There’s no shortage of public spaces in Cambridge; however, understanding how these spaces funcion and how they might better serce the community is a priority. Gehl is working with the City to better understand how a city can create design guidelines informed by public life and quality of experience.
Guiding Questions
Q.What does equity mean to Cambridge, and within the context of the guidelines?
Q.How might Cambridge format its guidelines in a way that maximizes clarity, with room for updates over time?
Q.How might Cambridge select an organizational structure for guidelines that is easy to understand and intuitive to apply?
Q.How might Cambridge’s guidelines be accessible to all of their intended users?
Urban Design Guidelines
Cambridge Urban Design Guidelines
Setting the Stage for Design Excellence Gehl is working with the City of Cambridge to redesign the City’s Urban Design Guidelines. Gehl’s role will be to develop a set of guiding principles and success metrics for the Guidelines, anchored in global best practices, and observational research of Cambridge’s public spaces and public life.
Gehl is a sub-consultant to OverUnder, an award-winning design firm that specializes in helping civic, cultural, and academic clients achieve sophisticated and distinctive designs with lasting impact. With a wider team of specialists in climate resiliency, zoning, and public realm the Gehl team is working together over an 18-month period to develop a vision for Cambridge’s Urban Design Guidelines.
To redesign the City’s Urban Design Guidelines, the Gehl team began by reviewing global best practices and existing Cambridge documents, including the review of 48 guidelines from around the world and interviews of three municipalities implementing the guidelines in their cities. The team explored how these guidelines
took shape from inception to rollout, with focus on development, implementation, organization, updates and adaptation, and sustainability and equity. Gehl will use this research to identify success criteria around style; Equitable Urban Quality, Sustainability and Place Identity; Public & Inter-Agency Engagement; User-Friendliness and Adaptability of the Guidelines and content.
Gehl is also leading a public life study to inform the guidelines. The purpose of this study is to:
• G ather insights focused on how people move through and spend time in Cambridge today
• R eveal opportunities to update the guidelines based on people’s lived experience of the built environment
• S erve as a baseline of Cambridge public space and public life quality, for future comparison
The outcome of this work will be the generation of data used to inform the guiding principles that set the foundation for the final guidelines to be published at the end of 2023.
Facts
Location Cambridge, MA
Client City of Cambridge, MA
Gehl team Julia Day (Project Director), Eamon O’Connor (Project Manager), Lily Wubeshet, Marina Recio Rodriguez, Candice Ji Year 2021-Ongoing
