Designed to promote self-organization, emergence, resilience, and productive forms of feedback between environment and the city, UACDC is developing a longitudinal repertoire of place-building models. By solving through biological and urban patterns simultaneously, sample projects illustrate the modularity of the environment and infrastructural components’ fit with one another. Social and environm
ental measures are recombined with economic development in recognition of contemporary ecologies. Emphasizing the city as ecology―as ecosystem―these recombinant ecologies manage natural capital in the delivery of environmental and urban services. Under the direction of Stephen Luoni, the center’s director for the last ten years, UACDC has become a respected national authority in urban design and the shaping of the built environment. As a bridge between public and private development sectors, UACDC has developed nine place-making models to address core challenges in the built environment. These community development models include, among others, transit-oriented development, low impact residential development, context-sensitive street design, agricultural urbanism, and smart growth urbanism. UACDC has helped to reshape development and planning policy at the state, regional, and municipal levels. UACDC’s urban design projects have won more than 100 design and planning awards statewide, nationally, and internationally. The awards cover a range of professional domains including AIA Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design from the American Institute of Architects, ASLA Honor Awards for Planning and Analysis from the American Society of Landscape Architects, Charter Awards from the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Holcim International Award for Sustainable Construction, and awards from the Environmental Research Design Association. UACDC’s publications connecting design methods with public policies are also award-winning efforts influential outside of Arkansas. UACDC’s book, Low Impact Development: a design manual for urban areas, pioneers the role of ecological-based urban stormwater management in urban design and is used in university classrooms and by government agencies nationwide. The center’s work is especially focused on urban infrastructure that delivers ecosystem services in addition to urban services. UACDC has provided design and planning services to over fifty communities and organizations through project fees and funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Clinton Global Initiative, the AIA, and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Their planning and design has helped clients and sponsors to secure over $64 million in funding to enact suggested improvements.
