Urban Design Guidelines - Valley Metro

INTRODUCTIONUrban Design D efined"Urban design is the art and science of making places for people."It includes the way places work and how places look, as well as matters such ascommunity safety. It concerns the connections between people and places,movement and urban form, nature and built fabric, and the processesfor ensuring successful villages, towns and cities."Good design can help create lively places with distinctive character; streets andpublic spaces that are safe, accessible, pleasant to use and human in scale; andplaces that inspire because of the imagination and sensitivity of their designers."United Kingdom, Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions.The Valley of the Sun ...This region, itshistory, its people, its products, itsbuilding forms, its recreational opportunities,and its challenges are all shapedby one element ...the light of the sun. Ifwe do not acknowledge its power, wewill short change the potential of ourdesign. This does not negate the factthat the sun can be a willing and productivepartner. For hundreds of yearsthe sun has warmed our skins, liftedour spirits, grown our crops, and morerecently been a partner in generatingour power.If one does not use their intelligence asthey encounter the desert, they willsurely perish. This place that we call theValley of the Sun has evolved becauseof a partnership between the power ofthe sun and human ingenuity. TheHohokam tribes who first irrigated thisvalley in the early 1400's, the earlyAmerican settlers who moved agriculturalgoods through the heat in the1870's, and our communities have usednumerous cooling techniques and haveneeded this partnership to thrive.As we embark on creating the singlelargest piece of infrastructure constructedby the combined cities of Mesa,Phoenix, and Tempe, it should come asno surprise that the sun and humaningenuity will play major roles in formingof this project. There are few otherlight rail systems in the world that facethe challenges that the design of thissystem must face. The burning heat ofthe day and the temperature swingsinto the night will demand that everysingle element is reviewed for its appropriatenessand its ability to not merelysurvive, but to function well for thecommunity.It is this community that funds the systemand will be the users of the system.Based on an early understanding ofthis, the multi-jurisdictional RegionalPublic Transportation Authority (RPTA)created a process of checks and balancesthat would guide the design ofcritical elements. A regional group ofcity staff and citizens created a visionstatement and a set of goals to supportthe vision. These Guidelines are a directoutgrowth of the vision and goalsadopted by the agency and will providea framework for designing elementswithin the system.Page 1