Creating Lasting Communities: Peter Calthorpe is the 2006 Laureate of the Urban Land Institute J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development

NEW YORK, Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Peter Calthorpe, one of the nation's most influential urban designers, has been named the recipient of the 2006 Urban Land Institute J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.

The Nichols Prize recognizes a person or a person representing an institution whose career demonstrates a commitment to the highest standards of responsible development. The prize honors the legacy of legendary Kansas City, Missouri, developer J.C. Nichols, a founding Urban Land Institute (ULI) member considered to be one of America's most influential entrepreneurs in land use during the first half of the 1900s. Calthorpe was awarded the prize at a celebratory luncheon today in New York City.

Calthorpe, principal of Calthorpe Associates, an architecture, urban design, and urban planning firm in Berkeley, has devoted his 30-year career to the creation of communities that are as easily negotiated on foot as by car, and which significantly improve the balance between land development and land preservation. And, with John Fregonese, his partner in Fregonese, Calthorpe Associates in Portland, Ore., he has pioneered the emerging field of regional design.

Since Calthorpe formed Calthorpe Associates in 1983, its work has expanded incrementally to include: more than 30 new community designs, among them Stapleton in Denver, Issaquah Highlands in the state of Washington, and Daybreak in Salt Lake City; countless urban revitalization plans, ranging from HOPE VI public housing projects in Chicago to a transit village in Richmond, California; 11 long-term regional plans such as Envision Utah, the COMPAS plan for Southern California, and Metro Vision 2040 in Portland, Oregon; and an increasing number of international plans, ranging from the Tunis waterfront to the rural lands of Rotterdam in The Netherlands.

In Calthorpe's view, the business of urban design is the business of creating positive change. "My goal has been to work on projects that, in some serious way, lead to redirecting and repairing the missteps that we in design and development have made since World War II," he says.

Although Calthorpe's designs vary broadly according to a project's size and type, all of them are rooted in four principles pertaining to the need for diversity, building to human scale, a focus on restoring and preserving buildings, and taking a regional perspective. He constantly weighs his idealistic desire to stay true to those principles against the extent to which they can be fulfilled with each project. These principles, says Calthorpe, provide direction and guidance. "For each project, I ask myself, 'Is it diverse? Is it walkable? Does it restore and protect critical qualities? How does it interconnect and add to the region as a whole?' Typically, I can find ways to answer each of these questions," he says.

Calthorpe is the first architect and first urban designer chosen as the Nichols Prize laureate. The selection of Calthorpe as this year's recipient honors the work "not only of those who do the developing, but of those who do the planning and who influence planning and development through their ideas and vision," says 2006 Prize Jury Chairman A. Eugene Kohn, chairman of Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects in New York City. "His legacy is one that shows the value of planning cities in an intelligent way."

Along with Kohn, other jury members were: Robert Campbell, architectural critic for the Boston Globe; Bonnie Fisher, principal, ROMA Design Group, San Francisco; Christopher B. Leinberger, founding partner of the Arcadia Land Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and director of a graduate real estate development program at the University of Michigan; and Jeremy Newsum, group chief executive of Grosvenor Estate in London.

As the prize winner, Calthorpe "represents an angle on urban development that often is overlooked," says jury member Newsum. "Those who plan the way cities should develop are often unsung, but vital to the process. He is at the forefront in a significant movement in redefining how urban areas should work."

When Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises was selected by the city of Denver to redevelop the former Stapleton Airport site, the company turned to Calthorpe for help with the community's design. According to Ronald Ratner, president of Forest City Residential Group, Calthorpe's expertise as a problem solver stems from his ability to think as a developer, an architect, an engineer, and a planner in order to fit all the pieces of a project together. "He has an amazing ability to deconstruct a problem, to get to the bottom of what people are saying. . .Whether he is talking to traffic engineers or retailers, he extracts information and utilizes his principles to come up with a design solution. Peter is a craftsman at the top of his trade," Ratner says.

"Urban design," contends Calthorpe, "involves a nuanced set of tradeoffs. It involves a balance of design, economics, politics, and the marketplace; they are all integrated."

Calthorpe cofounded the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) in 1993, along with Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, both principals at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company in Miami; Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides, both principals at Moule & Polyzoides in Pasadena; and Daniel Solomon, director of Solomon E.T.C., a WRT company in San Francisco.

CNU advocates public policies and development practices that support more livable communities. Its advocacy is based on the belief that neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and for public transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; and urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice. The organization has a set of principles that apply to the design and development of all levels of community -- such as the region, the city, and the block.

"If I were to summarize new urbanism, it would be very simple. New urbanism involves communities that are diverse and integrated, in terms of who is there and what is there. It takes in a full range of people of all colors and backgrounds -- higher income, lower income, young, old, families, singles, the broadest range possible. It includes shops, schools, housing, parks, businesses, all the uses, all mixed together, all walkable. You cannot have good urbanism without that kind of diversity and walkability," Calthorpe says.

According to Calthorpe, the premise behind CNU can be attributed to J.C. Nichols's desire to build for permanence. "J.C. Nichols understood that a community was about integrating a full range of activities with housing, shops, schools, parks, and clubs. He understood the importance of streetscape. He wanted to build a community that would last for generations, and be socially and environmentally sustainable," Calthorpe says.

The prize is funded by an endowment from the family of J.C. Nichols to the ULI Foundation. A management committee including ULI representatives and members of the Nichols family directs the prize program. More information on the prize program is available at http://www.nicholsprize.org/.

The Urban Land Institute (http://www.uli.org/) is a global nonprofit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to provide responsible leadership in the use of land in order to enhance the total environment. Established in 1936, the Institute has more than 32,500 members representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines.