3D model of downtown Boston to test microclimate performance and the fluid dynamics of the structure.

By blocking winter winds and embracing the limited daylight hours, the pavilion is carefully calibrated to increase the perceived temperature within the enclosure. The design encapsulates Sasaki’s ongoing think-make approach, incorporating research in algorithmic modeling, digital fabrication, site responsive design, sustainable building systems, and material studies.

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2020 RESEARCH GRANTS Sasaki’s research grant program is gearing up for another year of forward-thinking projects. Click here to read more about this year’s grant winners on Sasaki’s blog.

AUTOMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF URBAN & LAND TYPOLOGIES Team: Raj Adi Raman, Justin Kollar, Sourav Biswas Advisors: Laura Marett, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP, Jill Allen Dixon, AICP Sponsoring Principal: Ken Goulding

CARBON CONSCIENCE Team: Chris Hardy, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP ND, Tamar Warburg, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Ekaterina Trosman, Michael Frechette Advisors: Michael Grove, ASLA, PLA, Ken Goulding

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CLIMATE.PARK.CHANGE A Design Toolkit for Resilient Parks Team: Anna Cawrse, ASLA, PLA, Lanmuzhi Yang, Eric Youngberg, Kara Slocum, Andrew Sell, Joshua Brooks, ASLA, PLA Collaborators: National Recreation and Park Association

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