Category : Community & Regional Planning

Moving Forward, Even Amid the Uncertainty of COVID-19

2020 Community & Regional Planning, Urban Design

Proactive community planning is a critical component to the health of any community. And right now, it’s more important than ever before.

The past 12 months have been very interesting here in Nebraska: in the spring of 2019, devastating floods swept across the state, wiping out infrastructure and leaving businesses destroyed; a year later, the global COVID-19 pandemic has flooded our communities in a different but equally significant and devastating way.…

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Four Foundations of Successful Preservation

2020 Community & Regional Planning, Preservation, Restoration

National Preservation Month offers a chance to consider what it takes to preserve the past to create a better future.

The month of May is dedicated to National Preservation Month, a time to celebrate the diverse and unique heritage of our country’s cities and states.…

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The Ways Preservation Pays

2020 Architecture, Climate Change, Community & Regional Planning, Community Development, PLanning, Restoration, Sustainability, Urban Design

From affordable housing to sustainable practices, a look at six benefits historic preservation can have on a community’s bottom line.   

My passion for historic preservation began when I was young. An admiration for the beauty of old buildings and the extensive details of these structures ultimately led me to pursue a career as an urban planner.…

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Design Residency Explores Urban Redevelopment and Transformation of a Living Community

2019 Community & Regional Planning, PLanning, Urban Design

Eleven graduate students from nine universities across seven states and two countries came together Nov. 5-8, 2019 for RDG’s ninth annual Design Residency.

Residents were charged with solving a challenging design problem: reimagine and reinvigorate the eastern end of Des Moines’ Douglas Avenue Corridor, a section of the city with a highly diverse yet low-income population, deteriorating infrastructure, lack of walkability and accessibility and numerous struggling businesses.…

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Create Meaning Together With Design Residency

2019 Climate Change, Community & Regional Planning, Design Residency, Early Learning, Landscape Architecture, Resilience, Sustainability, Uncategorized

Meeting The Challenges of Climate Change

In October 2018, RDG Planning and Design hosted its 8thannual Design Residency, a 3-day charette style learning event which gathers the nation’s top graduate students from many fields to address complex community problems.…

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Promoting Healthy Lifestyles – National Bike Challenge

2019 Architecture, Biking Community, Community & Regional Planning, Health, Healthy Lifestyle, Office News, Uncategorized

At RDG, we are more than just designers and we strive every day to provide opportunities for staff to adopt a series of lifestyles that allow them to achieve balance to their home, work and public lives. Lifestyles that maintain their value as good designers, commitment to sustainable decisions, living a healthy lifestyle, continuous learning, embracing new technology, and all the while having some fun! We…

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Community Planning – Seeing Through The Lens of GIS

2019 Community & Regional Planning, GIS, Landscape Architecture, Parks & Recreation, Sustainability, Technology, Uncategorized, Water Trails

GIS, also known as Geographic Information Systems, is a software platform bringing understanding to our projects. This platform provides a variety of tools to perform data manipulation. For us at RDG, GIS is a foundational tool utilized in all of our community and regional planning work.…

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Designing a Revitalized Community

2019 Community & Regional Planning, Parks & Recreation, Restoration

A community isn’t magically revitalized by spiffing up a building or two. Creative vision, thoughtful planning, and revived key places and structures can impress and energize locals and visitors alike, enhancing pride of place and making further changes seem not just possible, but desirable.…

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When there’s too much and not enough

2018 College & University, Community & Regional Planning

In 2014, St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota had too much, and not enough. Like many institutions of higher education, SCSU found itself with too much aging infrastructure competing for limited deferred maintenance dollars, too much capital wrapped up in facilities that didn’t meet current and future needs, and – maybe surprisingly – just too much real estate.…

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The Missing Middle Housing in the Midwest

2016 Community & Regional Planning

Affordable housing has always been a concern across the country, but multiple factors over the past decade have raised more specific concerns for housing our workforce. The discussion in recent months has expanded to include not just the need for housing, but the type of housing units these particular households need, including rowhouses, duplexes, apartment courts, townhomes, live/work units, and smaller midsized houses.…

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