Mayors' Institute on City Design

Virtual Seminar: Beyond Traditional Engagement and Design Guidelines: Boston Design Vision

Virtual Seminars are engaging and interactive learning opportunities for small groups of mayors and their senior staff. Each one-hour seminar features a deep-dive presentation on a single timely topic, followed by a moderated group discussion among the attendees.

Virtual Seminar: Beyond Traditional Engagement and Design Guidelines: Boston Design Vision

In this seminar, the team behind the Boston Design Vision will share some of the creative engagement tactics bolstering their effort to make buildings and outdoor spaces better support Bostonians’ sense of belonging and identity, and will share how this vision will be applied moving forward.

Traditional urban design standards and guidelines often fail to capture the rich tapestry of spaces that make up loved and stewarded neighborhoods. In addition, they are often seen as impediments to development, and if not done carefully, can result in homogenous new development. Through the Design Vision, the City of Boston has strived to capture the essence of what makes Boston unique; what makes spaces welcoming, comfortable, and usable; and how development can support movement and help build community. Through innovative community engagement, the city has worked to embrace residents’ rich knowledge about their communities and shape that into a lasting, flexible, and adaptive vision.

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Speakers

Diana Fernandez Bibeau
Deputy Chief of Urban Design
City of Boston Planning Department

Diana Fernandez Bibeau is the Deputy Chief of the Urban Design Division and works to elevate the importance of urban design and champion the transformative power of sustainable and walkable communities for all ages and abilities.
In partnership with Chief Shen and the Planning Department’s Urban Design Division, Fernandez works to strategically transform existing BPDA urban design processes to promote predictability and quality for both the community members and the development industry. With over a decade of private practice experience, Diana has built a design portfolio that reassesses the policies that have perpetuated race, gender, environmental, and socioeconomic inequality and created design methodologies that can respond to and correct them. As part of her work, Fernandez partners on the Mayor’s Green New Deal agenda with the City departments, including the Boston Transportation Department, the Environment Department, Parks, Office of Housing, Public Works, Public Facilities, Boston Public Schools, and Boston Public Libraries, to align urban design efforts into a comprehensive vision for Boston.

 

Gina Ford
Principal, Landscape Architect and Co-Founder
Agency Landscape + Planning

Gina Ford is a landscape architect, co-founder and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning. Underpinning her two decades of practice are a commitment to the design and planning of public places and the perpetuation of the value of landscape architecture via thought leadership, teaching, writing and lecturing.

Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects, among others. She is on the board of directors for the City Parks Alliance and the stewardship council of The Cultural Landscape Foundation. She received the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship, the Wellesley College’s Shaw Fellowship and the Boston Society of Architect’s Women in Design Award of Excellence.

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IMAGE: CITY OF BOSTON

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