PlaceMaking@Work

Up Next: New Rules for Retail: A Form-Based Perspective

Bob Gibbs | Dec 15| Register

American towns and cities traditionally provided for the majority of their markets and offered a wide range of goods and services including groceries, hardware, apparel, and home furnishings, in small shops as well as at least one major department store. These stores contributed toward sustainable urban centers that allowed for residents to walk or have only a short drive for most of the goods and services that they desired or needed. In larger towns and cities, department stores were often hundreds of thousands of square feet, covering entire blocks. Presently, shopping centers in sprawl areas capture the vast majority of the retail spending of most communities, resulting in an unsustainable land pattern. Urban residents must drive outside their neighborhood, village, town or city for most of their goods and services. This reverse trip often results in a lower quality of life for urban dwellers, while at the same time the locations of shopping centers and malls encourage people to move outside of towns and cities. Both tendencies support more sprawl. However, due to demographic trends toward urban living, many leading retailers are now seeking urban locations to deploy new stores. They have designed flexible formats that can be adapted to historic buildings or smaller block grids. Downtowns and urban centers have an opportunity for rebirth as the center of commerce for their regions. 

Learning objectives: 1: Explain the history of downtown retail, and its decades-long migration to the suburbs. 2: Describe methods for reinvigorating towns and cities by leveling the playing field for business to locate in urban cores and town centers. 3: Assess tools like form-based codes and the SmartCode Retail Markets Module for reintroduction of retail and commercial spaces, as well as case studies of other places who are getting it right. 4: Participants will begin to understand how to employ form-based codes as a method to reintroduce retail and commercial into appropriate areas along the rural-to-urban transect.

Bob Gibbs's expertise has been sought by some of the most respected mayors, renowned architects, and successful real-estate developers in the country. Profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Urban Land, Gibbs has, writes The Atlantic Monthly, “a commercial sensibility unlike anything possessed by the urban planners who usually design downtown-renewal efforts.” Bob is President of Gibbs Planning Group, author of many publications, including the SmartCode Retail Markets Module.

Register here. $49 for 75 minute session, Thursday, December 15, 2pm EST. Online from anywhere with an internet connection plus a phone connection.

Webinar Education Series

The PlaceMaking@Work Webinar Education Series live online events focus on the practical side of major zoning reform to allow walkable, mixed-use, sustainable communities to occur as a matter of right. Get form-based education when and where you need it.

Leading practitioners share cutting edge info to keep you ahead of the game. At a competitive price of $49 per session, your whole office or planning commission can train up for one fee per connection. At a regular schedule of once a month, register to take the live webinar, or catch up on it later by listening to a recorded version.

Webinar Education Series

• New Rules for Retail: A Form-Based Perspective
  Bob Gibbs | Dec 15 | Register
  
  
• Benchmarks for Sustainability: Creating Measures of Success
  Hazel Borys | Jan 19, 2012 | Register
  
  
• New Models for Mixed Use: Infill Strategies
  Victor Dover | Feb 16, 2012 | Register
  
  
• One Municipal Planner's Tale of Two Cities' FBCs
  Matthew Lewis | Mar 15, 2012 | Register
  
  
• Pacific Rim Form-Based Lessons
  Demetri Baches | Apr 19, 2012 | Register
  
  
• Getting to the Heart of Urbanism with Balanced Retail
  Rob Spanier | May 17, 2012

• Urban design under a SmartCode
  Geoff Dyer | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Montgomery case study
  Chad Emerson | Register for recorded session
  
  
• How to integrate a FBC with existing code
  Dan Slone | Register for recorded session
  
  
• SmartCode calibration basics
  Susan Henderson | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Sprawl Repair
  Galina Tachieva | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Miami Case Study
  Marina Khoury | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Form-Based Economic Development
  Scott Polikov & Hazel Borys | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Implementation strategies
  Jennifer Hurley | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Form-Based Coding at the Regional Level
  Susan Henderson | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Agricultural Urbanism: Local Food
  Andrés Duany | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Managing Message and Media in the New Normal
  Ben Brown | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Getting to Green I: Recovering Sustainable Traditions
  Steve Mouzon | Register for recorded session
  
  
• PlaceMaking for Transit-Oriented Developments
  Howard Blackson | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Getting to Green II: Imbedding Sustainability in the SmartCode
  Doug Farr | Register for recorded session
  
  
• Buy-In from the Beginning: Planning as Politics
  Nathan Norris | Register for recorded session
  
  

Held on the 3rd Thursday of every month at 2pm EST, each webinar is 75 minutes. With a different speaker every month and Hazel Borys as your moderator, you'll have plenty of time to ask questions by iChat or phone, and engage in a meaningful discussion.

Questions & Continuing Education

For questions, contact info@placemakers.com (204) 989-0217

If you'd prefer to pay by check, please send name, title, and email address of registrant, along with a check to:
PlaceMakers, LLC
5136 Sevilla Ave., NW
Albuquerque NM 87120

Each live webinar carries 1 hour of APA AICP credit, 1 hour of AIA CES credit, and 1 hour of CNUa credit.

Please note, recorded sessions do not provide credit.