Mayor Nancy M. Graham	It is a pleasure to be here today to talk to you about one of my favorite subjects--the importance of good design in creating sustainable development. I must warn you that I am biased, probably even passionate about my beliefs about the difference that good design can make. I am able to speak with some authority because I have seen the dramatic difference that design has played in the revitalization of Downtown West Palm Beach and some of its neighborhoods. I hope that a little of my passion will rub off on some of you.
Great cities and communities do not happen by accident.	Great cities and communities do not happen by accident. Neither does sustainable development. I can tell you it is not an undertaking for the faint at heart. It takes courage and determination to challenge the status quo and long-held beliefs. It takes great political vision and honesty.
	Creating sustainable development may require public regulatory agencies and developers to be hypnotized and remove from their minds current thinking of how things should be regulated and developed. It will require all of us to look at development with new eyes and open minds--look at new opportunities.
	What is Sustainable Development
"meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs," or, in other words, "living off the interest, not the principal."	"Sustainability" is defined by the Governor's Commission for a Sustainable South Florida as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs," or, in other words, "living off the interest, not the principal." I am sure that you will hear other definitions of "sustainability" during this conference. My way to describe "sustainability" in the context of design speaks to it in the context of "quality of life." It is impossible for me to adequately discuss the importance of design in the limited amount of time I have, but I will try to hit the highlights.
	Design is not the only thing needed to create sustainable development, but it can be everything. Sensitivity to design assures that we do not repeat the past, a past in which we built such monstrosities as antihuman housing projects to warehouse people, placed the importance of automobiles ahead of pedestrians and neighborhoods, totally disregarded the importance of the public realms, and designed areas for criminals, not the residents.
	Good design, by contrast, shows respect; people accorded respect are far likelier to be contributing, productive citizens. Good design and a positive sense of place or sense of community go hand in hand.
Design for sustainable development does not just mean the architect's design considerations for the look of a building or residence...	Design for sustainable development does not just mean the architect's design considerations for the look of a building or residence--many areas of design must be considered such as an overall master plan for how a particular area is to be developed or redeveloped; design guidelines; design of the public realm and public spaces, transportation, traffic, and road design issues; and the importance of details such as landscaping, street lighting, benches, and trash receptacles. I will discuss each of these briefly:
	Master Plan
	When I speak of a master plan for how a particular area is to be developed or redeveloped, I do not mean developing a master plan in the way that they have traditionally been done--many just pretty pictures. I mean a master plan that deals with height limits; building styles; architectural types; the relation of buildings to the street, buildings to buildings, and buildings to human beings; street design; pedestrian areas; transportation and parking needs; mixed uses; and other considerations.
Harris Music Building Before	Almost four years ago, the City of West Palm Beach started what has been a lengthy process to develop a creative and visionary master plan for our downtown. We have subsequently developed a master plan for the revitalization of a large run-down corridor in the north end of the City. We brought in the firm of Duany/Plater Zyberk and held a week-long charette and many, many other public meetings and hearings. Everyone thought the master plan was wonderful--except as it applied to their property.
After	The biggest challenges to the implementation of our downtown master plan has been the county and one of our neighboring cities. After a long and difficult struggle, we have resolved our outstanding issues with them. Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council and the Department of Community Affairs have been wonderful to deal with and understood our vision to redevelop our downtown into an active, vibrant, and dense urban area. Our Downtown Master Plan was approved by DCA and stated by them to be the most visionary, creative, and aggressive downtown master plan in the state. It balances the need for commercial development with a significant amount of residential development and provides for mixed uses. Most importantly, it provides predictability to developers about what is going to be built around them in the future, provides real opportunity for developing small areas without having to accumulate lots of land, sets up a very easy permitting approval process for projects consistent with the Plan, and sets up a competitive edge for developers to build within our urban core rather than in the suburbs where more unsustainable sprawl will occur.
	Design Guidelines
One way of understanding the importance of design guidelines is to look at a city or neighborhood as a living, organic thing.	One way of understanding the importance of design guidelines is to look at a city or neighborhood as a living, organic thing. For humans, our DNA contains instructions on such characteristics as color of eyes and hair. Obviously, our characteristics vary from individual to individual. These variations are essential to our sense of identity as individuals.
	The DNA of a city is expressed in those architectural and spatial characteristics best loved by its inhabitants, those that contribute most to its sense of identity. These characteristics may consist of the human scale of buildings and public spaces, building materials and colors, an arrangement of scale and architectural forms, building lot size, and roof lines. Parks, plazas, and streets are often the elements used to describe a place that we have visited, particularly people who have visited some of the wonderful European cities.
Centennial Square Before	A great example of this in my city would be Centennial Square and its dancing, interactive fountain. This has become the place where people of all ages, backgrounds, economic status, and cultural heritage gather to celebrate a sense of community--a place that people from all over Palm Beach County come to; it is their public square and fountain.
After	The physical characteristics of a sustainable development should vary within a limited range from building to building--the buildings should "speak to each other." It is these small and subtle variations on architectural themes that impart a sense of identity to the street or project. Those cities that recognize their unique character are able to develop clear design guidelines for sustainable development. These design guidelines may differ within different parts of a downtown and from neighborhood to neighborhood to create real visual statements. Real estate agents are well aware that the visual aspects of an area strongly influence the sales potential of a property. Even a city damaged architecturally can recover if the citizens understand its genetic code and develop design guidelines. Each new or remodeled building or residence should be expected to add value and richness to the community.
	The establishment of design guidelines geared to the creation of sustainable development played a significant role in the successful revitalization efforts of some of our favorite cities such as Portland, Oregon; Santa Barbara, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Charleston, South Carolina and in protecting the special character of those towns.
	Public Realm and Public Spaces
	The public realm is the connective tissue of our everyday world. It exists in the form of streets, highways, town squares, parks, and even parking lots. It is a set of real places possessing physical form. Historically, Americans have a low regard for the public realm which is unfortunate because it is the physical manifestation of the common good.
	The design symbolism of architecture sends clear messages--the blank brick wall says the street has no meaning and the pedestrian meaningless--that the public realm has no significance and that we don't care what goes on outside the buildings. This philosophy has done severe damage to public life in our lifetime. The design of the public realm in most of our cities and communities is degraded, incoherent, ugly, and meaningless.
Human scale must prevail over the needs of motor vehicles.	Sustainable development in the public realm will require devices for civic art, and waterfronts that are integral with the rest of the city. Human scale must prevail over the needs of motor vehicles. There must be ample green space. The task will be to make our cities worthy, to reconstruct them in a physical design form that is worth caring about, and to reinhabit them.
	There is now sufficient data to show why some public spaces are so successful and why some fail terribly. The design of seating, lights, and landscaping is critical to success. Seating should have backs and, where possible, be of a type that people can move around to establish their own sense of space. We must not continue to design our public spaces to keep the criminal out, but we must design them so that people will want to come in.
	Transportation, Traffic, Road Design, and Parking
	Anybody who thinks that we will be using cars 25 years from now the way we use them now is going to be in for a real surprise. We have too long focused on the pleasurable psychology of the car and have been blind to its negative effects on society. Highways, expressways, fast food shops, lube joints, and tract housing in their current design make every place so bleak that we hate where we came from, hate where we end up, and don't want to pay much attention to what we're passing through. Before cars ruled design, everybody, rich and poor, spent some time walking the streets, and everyone agreed that it was the feelings and safety of pedestrians that mattered. The street has to be designed so that it is worth walking down.
We must focus on creating other methods of mass transportation.	We must focus on creating other methods of mass transportation. However, the public will not feel good about riding public and other types of mass transit unless the public realm where people get on and off and walk down the streets is well designed, clean, attractive, and safe. Few can realistically be expected to use mass transit if they get off in a dirty, drab, and unsafe downtown.
	Design must also be used to create mixed use development so that people can live, work, shop, and play in the same small geographic area and will make minimal use of a car. We are creating such a mixed-use environment on 75 acres right in downtown West Palm Beach, to be known as City Place, which will break ground in early 1998.
	West Palm Beach has focused considerable effort on traffic calming in the last four years. We redesigned several of our streets in the downtown, particularly our main retail/entertainments streets of Clematis and Narcissus, so that they were attractive, pedestrian-oriented, and safe. This allowed outdoor cafes, street entertainment, places to sit, and substantial landscaping. This played a critical role in our very successful downtown revitalization.
	We are also working with various neighborhood groups and in our inner city areas to design and install traffic-calming devices specifically tailored to the needs of each particular area. Examples of numerous types of devices used are traffic circles, bulb-outs, mid-block landscape islands, narrowing streets, trees, and many others.
...a small portion of that money could be spent on improving the old highway systems and financing mass transit.	I believe one commonly overlooked problem that must be addressed through redesign and reconstruction is the old U. S. highway system, such as U. S. 1 in South Florida. In many areas along U.S. 1, the streets and sidewalks are old, dirty, devoid of landscaping, and unsafe. The buildings that sit along the old highway system are rundown, in need of paint, badly designed, and often abandoned. The redesign and improvement of these old corridors would significantly change commercial and residential areas, owners would invest in fixing up or placing new construction in these areas, new jobs could be created in these urban areas instead of going to the suburbs, and residential areas nearby could be redeveloped. Instead of spending billions on new expressway interchanges, a small portion of that money could be spent on improving the old highway systems and financing mass transit. A mayor friend of mine in Milwaukee recently was very frustrated because the DOT there was about to spend $400 million to redo an interstate interchange when, for about the same amount of money, a light rail transit system could have been installed; a real lack of vision for a sustainable downtown living environment.
	Finally, a real pet peeve of mine--parking garages. We seem to be able to build the ugliest, dullest, and unfriendliest parking garages when we can't build anything else. Very little creative and visionary thought goes into the design of these structures--just how many cars can fit in. They go against good street life. If we are going to have sustainable development, we must stop giving developers one parking space for everyone working or living in a building. Bankers are going to have to rethink the financing requirements for so many parking spaces. Sustainable development requires us to get people out of their cars and walking many blocks. It can be done. We must place substantial design requirements on parking lots, not allow them on primary roadways where they are heavily visible, and quit allowing buildings to be torn down to create little parking lots all over our downtowns. Interestingly enough, in some of our neighborhoods it is the churches that are buying residential property, demolishing the homes and building ugly, bare parking lots that scar and destroy the residential character of a neighborhood.
	Importance of Details
...details...are of critical importance to good design in sustainable development.	Finally, I want to very briefly mention the importance of what to some may seem like little details but that I think are of critical importance to good design in sustainable development. These are details such as landscaping that uses little or no water, uses a variety of colors and textures, and is well maintained. Street lighting should vary depending on the area: benches should be comfortable, have backs, be well maintained, and be in a visible location to both see and be seen. Trash receptacles should be selected for not only getting the trash out but also for attractive design, maintenance, durability, color, and location.
	Fencing should be given thought as to purpose, location, look, maintenance, and safety. The City is in the process of constructing new homes in one of our predominantly black inner-city neighborhoods. The normal thing to have done without understanding the importance of the design would have been to put up a dull, drab, chain link fence. We didn't. I selected the fence myself, and it was a very attractive black wrought iron fence that one would see in a better developed part of town. Yes, it cost more. When it was priced, my city administrator sent me a note saying the fence cost almost $60,000 and how badly did I really want it. I simply wrote under his comments in bold capital letters the word BADLY. When that fence was installed, an incredible sense of pride developed in that area about their fence. What that fence said to the families and kids there was that they were good enough to deserve an attractive and beautiful living environment just like people in better neighborhoods enjoyed.
Finally, flowers.	Finally, flowers. I use flowers heavily in our city because they add such beauty to the public realm. There are many types of colorful flowering plants and flowers that do not use much water. The minimal cost of flowers is a great investment in creating sustainable communities.
	Mayor Nancy M. Graham's vision for West Palm Beach is to become the greatest medium-size city in Florida and a major player in Southeast Florida. The initial phase of that dream was realized when a fountain and amphitheater symbolizing the new downtown were dedicated during the City's Centennial celebration in November 1994. It has continued with the revitalization of the City's business district and waterfront, neighborhood improvements, the establishment of youth-oriented programs, a major focus on fighting crime and changing methods of policing, the development of affordable housing, and creating a customer-focused government. The Mayor's vision and straightforward approach to city government have resulted in numerous awards, including the Executive Women's Leadership Award for Public Section, Leadership Palm Beach County's President's Award for Outstanding Community Leadership, the Tree of Life Award from the Jewish National Fund, and many others. The Mayor was listed in Newsweek magazine as one of the top 25 Mayors in the country and was the feature story and on the cover of the March 1997 edition of Working Woman magazine.