City Hires New Firm To Revise Downtown Plan By Duany

8 November 2005 - 8:00am

West Palm Beach City Commission selects new firm to revise the City's Downtown Master Plan, based on form driven code authored by Duany-Plater Zyberk in 1996, with new, guideline driven code.

West Palm Beach City Commission selected a new firm to revise the City's Downtown Master Plan, authored by Duany-Plater Zyberk in 1996. The selected firm, Zyscovich, Inc. "challenged commissioners to embrace new building forms and to write more specific guidelines, in some cases specifying on a block-by-block basis how buildings should look.", in contrast to the former plan by New Urbanism pioneers Duany-Plater Zyberk relied on creating "a simple code with a few simple building forms aimed at creating pedestrian-friendly streets".

By hiring a new firm with a different philosphy, the City acknowledged that their plan was no longer adequate to the growing needs of their downtown.

Source: Palm Beach Post, November 8, 2005
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It is hard to think of a starker contrast than that between Moses modernism and Jacobs localism. Yet the standoff between Jacobs and Moses only ever sparred two separate wings of the middle class concerning how to build and rebuild the city for people of greater rather than lesser class privilege.