Andres Duany Keynote Talk

Wednesday night, August 26th, 2009, a couple hundred Louisianians gathered in the Old State Capitol in downtown Baton Rouge to hear the musings of an old friend. Andrés Duany, founding principal of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), was a key player in the original Baton Rouge Downtown Revitalization (Plan Baton Rouge) and came back to Louisiana after hurricanes Katrina and Rita to help in regional planning efforts. He is always honest, always thought provoking, and never predictable.

DPZ is widely recognized as a leader of the New Urbanism, an international movement that seeks to end suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment.  In the years since the firm first received recognition for the design of Seaside, Florida, in 1980, DPZ has completed designs for close to 300 new towns, regional plans, and community revitalization projects. This work has exerted a significant influence on the practice and direction of urban planning and development in the United States and abroad.

The firm’s method of integrating planning with accompanying design codes is being applied in towns and cities for sites ranging from 10 to over 500,000 acres throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. DPZ has received numerous awards, including two State of Florida Governor’s Urban Design Awards for Excellence. Seaside has been documented in over 800 articles and books and was described by Time Magazine as “the most astounding design achievement of its era.” The projects of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company have focused international attention on urbanism and its postwar decline. DPZ was instrumental in the creation of the Traditional Neighborhood Development Ordinance (TND), a prescription for pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use, compact urban growth, which has been incorporated into the zoning codes of municipalities across the country.  The firm has developed a comprehensive municipal zoning ordinance called the SmartCode, prescribing appropriate urban arrangement for all uses and all densities.

But DPZ has something new in the works...did you know agriculture was the new golf?

Andrés Duany''s Keynote, in Seven Parts

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7