Holistic Urban Design for Integrated Communities

Public plazas and other gathering spaces should reflect the community they are built within, and Otak understands how to enhance both interaction and communal experience with these places. We respect and celebrate the various cultures, values, and interests of the people whom these spaces belong to, and we strive to design active and vibrant public places, instilling a sense of community pride and creating lasting legacies within our collective memory.

Otak designs streetscapes for people and for multi-modal use. While engaging communities in the design process to reflect and honor their interests and cultural heritage, we develop shared streets, expanding access to public spaces, prioritizing pedestrians, calming traffic, improving safety, and boosting social and economic activity. Our designers integrate low impact development and green infrastructure, human scale lighting, and furnishings and public art that reflect unique community character.

Master community planning accounts for common public places and values, envisions a future, and develops strategies, tasks, and schedules to accomplish goals, driving positive environmental change. For four decades, Otak’s interdisciplinary team has considered each project as essential to a larger system and, working closely with interested parties, has developed integrated solutions for local communities, ecologies, and economies using a triple-bottom-line approach that considers potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts.

Otak takes downtown revitalization seriously by creating thriving urban centers with active parks and public spaces, streetscapes, transit centers, and public facilities. Functional downtowns require mixed residential, retail, and civic use, and accounting for the community’s vision is essential to build a proactive, equitable plan. To accomplish this, Otak designs plan-making, visioning, and policy development for downtowns, as well as planning and designing plazas, pedestrian spaces, and urban street networks.

Our landscape architects work with designers and engineers to develop design guidelines and standards that address several places and topics, from multi-modal streets, to downtowns, to scenic byways and corridors. We create clear, concise, and intuitive design guideline documents with the designer in mind, carefully reviewing all applicable code requirements and standards at all governmental levels while also adhering to the specific context, history, and style of the project’s location.