Urban Planning Portfolio

Erica Hallman Urban Planning Portfolio

table of contents

About

Resume 3

I am an artist, exploring languages in the practice of Urban planning to cultivate communities of creation.

Community Engagement 5 Spatial Analysis 9 Neighborhood Character Analysis

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Sensing Campus 19 Site Analysis 23 Computer Aided Design 27 Darkroom Photography 31 Writing 35

I am inspired by the work of people like Theaster Gates, Neil Freeman, Jan Gehl and all who see the city as the central studio for exploring human experience and the possibilities of the urban future.

I work as a Community Organizer, CAD Designer, student of Urban Planning and Co-Founder of a housing, farming and job training organization that seeks to create self-sustaining communities by ending cycles of displacement, utilizing vacant land and structures characteristic of many urban landscapes.

I approach Urban Planning as an extension of my work as a Community Organizer laying the building blocks for truly sustainable communities - those that inherently value human life, honor experience and communal history. Only by honoring the the past can we begin to create a future that guides development by prioritizing people. As planner’s I believe we have a mandate to reverse the mistakes of the past by centering community voices calling for the restoration and development of inclusive neighborhoods.

I am interested in the psychology of place and how the design of the urban environment affects the mental and physical well being, with a specific interest in historic buildings, economic development, art, placemaking, job training, sustainability and racial equity. These themes have become the undercurrent of much of my work as an artist, photographer, planner, organizer and human navigating urban spaces.

Erica Hallman hallmaej@mail.uc.edu

1+ 314-518-7198

3222 Bishop St., Apt. 2 Cincinnati, OH 45220

EDUCATIOn

scholarships & awards

Experience

Bachelor of Urban Planning Minor of Non-Profit & Community Leadership Urban Design Certificate University of Cincinnati GPA 3.96

Expected Graduation April 2022

Jane & Phillip Foster Scholarship

Fall & Spring 2018

Faith and Public Life - Cincinnati, OH (September 2018 - Present) Field Organizer - Work to build political engagement in the African-American community by building relationships with Pastor’s and within churches to get congregations to make the commitment to vote, raising turnout from 60% to 75%

Associates of Applied Sciences Computer Aided Drafting St. Charles Community College GPA 3.75

Graduated Spring 2017

Planning Skills Communication Creative Problem Solving Community Engagement Team Building Community Organizing Grant Writing

technical Skills AutoCAD Revit Civil 3D Solid Works Architectural Drafting Structural Drafting Adobe Illustrator InDesign Lightroom Photoshop Premiere SketchUp/V-ray ESRI/ArcGIS

Ladislas & Vilmas Segoe Scholarship

Fall & Spring 2018

Citizens for Yvette Simpson – Cincinnati, OH

(August 2017 – November 2017) Field Organizer Golden Key international Honour Society - Develop targeted canvassing strategy and associated territory utilizing Nation Builder

Inducted Fall 2018 - Train, organize and direct volunteers to canvas and phone bank and lead door to door team efforts

University of Cincinnati Dean’s List Winco Windows – St. Louis, MO

(February 2017 - Present)

Fall 2017 & Spring 2018 Jr. Draftsman - Produce floor plans, elevations and section details for window shop drawings using AutoCAD Better Billions Program - Grand Prize Winner - Expedited projects for a cost savings of $300,000 by 2nd quarter of employment

October 2016

Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

Inducted Spring 2016 St. Charles Community College Dean’s List

Summer 2015- Spring 2017

St. Charles Community College – Cottleville, MO

(January 2016 - May 2016)

Marketing & Communications Intern - Developed advertising & marketing content for web, social & traditional media platforms - Photographed & edited images from programming, special events and open portrait sessions Honey’s Child Boutique – St. Louis, MO

(April 2015 - August 2017) Store Manager - Delivered excellent customer service experience in store, producing $500/day in sales - Created captivating & inspiring content developed with in house team - Strengthened brand outreach by over 6K social media followers over 4 months St. Louis Roots – St. Louis, MO

(December 2014 - Present) Co-Founder -Founded organization around aiding in actualization of sustainable self-determined communities -Work to implement a paid training program to teach home rehab to cohort of community members -Secure abandoned homes for rehab, and assist community members to become owners -Transform empty lots into production gardens to give community access to nutritious foods Community Organizer – Ferguson, MO; St. Louis, MO & Cincinnati, OH (August 2014 - Present) -Participated in strategy meetings with local and national organizations such as Millennial Activists United (MAU), Black Lives Matter founders, the US Justice Department liaisons, PICO, The Organization for Black Struggle, SEIU, Fight for $15, Arch City Defenders, NLG Jail Support and other Hands Up Coalition partners in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown in Feguson, MO -Organized community engagement discussion “Why Ferguson Matters to the LGBTQIA Community” in September 2014, to open a forum for the LGBTQIA community to understand what was happening in Ferguson, create opportunities to lift up, support & be inclusive of the voices of people of color and created an action plan to call LGBTQIA organizations into action -Organized allies to hold workshops & teach-ins during Mizzou’s demonstrations of November 2015 that resulted in resignation of the University of Missouri president -Assist Iris Roley and the United Black Front in Cincinnati, OH in organizing the Collaborative Agreement Refresh efforts by producing media materials

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community engagement

St. louis roots At St. Louis Roots, we are driven by a single goal; to create strong self-sustained communities. Our approach is to build wealth and cultivate political power through concentrated neighborhood based job training, home ownership and urban farming programs that restore community control over the basic tenets of food and shelter as the building blocks of neighborhoods that prioritize people.

Our approach came from a realization in 2014 about an disconnect in the city of St. Louis’s social and urban fabric. Like many Midwestern rust belt cities St. Louis had experienced massive population decline since its peak resulting in the United States largest population decline frrom the 1950 to the 2010 census of 62.7%. As a result St. Louis is covered in abadoned houses and vacant property concentrated primarily on the cities Northside, which encompasses a number of diverse communities that share one statistic in common - their residets are majority African-American. The line of segregation that seperates St. Louis in two runs along Delmar Boulevard a throughfare running East to West across the entire city, known as the Delmar Divide.

At the same time St. Louis was suffering from widespread vacancy, the city was seeing its last homeless shelter shut down and numbers of people experiencing homelessness having nowhere to go. The solution seemed obvious. St. Louis has large numbers of unfilled houses and people who need homes. The task was how to connect them.

St. Louis Roots has been building capacity with community partners to initiate a job training program that train a team of community members in the skills of home construction and rehabilitation using currently vacant homes as their classroom and helps them become the owners. As a cohort the graduates of the program will be given business ownership training to assist them as they transfer their skills from the classroom to the workforce where they will be asked to join and run a cooperatively owned minority contracting business that centers their skills.

A farm will be established to utilize vacant lot area that will serve as a neighborhood center and community space for programming in addition to locally based food productioin centers.

We believe this model restores commuity ownership and control in ways that circumvent cycles of gentrification and take steps towards creating true sustainability in utilizing the existing urban landscape as its second biggest resource, and its people always coming first.

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LGBTQ & Black oppression: Why we should all care about ferguson LGBTQ & Black Oppression was a community meeting held for the St. Louis area queer community to meet and have a dialogue to understand what was happening in Ferguson from the voices of the people who were living it. The movement to create change in Ferguson and the St. Louis community was being led on the ground and in organizing spaces by a group of young queer black people, made up primarily of women.

This meeting was held to invite the more privilged members of the LGBTQ community to hear from the members of our community that are the most affected on why Ferguson was important, how they could support the people of color who were fighting for change and think through as a community what actions we could take to move the LGBTQ organizations in our community to support the people and work that was being done where we lived.

I organized the community meeting as a member of a three person team. The event was held at locally owned business that donated their space and outreach was done through canvassing at other community meetings and events. The event was hosted, moderated by and held a panel composed of 5 members each doing grassroots community organizing.

After the panel discussion, the space was opened up for questions. Then the community participated in a collective decision making processes that yielded 13 ways that each person would commit to supporting the work being done by these community organizers and to reach out to local LGBTQ organizations and ask them to do the same.

At the close each attendee had made a written commitment to the strategies and a follow up meeting was scheduled and taken under the wing of one of the grassroots organizations that were represented to continue assist in implementing strategies.

Community partners included Show Me No Hate, Blankspace, Millenial Activists United (MAU) and Socialist Alternative.

Ecovillage Over the summer of 2018, I worked with the Ecovillage Cooperative Homes and Gardens in St. Louis, MO. The Ecovillage runs a series of community based programs designed to uplift residents.

The Ecovillage’s primary goal is to provide healthy food and healthy space to the community through it’s urban food and herb gardens. The Ecovillage also does a weekly food share that is open to the community, of products that have been donated by a local Whole Foods.

The Ecovillage’s secondary mission is to provide co-operative housing fixing up houses in the neighborhood and using the rent and labor from co-op residents to provide materials and restore houses to liveable condition for the members.

Collaborative agreement In 2001 Cincinnati had seen several of its black residents shot and killed by police and The United Black Front decided to take action.

First, they held months of community forums for people to tell their stories about their experiences with the police in their communities. Then after collecting all of those stories the United Black Front filed suit against the city and after unrest erupted their work became the primary vehicle for the community, the Department of Justice and the City of CIncinnati.

In 2016 after the agreement had been in place well over a decade during a monitoring meeting it was realized that the early warning tracking system had been dismantled. The early tracking warning system is designed to measure and compares the data from police stops in the same neighborhood at the same time of day so that if their are massive descrepancies the department can address discrimanatory policing practices before they become a larger issue.

I worked with Iris Roley of the United Black Front on her work to do the Collaborative Agreement Refresh to update the Collaborative’s plan and implementation strategies, assisting her in organizing events, doing outreach and developing media.

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Spatial analysis

Over the course of a semester my classmates Grant Webster, Joe Carli and I worked as a team to understand and evaluate the Camp Washington neighborhood in the Mill Creek Watershed of Cincinnati, OH.

CAMP WASHINGTON

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We quickly realized that food accessability in the neighborhood was a pressing issue.

In order to communicate this visually we first looked at the transportation network in the community, as a determinant of this primarily walking communities ability to travel in to existing destinations in order to get groceries.

We then assesed the land resources available to the community to develop an urban production food garden.

Lastly we looked at the exisiting locations in the neighborhood that had some food resources, limited as they were, at convenience store locations, fast food restaurants and one urban farm.

TRANSPORT NETWORK Neighborhood Intersections Highways/Interstates Aerterial Roads (Major Roads) Neighborhood Roads (Minor Roads) Walking Paths Railroad Highway Intersections

1” = 800’

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In order to give an appropriate recommendation of a new location for food access we analyzed the area for elevation/slope, soil suitability, pervious surface areas and those with walkable access, which due to the Railroad tracks covering the West side of the neighborhood and Industrial lots that border them were analyzed to constrain potential sites to only include ouputs East of Spring Grove Avenue.

To inform our recommendation for a new food access location we looked at the areas where there was existing food access at the current urban farm, existing restaurants (exclusively fast food options) and existing convenience stores within the neighborhood of Camp Washington.

Additionally, we looked at the distance to neighboring grocery stores and used this information to guide our recommendation for placement of new food source that would best provide for the neighborhoods residents that currently had the most limited access.

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Neighborhood character analysis

During our study of the neighborhood character of Camp Washington we undertook some neighborhood sensing excercises to capture our initial impressions and perceptions.

This map utilizes Kevin Lynch’s language of sensation memory, as described in, “The Image of the City�, utilizing the 5 elements of paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks.

I designated Districts as the railroad district, the industrial district, residential district and green spaces. Landmarks were businesses and key institutions in the neighborhood and boundaries, major and minor paths and nodes were all communicated visually with the sketches of initial impressions.

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In order to represent the character of the Camp Washington neighborhood we used sketch up to model the stree typlogies that were representative of the 4 distinctive neighborhood districts that we identified: Residential, Industrial, Small Business District and Chain Commercial.

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To illustrate the distinct character of the neighborhood districts we modeled a street within each district that is represetative of each of the typologies at a scale of 1� = 40’. In order to communicate the feeling of the space invoked by the built enviornment in Residential, Industrial, Small Business and Chain Commercial Districts we illustrated an elevation street view for each in AutoCAD.

WILD JOE'S INC

WILD JOE'S INC

JOE'S INC

JOE'S INC

Used Car Sales Rear of Bldg.

2929 Henshaw

Used Car Sales Rear of Bldg.

2929 Henshaw

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sensing campus

Over the course of a semester I undertook an examination of the University of Cincinnati’s campus through the lens of viewsheds that conveyed distincive architecture at play in UC’s built environment which uniquely exploit the topography of a campus seated in city of seven hills.

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These illustrations represent an AI Map representing viewsheds on campus, hand sketches examining the public realm, figureground maps and three distinctive viewsheds on UC’s campus drawn by hand and a Sketch-Up model rendered in V-Ray. Opposite is an sketch up overview of UC’s campus rendered utilizing V-Ray.

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Site Analysis

Over the course of a semester we undertook an examination of a site located in the community of Lincoln Heights, OH to gain a better understanding of the multi-layered design process involved in site analysis.

In a team of six we produced a physical model at a scale of 1� = 100’ in order to get experience with the modeling process and to have a tactile 3D reference for the site.

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These are examples of conceptural architectural styles we are modeling as part of our site’s design development plan looking to provide a variety of housing types and experiences that will fuel economic development, grow the tax base and spur population growth in the Lincoln Heights community.

This is a concept map outlining a proposed concept for redevelopment of the site in Lincoln Heights, OH.

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Other features of the concept plan include a green ampitheatre utilizing the natural slope of the land and redevelopment of two currently abandoned structures into a maker’s space and artist’s live/work space.

Nature Path

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This concept plan features a Nature preserve and green path that circulates throughout the cite as well as two concentrations of mixed use development featuring retail commercial, office, cow-working and residential spaces.

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comPuter Aided Design

These are examples of architectural drafting work done utilizing AutoCAD softwares to show floorplans, elevations, details and sectionals from a variety of projects.

36'-0"

13'-5"

22'-7"

22'-0 1/2" 5 1/2" 14'-0 1/2"

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BEDROOM

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13'-11"

15'-2 1/2"

22'-10"

LINE OF FLOOR ABOVE

16'-10"

18'-3"

36'-0"

58'-0 1/2"

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WINCO

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Reviewer Note: The required quantity type "W1" differs between the architectural plans furnished to WINCO for preparation of the shop drawings and the request for Quote.

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All dimensions, configurations, orientation and handedness of asymmetrical configurations shown on this drawing are WINCO's interpretation of the Architectural drawings furnished.

Weather / Attack Dry / Protected They must be verified / guaranteed or corrected by the reviewerSide prior to release for fabrication.

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Anchor Type, Diameter, O.C. spacing, etc. as req'd per Anchor Schedule by Others Fastener by Others N.B.W.

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All Elevations in this submittal are viewed from the Building Exterior.

Non-Compressible Shim / Blocking, at all fastener locations, as required to achieve Square, Plumb & Level Window Installation.

N.B.W.

R.O.

These are examples of technical drawings done for window fabrication and installation showing floorplans locating window locations, window elevations and widow detail sectionals.

Intellectual Property of WINCO. To be used only for the Project it was created for.

This drawing may contain information given to WINCO in confidence. This Drawing may not be transmitted or used without WINCO's express consent.

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Darkroom photography

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Writing

I used to be a Patriot. Since I was a teenager I kept a copy of the Bill of Rights tacked to the wall in my room at parents house, in my dorm room, in my first apartment & elegantly framed in gold where it hung most recently at my now vacated grown up Condo. This document I believed to be the saving grace of a country that was quickly unraveling into a wider & wider bi-partisan divide. As a country we were & are constantly if not religiously failing the citizens (united) for the Almighty Dollar’s 1st Freedom of Speech. And 99% agree(d) that everything, although nothing precisely has gone all wrong.

When I say I used to be a Patriot, I am sure there are many who would not agree with me. As broken as I knew “the whole damn system” to be, I did believe that we could demand & create the change we wished to see. I knew we were broken but believed that at our heart lay principles that allowed us to heal.

It is August the 13th, 2014. I am in Ferguson standing on a sidewalk at the corner of Chambers & West Florissant. There are about 20 Ferguson police officers standing across from us in the parking lot of a Mobile gas station. Four days prior a man who wears their uniform shot & killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. We do not know the name of the man who shot Mike Mike to death. We do not know that this is only the beginning. We know only that Michael was supposed to go to college on Monday & instead we will bury his body. We know only, that we will not take it anymore. And I know the first amendment by heart.

Four days prior, I am a Patriot. I got out of work about 9:30pm & met my fiancé for a date night. Instead we are met with the news that a police officer shot Michael Brown to death. Instead of a dinner table, Ashley & I hold hands across the blood-stained street where Mike’s body laid for 4 1/2 hours.

Three days prior, I am a Patriot. After a 9AM meeting at the Ferguson Police Department in anticipation of their first statement & a long day without one, we leave to get food before we gather for a candlelight vigil on Canfield at 7PM. On our way we are nearly run off the road by police cars racing past us. My heart races along with them. We exit & make a left onto West Florissant passing the typical Midwestern shopping mall. Target, Starbucks, Verizon, grocery store, fast food, bank - lights. A sudden bank of flashing red & blue lights - and more police & their vehicles than I have ever seen or known existed in real life or fiction. Terrified, I walk past nearly a mile of armed police running towards the vigil. I find out the police also came for the vigil - in their riot gear. The thin glass begins to crack & so do the windows.

A rumor has circulated that Mike Mike stole a pack of rillos from the QT around the corner before the storeowner called the cops, who shot & killed him for this “robbery”. People shake their heads & weep. A black man’s life is worth more than 99 cents. But the barrel of a gun is contrary by nature. We walk shaken by our loss & confused and enraged by the heavy police presence as we walk through Canfield. They murdered our son & now they follow us to his grave, stalk & intimidate us as we attempt to mourn him, laying flowers in his blood.

St. Louis in the dead of August has a way of holding its heat. The blacktop heats up till the air is sacran sweet with the smell of tar & cotton candy sticking to every pore. The air stays heavy. Young men begin to pass us offering up Rillos. An old man walks by & laughs bitterly, “Ain’t gonna be no more QT...” We round the corner & the words to describe what we see have yet to be found - but they rise up with the sound of a riot. Glass breaks, buildings burn. The police stand guard (of themselves) & watch, a thousand deep, half a mile away - pointing their assault rifles & shotguns at citizens. Blocking our way they tell us we cannot leave & tell us to go back - go back into the burning buildings & find our way out there. “Go Where?” my fiance asks. “Well you shouldn’t have come down here. Should have known this was gonna happen. It’s common sense” Officer Neff tells her.

The 11th & 12th go by in a blur of militarized police oppression, and the 13th nearly went by the same. But instead, something changes. I change.

It is August 13th, 2014 & I am standing at the corner of Chambers & West Florissant - and I am a Patriot. I am standing hands raised, as people chant around me “Don’t shoot!”

About half of the 40 or so people I am standing with are on their knees begging the officers across the street, in this moment & every other “Don’t shoot!” Two tactical operations units topped with occupied snipers nests roll towards us with a unit of about 50 riot police marching in formation behind them. An officer comes over the loud speaker, “Attention. This is the police department. You must disperse immediately. You will be subject to arrest if you do not disperse. Leave the area peacefully now.”

The crowd begins to move. I do not. I begin screaming. Ferguson PD rips the Bill of Rights off my wall & sets it aflame laughing as they watch it burn up.

I scream, “We were peaceful.

We’ve been peacefully protesting as is our right given to us by the constitution of the United States of America.” I am still a Patriot. “You’re supposed to protect us!” The sniper peering through his scope pans over to me. He is precise. I watch him line up his crosshairs. “Protect us!

Protect us, protect our babies!” My voice begins to crack - and so does my faith. Here standing on the corner my faith is cracking. “We have rights.” This is my last moment as a Patriot. The sniper cocks his carefully trained rifle & I hear the click as his bullet slides in to place. I stare at this man, finger hovering over the trigger of a sniper rifle that is trained on my head. My faith shatters - there’s no such thing as rights. In this moment there is only the officer, his bullet & his finger hovering over the trigger. And someone will decide later if he was “justified”. The words “the right of the people...” have gone up in flames. The last time I will ever scream about my rights, I yell, “You can’t turn this into a police state just because you don’t like what we’re saying!”

The camera on my phone shakes. A large man, I now call friend, picks me up & carries me away from the sidewalk, in fear for my life. I finally start to walk for myself, backwards, camera turned towards the police. I know now. There is no calvary. That piece of paper isn’t coming to save us .

My “rights” lay in the street. Paper burning. Fuel to feed the bonfire the police are about to make of this place. And as I watch, camera unsteady the 50 man unit advances on us - we are dispersing as ordered. Pop, spark, clang, sizzle - I learn what teargas tastes like.

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