UP426: Urban Design and Planning

Team Project

Project Manual | Problem Statement | Background Material
Project Overview | Site Images | Team Reports

The team project parallels and complements classroom discussions that often involve abstract and fuzzy notions so that these discussions may be grounded in real-world situations. The project is not intended to be a professional product for a real-world client. Each lesson, team discussion, and resulting team report will focus on a specific urban design issue in the context of the study area. By the end of the team project, these various reports will be compiled, and each team will produce an urban design scheme for guiding future decisions concerning the site so as to improve the sensual component of the quality of life in the area.

Problem Statement

The Village of Savoy (http://www.village.savoy.il.us/) is the smallest of the three political jurisdictions that make up the Champaign-Urbanan metropolitan area. Traditionally a quiet residential suburb, the village has recently seen significant growth including an increase in commercial establishments. Still, the village lacks a place that could be called its center; a place on which it would base its identity.

The challenge in this project is two-fold:

• figuring out where such a center might best be developed given how Savoy and the metropolitan area might evolve in the future
• identifying key attributes of place quality that individual design decisions must strive to bolster

Background Material

To help orient you to the project, here are some planning-related documents:

• Village of Savoy Comprehensive Plan
• Village of Savoy Zoning Ordinance
• U.S. Rt. 45 Corridor Plan

Frequent visits to the site will be required. The site is adjacent to campus, is served by the MTD 10/Gold bus, and is quite accessible.

Project Overview

Your analyses will draw primarily on data you collect from visiting the site, and from talking to people about the site. Where possible, archival and other public data will be made available to all teams. You are strongly urged not to contact any public officials unless you have first checked it out with the course instructor.

The course schedule lists a number of questions to be discussed in connection with each urban design issue, and there is often a reading that goes with these questions. Before each lecture session, your team must discuss the assigned questions, and if there are readings assigned, you must discuss how those readings apply to the project site. Note: On several assignments, other members of a team will have to contribute graphics and other types of analyses.

After the lecture session, you will visit the site and make any observations necessary to carry out the analysis tasks assigned. In the lab sessions following the lecture, your team will work on carrying out the related project tasks. When comments are made on draft reports, the entire team will discuss the comments, and a revised version submitted on the date indicated. All computer files containing versions of assignments generated by this exercise must be preserved and be available for use in creating the final report.

The project will be worked on by four-person teams (if necessary, one or more teams may have five members). Teams must be composed exclusively of graduate or undergraduate students.

All assignments will be submitted in electronic form. You will use Microsoft Word to create the draft version of analyses and also for the final report.