Planners to start talking about style, aesthetics

Seminar looks at what works, what doesn’t in development

The series is a countywide look at successes — and failures — in design and use of public space. During seminar-style meetings and field trips, participants will learn about successful urban neighborhoods, such as Woodmont Triangle in Bethesda. The final seminar on June 25, which is open to the public, will wrap up the series and invite dialogue from residents.

Roger Lewis, retired University of Maryland professor of architecture, and John Carter, the Park and Planning’s chief of urban design and special projects, will lead the series. They will do their best to accommodate members of the public, they said, although some meetings involve travel and transportation may not be available for everyone.

The seminar aims to get people talking about aesthetics and how to create inviting public space and architecture tailored to its surroundings. Seminar leaders will talk about urban neighborhoods like those in Bethesda and Silver Spring, emerging centers and ‘‘mature commercial centers.”

They will not discuss what they called a ‘‘one size fits all” approach to urban planning, where designs are judged using set criteria for, say, traffic capacity, sewer and water systems and public amenities.

The seminars will instead open a dialogue on revisions to the county’s design review process, possibly adding rigorous, long-term economic analyses and making reviews more individualized and contextual.

Re-evaluating the county’s ‘‘public realm” planning process is timely and necessary, Lewis said.

‘‘In a county where the supply of land is fixed ... how will the county accommodate future growth and change?” Lewis said.

‘‘There’s a reluctance to talk about design quality” and ‘‘lack of aspiration, lack of collaborative design discourse” that must be overcome for an urbanizing area to evolve smoothly, he said.

Another impediment Lewis cited was ‘‘civic and citizen constituencies,” who ‘‘for whatever reason are opposing rather than proposing.”

He said he believed development-averse neighbors were lacking proper information from their regulators and policymakers about urban design.

Carter showed photos to contrast past successes with designs that he believed the county ‘‘can do a little better.” He showed the nuanced differences between just two segments of Rockville Pike — an asphalt- and concrete-heavy commercial stretch versus a landscaped area to its south.

He juxtaposed public plazas with concrete or a fountain, and a public parking garage without a green roof versus one with a lush, vegetated park-like roof. He compared shapes — a boxy and nondescript structure contrasted by a rounded building with a lacing of trees.

Bethesda Row was an example of ‘‘one of the most successful redevelopment environments in this region, Lewis said. ‘‘I think some of it was serendipitous.”

The ground-level retail stores and city-style sidewalks with café seating and greenery help make Bethesda Row a success, he said, by creating a leisurely social atmosphere. The seminar will look at the Bethesda Row urban neighborhood as one model for other parts of the county.

The audience made up of people from county planning staff, neighborhood and industry associations and the County Council brought up questions they want to see answered: Who pays for high-cost design? How can planners create more walkable communities? How will they consider the experiential nature of space, such as how light shines as a person walks between buildings? Can builders hold onto the integrity of their original vision by the end of the review process? And what about historic preservation?

‘‘What is being offered to supply an economic balance to the mandate that’s being imposed?” asked Raquel Montenegro of the Maryland-National Capital Building Industry Association. ‘‘How is it being offset?”

Then through the questions came one planner’s opinion that seemed to back Lewis’s thesis that the county should change its methods.

Even planning staff at the county level say, ‘‘That’s the ugliest development. No, that’s the ugliest development,’” said Rose Krasnow, chief of development review, in reference to design proposals her staff vets.

‘‘It does worry me that there’s just a limit to what we can add in to this review process,” she added.

Visit www.MontgomeryPlanning.org for more information and regular updates on seminar work.