Emeritus Professor and Alumni Team Win National Urbanism Award
Work for the City of Beaufort, South Carolina, led by Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Urban Design David Walters with alumnus Craig Lewis (Master of Public Administration) and a team of UNC Charlotte alumni, has won a Charter Award from the Congress of the New Urbanism (CNU). Among the nation’s premier urban design awards, the CNU Charter Awards “recognize exemplary work in architectural, landscape, urban, and regional design, as defined by the Charter of the New Urbanism. The Charter defines the essential qualities of walkable, sustainable places from the scale of the region down to the block and building.”
The UNC Charlotte team received one of only ten Charter Awards given this year from several hundred submissions, and one of only two that were singled out for recognition in regional planning as well as for urban design at city and neighborhood scales.
Representing more than five years of work, the project in Beaufort is the result of a lengthy and detailed design and community participation process that began with a county-wide regional plan for Beaufort County in 2009 and continued in additional public design phases over three years for the City of Beaufort. These various phases dealt with different geographical and demographic sectors of the city and comprised detailed urban design strategies for development and redevelopment in a wide variety of settings: the historic urban center, urban and natural waterfronts, historic residential neighborhoods, institutional campuses, greenway corridors and parks, suburban commercial strips, preserved landscapes, and green field fringes. All development and redevelopment strategies were governed by principles of sustainable and resilient urbanism, and this multi-year effort culminated with the writing and adoption in 2015 of a detailed form-based zoning code and development ordinance for the City of Beaufort.
Led by Walters and Lewis, the large team of UNC Charlotte alumni included graduates from the School of Architecture’s architecture and urban design programs and the Department of Geography’s community planning program: Aleksandra Borisenko, Allen Davis, Nicole Goss, Dave Malushizky, Adam Martin, Dylan McKnight, Keihly Moore, Lindsay Shelton, and Rachel Wheeler.