Category Archives: UNM Talk

The Albu­querque City Coun­cil met recently as a “Com­mit­tee of the Whole,” at the request of the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico School of Archi­tec­ture and Plan­ning, which engaged the UNM com­mu­nity. The pur­pose of the spe­cial meet­ing, Albu­querque 20/20: Design + Plan­ning for Qual­ity of Life + Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment, was to dis­cuss how plan­ning and design can help enhance qual­ity of life for res­i­dents, while address­ing the city’s goals for eco­nomic devel­op­ment and urban growth. The meet­ing was set to pre­cede the City Council’s meet­ing to decide upon redis­trict­ing and bud­get approval.

City coun­cilors who attended were Brad Win­ter, Dis­trict 4; Deb­bie O’Malley, Dis­trict 2; Isaac Ben­ton, Dis­trict 3; Rey Gar­duño, Dis­trict 6; Ken Sanchez, Dis­trict 1; Dan Lewis, Dis­trict 5; and Don Har­ris, Dis­trict 9.

CITY DESIGN AND PLANNING
Ben­ton said that he met pre­vi­ously with Geral­dine Forbes Isais, dean, School of Archi­tec­ture and Plan­ning. “We met to dis­cuss was to engage the city and the School of Archi­tec­ture and Plan­ning to address issues of mutual con­cern, and the rela­tion­ship between the uni­ver­sity and the city,” he said.

Forbes Isais intro­duced the first agenda item, city design and plan­ning. “The city lead­ers and the school share an inter­est in the future of the City of Albu­querque, its growth and qual­ity of life,” she said.

She noted the many pro­grams at the school that touch on the topic – archi­tec­ture, land­scape archi­tec­ture, com­mu­nity and regional plan­ning, as well as his­toric preser­va­tion and region­al­ism, urban and regional design and the school’s new Indige­nous Design +Plan­ning Insti­tute (iDPi).

“The built envi­ron­ment impacts qual­ity of life and it can be enhanced through plan­ning, locally and glob­ally,” she said.

Regard­ing a “brand,” Forbes Isais said, “Know­ing who and what you are is cul­ti­vated over time. Albu­querque has a sense of iden­tity, deep roots, cul­ture – we see it in the peo­ple, moun­tains, river and archi­tec­ture. Through our courses we teach growth, plan­ning, eco­nomic devel­op­ment, jus­tice for cit­i­zens and the envi­ron­ment. We have an inter­est in nego­ti­at­ing the future with­out los­ing a sense of who we are.”

Katya Craw­ford, assis­tant pro­fes­sor in land­scape archi­tec­ture, said, “Albu­querque is our lab­o­ra­tory. Our stu­dents and fac­ulty are com­mit­ted to the miss­ing pieces – the holes in the urban fab­ric – such as vacant lots that stand out like miss­ing teeth. We want to forge a rela­tion­ship with the city to share our design ideas that can be tested. We want to be known as the cre­ative force we are.”

Coun­cilor O’Malley talked about a city’s pre­vi­ous brand­ing ini­tia­tive. “The for­mer mayor got recog­ni­tion for Albu­querque. It was a way to pro­mote busi­ness growth that can pay for infra­struc­ture,” she said.

Coun­cilors, fac­ulty and atten­dees talked about the var­i­ous parts of the city, their spe­cial iden­ti­ties and needs.

Albu­querque is State’s Urban Cen­ter
Coun­cilor Ben­ton, who rep­re­sents the down­town area, said, “The core of the city can­not be sac­ri­ficed for the short-sighted devel­op­ment of sprawl. The city, with other part­ners must make sure that doesn’t hap­pen.” He added, “Albu­querque is the urban cen­ter of the state. It’s the big dog, the power house of the state. It must have a unique sense of place, dif­fer­ent than Santa Fe or Las Cruces. It should be the dynamic cen­ter of the state.”

Coun­cilor Ben­ton said that Albu­querque should be “the dynamic cen­ter of the state.” “It is the top eco­nomic gen­er­a­tor of the state. Its sense of place should be brought for­ward bet­ter,” he said. That sense of place is seen in Route 66, down­town and Nob Hill, for example.

West­side
Coun­cilor Sanchez, who rep­re­sents the west­side, said that his dis­trict is the city’s “final fron­tier.” A life­long res­i­dent, Sanchez recalled the shift in focus across the city through the years. “Down­town was the hap­pen­ing place. Then there was a shift to uptown and the heights, then toward Win­rock. It had a neg­a­tive impact on our city’s down­town core,” he said.

Coun­cilor Sanchez noted that he and Coun­cilor Ben­ton are work­ing together to engage in some Route 66 plan­ning out to 98th Street that includes a new fire sta­tion and a library. As in other parts of the city, west­side res­i­dents wanted a new com­mu­nity, close to schools and parks. He said, “The divide between the east and west sides of the river is because of the time it takes to tra­verse it.”

Coun­cilor Lewis, also a west­side rep­re­sen­ta­tive, talked about the sec­tor plan that allowed for the devel­op­ment of Vol­cano Heights, that bor­ders, but does not impact, Pet­ro­glyph National Mon­u­ment. “The plan was jus­tice for cit­i­zens and the envi­ron­ment. Landown­ers and city plan­ning were able to guide devel­op­ment of new homes above the escarp­ment. It is sprawl right now, but all were at one time,” he said.

Growth and Water
Coun­cilor Gar­duño coun­ters the notion that growth is inevitable. “We must tie land use to water. We haven’t looked at water­shed. We invaded a water­shed – St. Augus­tine. We have to learn from what hap­pens else­where. Los Ange­les grew from water stolen from the Col­orado River.” He added that the city has no storm water ordi­nance. “Why don’t we have it? No enforce­ment abil­ity,” he said.

Albu­querque Needs Vibrant Urban Cen­ter
Coun­cilor Ben­ton said that Albuquerque’s brand­ing could be as a sus­tain­able south­west arid city. “We are in com­pe­ti­tion with cool places. We need to attract pro­gres­sive, forward-looking busi­nesses who want an edu­cated work­force. Those that are look­ing for a unique place to move, a unique urban envi­ron­ment,” he said. He added that young peo­ple want a “vibrant urban char­ac­ter” and a “great sense of place.” “We have great open space – parks, river, foothills – the cool out­door lifestyle young peo­ple are look­ing for.”

“That’s why we’re here. It’s about attract­ing large national busi­ness to grow our econ­omy. Plus, we want to develop small, local entre­pre­neur­ship,” he said.

Coun­cilor Ben­ton said, “We are the vibrant urban cen­ter for New Mex­ico. Down­town is for Albuquerque.”

Coun­cilor O’Malley said that man­ag­ing growth has had set­backs. “The con­struc­tion indus­try fights back.” She noted that Albu­querque lost con­trol of water to the Water Author­ity. Despite extrater­ri­to­r­ial zon­ing and impos­ing reg­u­la­tions, she said, “Noth­ing will hap­pen about water until it doesn’t come out of the tap.”

Coun­cilor O’Malley’s dis­trict is eclec­tic. “It includes urban areas down­town, the muse­ums, the ace­quias and the North Val­ley.” About the empha­sis on down­town, she said, “The urban core isn’t there. It isn’t there in many places. Iden­tity of the city is made up of all areas. We need to enrich neigh­bor­hoods for their unique iden­ti­ties. Iden­tity is both micro and a macro. Down­town is just a small part,” she said.

Coun­cilor Ben­ton said, “No mod­ern, suc­cess­ful city is with­out a strong down­town. A vibrant urban cen­ter is crit­i­cal. There is a gen­er­a­tion we want to keep here, like the UNM grads. We will lose them if we do not develop our sense of place. Peo­ple want walk­a­ble urban­ism. They want to walk, hang out in an urban environment.”

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Clau­dia Isaac, pro­fes­sor, com­mu­nity and regional plan­ning, intro­duced the sec­ond topic, growth and devel­op­ment. She said that eco­nomic devel­op­ment is “the out­come of poli­cies that enhance the qual­ity of life and stan­dard of liv­ing for a city’s pop­u­la­tion. Suc­cess­ful eco­nomic devel­op­ment alle­vi­ates poverty, increases access to goods and ser­vices, and ensures that sta­ble and high wage jobs are avail­able to the widest pos­si­ble population.”

Cap­i­tal ideas
Isaac talked about human cap­i­tal, “the skills, train­ing, health and cre­ative capac­ity of city res­i­dents;” nat­ural cap­i­tal, “enhances the sus­tain­abil­ity, clean­li­ness and effi­cient use of local resources;” phys­i­cal cap­i­tal, “the built envi­ron­ment, which in a vibrant econ­omy closes gaps between pro­vi­sion and demand for infra­struc­ture, hous­ing, com­mer­cial and man­u­fac­tur­ing space and tran­sit.” Social cap­i­tal, she said, is often ignored in eco­nomic analy­sis. It is char­ac­ter­ized by “the net­works and rela­tion­ships that ‘bond’ com­mu­ni­ties together inter­nally and ‘bridge’ com­mu­ni­ties to each other.”

Isaac said, “A com­mu­nity with robust social cap­i­tal has high lev­els of civic engage­ment, with broad based, and par­tic­i­pa­tory com­mu­nity based orga­ni­za­tions that col­lab­o­rate effec­tively with gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sector.”

She pointed to par­tic­i­pa­tory bud­get­ing as a munic­i­pal man­age­ment tool, which she described as, “a demo­c­ra­tic process in which com­mu­nity mem­bers directly decide how to spent part of a pub­lic bud­get.” She encour­aged the coun­cil to build on par­tic­i­pa­tory practices.

Good design and eco­nomic devel­op­ment
Archi­tec­ture Pro­fes­sor Mark Childs said that good design is strong and endur­ing eco­nomic devel­op­ment. “It is crit­i­cal to the qual­ity of life and sense of pride in one’s city. This is deeply true for the pub­lic parts of a city – the streets, pub­lic build­ings, parks and even the power sub­sta­tions and cell tow­ers. You are the clients and set the stan­dards for these pub­lic places,” he said.

Childs noted that there is “grow­ing evi­dence that cre­ative indi­vid­u­als and busi­nesses move towards vibrant places, and those great places are the cru­cible for cre­ative work.”

He said that great cities share prin­ci­ples that include learn­ing from, but not copy­ing other places, cel­e­brat­ing mul­ti­ple eras of his­toric build­ings, being actively engaged in cre­at­ing new riffs, new styles that are rooted in their place; and hav­ing rich pedes­trian realms – great streets, plazas and parks.

Growth with Qual­ity for All
Coun­cilor Gar­duño said that growth must be within. “Growth has to con­sider qual­ity for all of us who are here. We are all in it together. No one prefers to be poor, oppressed or at the bot­tom of the heap. Social cap­i­tal is impor­tant. We can’t grow only the one per­cent,” he said.

Coun­cilor Sanchez said that each coun­cil dis­trict gets $1 mil­lion annu­ally to invest in growth. He said that it doesn’t go far and that GO Bond rev­enues are going from $164 mil­lion down to $110 mil­lion. He said that drop requires cre­ativ­ity in attract­ing money.

He said, “Bond­ing was for 10 years, now 13, and it may extend to 15 years. If it doesn’t, we can’t do things for our com­mu­nity. There’s a chal­lenge and a risk. Do you want Albu­querque to grow?”

Local archi­tect Gar­rett Smith asked the coun­cil mem­bers, “How do you see the city’s approach to devel­op­ment for the long term?” He ques­tioned the value of reg­u­la­tions, sec­tor plans, model homes and pre­scrip­tive city design. “This room is full of peo­ple who can design good archi­tec­ture. Let them do it! Get rid of traf­fic engi­neer­ing. Look at great cities. To be suc­cess­ful we have to get rid of some rules and reg­u­la­tions and do what’s best.”

Andy Gin­grich, a master’s stu­dent in com­mu­nity and regional plan­ning, addressed the need to design healthy com­mu­ni­ties with all cit­i­zens in mind. “In the coun­try, 70 per­cent have driver’s licenses. That means 30 per­cent do not. That includes kids, elderly and the dis­abled. It’s a jus­tice issue.” He noted that six-lane streets pose a cross­ing imped­i­ment to pedes­tri­ans. “A pub­lic right of way must serve all the pub­lic,” he said.

Local archi­tect Rob Dick­son said that UNM and Albu­querque should be branded together like the Uni­ver­sity of Texas and Austin. “They should share assets, and col­lab­o­rate on indi­vid­ual inter­re­lated brands. He said that vibrant down­towns require a sub­stan­tial res­i­den­tial base. “Pub­lic pol­icy may have to prime the pump. It must max­i­mize exist­ing pub­lic asset invest­ments, par­tic­u­larly by retro­fitting with infill. It’s where every city is going,” he said. Finally, he said that two com­mis­sions, the Envi­ron­men­tal Plan­ning Com­mis­sion and the Albu­querque Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion could be doing a lot more. The EPC, by ordi­nance, is under direc­tive to pro­vide cre­ative ideas. Dick­son sug­gested the Albu­querque Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion look at the Portland’s devel­op­ment plan because it max­i­mizes infill.

Dick­son con­cluded, “There are ways to be bet­ter and still be us.”

Albuquerque’s Improve­ments and Needs
UNM retiree Nick Estes noted Albuquerque’s improve­ments. “Albu­querque is bet­ter than it was in the 50s and 60s. There are more inter­est­ing things to do here. The pol­lu­tion has got­ten bet­ter. We have estab­lished urban bound­aries and pro­tected open space. For­get brand­ing. How­ever, we’re still liv­ing with urban bag­gage of the 50s and 60s. Like San Mateo – no parks, land­scap­ing or con­sis­tent sig­nage,” he said.

Coun­cilor O’Malley noted that the North Val­ley Over­lay Zone encour­ages clus­ter devel­op­ment and per­me­able sur­faces. “We’re look­ing to con­serve water, get away from hard sur­faces and return to its organic growth.

TOWN GOWN RELATIONSHIP
Finally, the group explored the town and gown rela­tion­ship. Archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sor Michaele Pride said that as the state’s flag­ship uni­ver­sity, UNM has an “explicit respon­si­bil­ity to serve the state and an implied respon­si­bil­ity to the city.

“UNM peo­ple reside in Albu­querque. We depend on the city. Albu­querque is the lab­o­ra­tory for the school. Through col­lab­o­ra­tion, we can enrich the les­son learned and together develop strate­gies to address growth, eco­nomic develop, and share design and plan­ning best practices.”

Alf Simon, asso­ciate dean and direc­tor of the land­scape archi­tec­ture pro­gram, said that UNM and the city have mutual inter­ests includ­ing smart urban growth poli­cies to com­bat sprawl. He said, “Infra­struc­ture is crit­i­cal to how we live, our qual­ity of life and a way to our goal of sus­tain­able liv­ing. We’ve learned a lot since that infra­struc­ture was put in.”

The uni­ver­sity and the city share a goal to develop strong, healthy com­mu­ni­ties with parks, open space, squares, streets and pub­lic trans­porta­tion. He said that well planned com­mu­ni­ties with well-designed and thought out ameni­ties are a “cat­a­lyst to sus­tain­abil­ity.” Pub­lic health, safety and eco­nomic devel­op­ment are con­nected through good design, he said.

Mov­ing For­ward Together
Dean Forbes Isais said that she would like to for­mal­ize the school’s invest­ment in the city. “We would like to work with city lead­er­ship to cre­ate an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Albu­querque City Lab. With the lead­er­ship, we would iden­tify an area as a research and cre­ative focus for the semes­ter as a token of our appre­ci­a­tion for your time. Please com­mu­ni­cate this to the mayor. We are a great city, but we can be better.”

Coun­cilor Win­ter said that they should try to meet with the board of Regents.

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor Kristina Yu said, “Our stu­dents are spa­tial pio­neers. Incen­tivize stu­dents with hous­ing to keep grad­u­ates here and get them to look at improv­ing areas.”

Dean Forbes Isais said that the cre­ative econ­omy of the city is impor­tant. She said that the down­turn in the econ­omy, which adversely affects the build­ing and trades indus­try and there­fore archi­tects, has given design pro­fes­sion­als the real­iza­tion that they need to be involved in mate­ri­als research.

“We are just wak­ing up to that dimen­sion of who we are. Pre­vi­ously we allowed prod­uct peo­ple to do R&D. Now uni­ver­si­ties are doing more of that,” she said.

“Despite the 30 per­cent decrease in the con­struc­tion indus­try in the last five years, in tax­able gross receipts, con­struc­tion remains in sec­ond place behind retail,” she said. Forbes Isais said that the con­struc­tion indus­try fig­ures don’t come just from hous­ing on the west­side. “It’s from other things like car­pen­try, fur­ni­ture, duct­work, light­ing, stucco and infra­struc­ture,” she said.

“The School of Archi­tec­ture and Plan­ning is ded­i­cated to a qual­ity built envi­ron­ment at the same time we are ded­i­cated to eco­nomic devel­op­ment. Deci­sions about design­ing include sup­port­ing the nat­ural envi­ron­ment. We must take into con­sid­er­a­tion the peo­ple, plants and ani­mals that will depend upon the envi­ron­ment in the future. That is the base­line for design deci­sions,” she said.

Cap­i­tal out­lay can’t jump­start the econ­omy with­out jump­start­ing the con­struc­tion indus­try, she said. “Now that it’s dor­mant, we have an oppor­tu­nity to do it right. Equally, the town and gown rela­tion­ship is pos­si­ble because the stall in the econ­omy allows for it,” she said.

See a slideshow.

Media Con­tact: Car­olyn Gon­za­les (505) 277‑5920; email: cgonzal@unm.edu