Site planning goals
- promote public health, safety, and welfare
- protecting the public from natural disasters/hazards
- reducing construction and maintenance costs
- improving site function (including greater convenience and access for users)
- increasing profit from development
- protecting valuable natural and cultural amenities
- supporting critical ecological processes
LARE frames site planning as a component of smart growth and sustainable design and as such planning and design activities should ALWAYS find a way to balance social/cultural, environmental and economic considerations
Sustainable site planning
“Context-sensitive” and capable of “minimizing negative development impacts by respecting the landscape’s natural patterns and processes”; “sustainable site planning protects and restores degraded natural and cultural resources and minimizes detrimental impacts of development on the environment”
Five principles of sustainable site planning
- Protecting the natural environment from unnecessary impacts
- Using design as an opportunity to restore environmental degradation
- Discouraging development on developed “greenfield” sites
- Encouraging density, mixed-uses and walkable communities
- Promoting efficient resource use and resource conservation
*these value-oriented statements form the conceptual basis for the majority of planning and design content covered by the Section 3 exam
Site selection
Directly influences and is influenced by site program
LA should preference sites for development (regardless of intended use) that are:
- reflective of input from stakeholders
- located in or adjacent to existing communities
- previously developed (including greyfield and brownfield sites)
- adjacent to public transportation
Development should generally be avoided on sites that:
- contain prime farmland or are undeveloped (greenfield)
- provide habitat for threatened or endangered species or contain sensitive ecosystems (e.g., wetlands)
- are located within the 100-year floodplain
- require extensive excavation and grading
7 steps necessary to guide the site selection process, and they are as follows:
- Clarify the project’s purpose, goals, and requirements
- Determine the site selection criteria, including factors such as access, utilities, and size
- Identify potential sites
- Evaluate the suitability of each site, weighing the environmental, economic, and social opportunities and constraints
- Rank and prioritize the selected sites
- Select the most suitable site and develop a site selection report to document the results of the evaluation
- Conduct feasibility studies to determine items such as market analysis, design concepts, and project costs
Site programming
Determines the specific uses for a site as well as the associated functional and space requirements that are necessary to meet a project’s objectives
Influenced by the opportunities and constraints presented by a specific site
Ultimate goal of program refinement is to provide clear direction and vision as the project evolves, and program development is always about taking future or projected needs into account
Site program
Developed as a list of all the requirements that the design solution must include and satisfy
a program document will always include:
- A list of goals and objectives
- Elements to be included in the design
- Special requirements for the design to fulfill
The program document has two purposes:
- acts as a summary and a synthesis of the site inventory/analysis and client interview
- functions as a checklist to compare the design proposal against
A project’s program may be developed by
the client/client’s employees or with the assistance of consultants with programming expertise
The specific consultant or consultants chosen to undertake a programming study will reflect the client’s project objectives
Program development
A period of research and information gathering used to determine project outcomes
Programming studies are guided by the following information
- market analyses
- literature reviews
- user demand studies
- stakeholder interviews/surveys
- analysis of relevant precedents
- client objectives (desired uses, special features, design styles)
- project budget
Note that program development is not analogous to the “basis of design”
“Basis of design”
Set of documents used to formally establish a project’s design intent and used to evaluate conformance to the desired design. As such, the basis of design document can include relevant regulatory requirements, a geotechnical report, budget and schedule information and other various data
Site inventory
Process of documenting various site data
ONLY the act of collecting data
Site analysis
Follows the site inventory, and it requires the landscape architect to interpret the site inventory data to make conclusions relevant to the design process
Any conclusions drawn from site data is analysis
Examples of site inventory
- identifying the locations of specimen trees
- acquiring topographic data of the site
- cataloging the soils found on the site
When translated to the analysis phase, these may yield information including
- suggesting that site access occur in locations without specimen trees
- conducting a slope analysis to site a building
- determining that the site’s soils cannot support stormwater infiltration
Site analysis
-
Study Guide Ch. 2 Public Outreach38
-
Study Guide Ch. 3 Plan Types56
-
Study Guide Ch. 4 Pre-Design Process20
-
Study Guide Ch. 5 Opportunities and Constraints112
-
Study Guide Ch. 6 Site Design Process40
-
Study Guide Ch. 7 Buildings and Circulation122
-
Study Guide Ch. 8 Plants, Parks, and Sports39
-
Study Guide Ch. 9 Other Design Topics81
-
Key Points1
