Celebrating its 16th year in 2011, DPZ Charlotte is a major leader in the practice and direction of urban planning, involved in designing over 150 new and existing communities in the Southeast region and North America.

DPZ Charlotte is the regional office of internationally renowned urban planners Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, headquartered in Miami, Florida. DPZ maintains another regional office in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

DPZ Charlotte's projects have received numerous awards, including a National Smart Growth Award by the Sierra Club and a National Award for Best of American Living Award from the National Association of Homebuilders and Professional Builders Magazine. DPZ Charlotte is also the recipient of the American Business Journal Green Entrepreneurial Effort/Innovative Idea in 2008 and the National Outstanding Planning Award called, "Making Great Communities Happen," from the American Planning Association.

The office is led by Tom Low, a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), recognized by the New York Times as "the most important collective architectural movement in the United States in the past fifty years." The movement, currently over 4,000 strong, marked a turning point from the segregated planning and architecture of post-war America; instead, they advocate and promote the universal and time-tested principles of traditional planning and design that have created the best-loved and most-enduring places throughout the world.

The firm's method of integrating master plans with project-specific design codes and regulations is currently being applied to sites ranging from 10 to 10,000 acres throughout the Southeastern region and North America.

A significant aspect of DPZ Charlotte's work is its innovative initiatives; Light Imprint, Learning Cottages, and Civic By Design; that are integral to research and the firm's designs.

Light Imprint is a planning and development strategy that emphasizes sustainability, pedestrian-oriented design, and environmental and infrastructure efficiency. At the same time, the approach reduces a community's infrastructure costs. LI implements transect-based environmental methods that are not found in other strategies. LI is available as a publication, Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainability and Urbanism, and as a website.

The Learning Cottage is an alternative to school mobile units and factory style schools. This prototype is modeled on the great American campus. The two-classroom Learning Cottage prototype cost falls between the price of a typical trailer and permanent institutional construction. The scope of the Learning Cottage includes designing campus plans, alternative classroom plans and elevations, and plans and elevations for gymnasiums and other administrative buildings.

Civic by Design fostered by DPZ Charlotte is the research on the early twentieth century planning movement, specifically the work of planner John Nolen. The techniques used by these civic planners reattach the thread of historic continuity for current community design.

DPZ Charlotte's recent books, The Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainability and Community Design and Civic By Design: John Nolen's Lessons and the New Urbanism, written by Thomas Low, are textbooks that describe both initiatives and their place and influence in new urbanism and community design. These on-going efforts along with the depth of experience in town making have earned DPZ Charlotte regional and national recognition for their contributions to the American built environment.

Back to top

Established in 1995, the Charlotte, North Carolina, office of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company is a major regional leader in the practice and direction of urban planning. With over 30 projects completed, DPZ Charlotte has designed new communities and created civic vision plans for existing cities and towns throughout the Southeast and in other parts of the United States.

Regional Director Thomas Low, AIA leads the DPZ Charlotte. The office opened in 1995. The office is located in the Myers Park neighborhood, which was designed by John Nolen in the early twentieth century.

Projects completed by DPZ Charlotte range in size from infill development covering a few city blocks to new communities covering thousands of acres. Projects such as Cheshire in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and Habersham near Beaufort, South Carolina, are good examples of new towns. Even though both towns are good vacation spots, they provide year-round residents with traditional, walkable communities. Each project has a range of housing organized along the transect from neighborhood edge to village center. The village centers have small shops, restaurants, and post offices to encourage residents to gather and meet one another. Here are some built examples:

Over the years, DPZ Charlotte's projects have received numerous awards. In 2008, the Light Imprint Initiative received the Charlotte Region Green Entrepreneurial Effort/Innovative Idea from the Charlotte Chapter of the U. S. Green Building Council and the Charlotte Business Journal.

Habersham, South Carolina, received the National Award for Best of American Lining from the National Association of Homebuilders and Professional Builders Magazine in 2005.

The Virginia Blue Ridge Chapter of AIA awarded its 2007 Honor Award for Excellence in Urban Design to DPZ Charlotte for the City of Roanoke Market Study (prepared in conjunction with SFCS, Inc., of Roanoke). Following that, the Virginia Downtown Development Association gave its Award of Excellence to the City of Roanoke, for the same Market Study.

In  2006, the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association awarded the North Carolina Marvin Collins Award for Implementation for the community of Willow Oaks in Greensboro.

Southside, a neighborhood in Greensboro, is the winner of three awards. They include a Sierra Club Top Ten Developments of 2005, a 2004 Environmental Protection Agency National Award for Smart Growth Achievement, and a "Making Great Communities Happen" Outstanding Planning Award from the American Planning Association, to City of Greensboro, North Carolina, for implementation of the Southside Area Development Plan in 2003.

Vermillion, located in Huntersville, North Carolina, received an Award of Merit from the Charlotte Section of the American Institute of Architects for Vermillion Phase I in 2001 and a Smart Growth Award by the Sierra Club in 2000.

Back to top

In the last five years, DPZ Charlotte also launched three initiatives that have received both national and international attention. Each initiative has required research and study that has developed into useful New Urbanist planning tools.

The Early Twentieth Century Neighborhood Planning Initiative seeks to return successful early town and neighborhood planning techniques to the development of modern towns and new neighborhoods. By focusing on the work of American planners like John Nolen and the Olmsteds, this initiative emphasizes the importance of providing public open space in compact, walkable communities. One product of this ongoing initiative is the publication of the book, Civic By Design: John Nolen's Lessons and the New Urbanism, written by Low with Thomas Hanchett. One example of the inspiration found in Nolen's work is the pinwheel square incorporated into Vermillion, a DPZ Charlotte project in Huntersville, North Carolina.

The Light Imprint Initiative was introduced at an Open Space Workshop in conjunction with the Congress of the New Urbanism held in Philadelphia in 2007. Light Imprint is a New Urbanist planning approach that adds a tool box of techniques to manage stormwater and natural drainage. Interest generated at that workshop grew exponentially. DPZ Charlotte began creating Light Imprint overlays for its projects in the planning and construction stages. DPZ Charlotte assembled a team of experts, led by Low, to publish a limited edition of the first Light Imprint Handbook in 2007. Following an intensive four-month period of international peer review of the Handbook and the associated web site, the Light Imprint team gathered again at DPZ Charlotte in August 2008 to edit and compile version 1.3 of the newest Light Imprint Handbook: Integrating Sustainability and Community Design.

The Learning Cottage Initiative grew from an informal dinner discussion following a meeting of the Civic By Design Forum, which is chaired by Low. Those attending the dinner were discussing the Katrina cottages proposed as housing replacements for FEMA trailers. The question arose, "Could a similar design replace mobile classrooms at local schools?" Everyone agreed that mobile classrooms used to supplement classroom space are visually unappealing, generally poorly sited, and signify overcrowding. Ideas for a Katrina-inspired Learning Cottage were sketched on paper napkins. The interest generated became the basis for the School Design Workshop held on September 12, 2006. The Learning Cottage was the subject of a Salon held at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Philadelphia in 2007. Since then, DPZ Charlotte greatly expanded the scope of the initiative by designing campus plans, alternate classroom plans and elevations, and plans and elevations for gymnasiums and administrative buildings.

The projects completed by DPZ Charlotte have not been limited to the Carolinas. In October 2005, Low participated in the Mississippi Renewal Forum. Along with two hundred community leaders and design professionals, he worked to plan the rebuilding of eleven coastal communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. During the weeklong charrette, Low led a team from Long Beach, Mississippi, a town severely damaged during the storm. Other staff members from DPZ Charlotte worked on several rebuilding efforts in New Orleans including a regional plan for St Bernard Parish, a plan for the French Quarter, and a master plan for Jackson Barracks.

Back to top