Video and Slides: Final Presentation of Design Northampton Week

Here is a Google video of the final presentation of Design Northampton Week. It’s 2 hours and 5 minutes long. Notre Dame Professor Philip Bess and his graduate students offer urban design suggestions for Northampton, drawing on principles of New Urbanism and compact growth. This PDF file (63 pages, 5.8MB) contains all the slides shown. […]

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Video: Fourth public “in-process” presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week

Here is a complete Google video of Design Northampton Week’s fourth public “in-process” presentation and feedback session that took place on September 12. It’s one hour and 20 minutes long. Thanks to Katharine Baker, a member of the Northampton Design Forum organizing committee, for volunteering to operate our video cameras. This was the last “in-process” […]

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Video: Third public “in-process” presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week

Here is a complete Vimeo video of Design Northampton Week’s third public “in-process” presentation and feedback session that took place on September 11. It’s one hour and 32 minutes long. Notre Dame students presented ideas for revitalizing King Street between Bridge Road and North Street. They also made suggestions about Hospital Hill (Village Hill), particularly […]

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Video: Second public “in-process” presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week

Here is a complete Google video of Design Northampton Week’s second public “in-process” presentation and feedback session that took place last night. It’s one hour and 51 minutes long. Notre Dame students presented ideas for making the line of buildings along certain major streets more coherent. Pleasant Street and downtown Florence received attention. The students […]

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Video: First public “in-process” presentation and feedback session for Design Northampton Week

Here is a complete Google video of Design Northampton Week’s first public “in-process” presentation and feedback session that took place last night. It’s one hour and 42 minutes long. The Notre Dame design team discussed the historical settlement patterns and geography of Northampton and indicated potential areas of focus. Citizens were not shy to give […]

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Complete Slides from Northampton Design Week Opening Presentation

The Notre Dame team has kindly made the slides from their opening presentation available as PDF (93 pages, 5.8MB). You can watch a video of Notre Dame Professor Philip Bess giving this presentation and read his handout. Below are selected slides that particularly caught our attention. The two slides below underscore how zones of dramatically […]

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Video: Design Northampton Week Opening Presentation

The video of last night’s opening presentation for Design Northampton Week is now ready to view. It’s 2 hours and 11 minutes long. Notre Dame Professor Philip Bess defines terms like space and anti-space, then offers his vision of good urban design, plus a way to look at zoning based on density (transect-based zoning). Poorly-built […]

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Design Northampton Week: Full Schedule and Handout from Opening Presentation

Professor Philip Bess of Notre Dame gave the opening presentation of Design Northampton Week this evening to an intent crowd at Northampton’s Senior Center. The presentation lasted a little over two hours. We’ll do our best to make our video of the event available within a day or two. This handout provided by Notre Dame […]

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Public Input Hours and Presentations at Design Northampton Week

Design Northampton Week kicks off today with a 7-9pm public presentation by Professor Philip Bess of the University of Notre Dame. This will take place at the Northampton Senior Center on Conz Street. The final presentation and feedback session will take place from 4-6pm on Saturday, September 13, also at the Senior Center. In between, […]

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Rutherford Platt in Gazette: Avoid Overplanning

Rutherford Platt is Emeritus Professor of Geography at UMass Amherst. We have cited on several occasions his concept of The Humane Metropolis. In Saturday’s Gazette, Dr. Platt cautions about the hazards of overplanning a city: The ‘humane micropolis’…Urban adaptation cannot be imposed from above through preconceived plans. Instead, it depends upon the resourcefulness of local […]

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