uniting people across the development transect | TBG featured on Land8.com

We’re thrilled to have a feature article on Land8.com discussing the importance of creating a sense of community in our designs.

Here’s an excerpt:

In the world of design and planning one of our biggest challenges lies in the placemaking endeavor — creating a sense of community in a new or unremarkable development lacking notable history or existing bonds among people.

How can we create anew an identity, a sense of belonging, and pride of ownership in a setting in which those aspects are nonexistent?

These characteristics are cornerstones of a successful development — whether a residential community or the proverbial third place — in contexts spanning the urban to rural transect, and their foundation lies in establishing planning and design principles focused on connectedness, diversity and flexibility.

The notion of connectedness includes not only physical connections between people and their environment, but also social and emotional connections. Diversity in our placemaking practices includes using master planning, land use, architecture and open space to provide context and variety in scale. Flexibility pertains primarily to programming, including creating spaces that offer broad appeal and adaptability to serve a multifunctional purpose.

In several ongoing North Texas projects, focusing on these three core tenets has been imperative to creating a successful identity and pride of ownership. These case studies run the gamut from rural greenfield community development, to a suburban brownfield mixed-generational community, to an urban brownfield mixed-use and residential district.

To continue reading, please be sure to visit Land8!