Author Archive
This article describes a few of my observations, questions and ideas related to the recent concept submittal for the 11th and Pearl redevelopment project (available here -- 15 mb pdf). I read about the project in the newspaper a few weeks ago, and [...]
About the author:
As a landscape architect/urban designer, Jerry Shapins is an enthusiastic supporter of sustainable community development intended to reweave the fabric of the city to be pedestrian and bike friendly, green, more compact and less wasteful of energy. His past experience included working for 35 years as a landscape architect and urban designer, and for 18 years leading Shapins Associates in Boulder Colorado, now known as Belt Collins West. Shapins Associates developed plans and designs for public open spaces, trails, community planning, downtowns, walkable landscape urbanism, placemaking, sustainable transport, and historic preservation. Some of the projects in Boulder that Jerry and his firm worked on included the Colorado Chautauqua Landscape Master Plan, Broadway Streetscape Improvements, CU Research Park Campus Plan, 13th Street Contra Flow Bike Lane, Grandview Terrace Master Plan, CU South Campus Master Plan, 9th/Canyon Design Charette, BURA Urban Design Guidelines, Foothills Community Design and more. After retiring from Shapins Associates, Jerry and his wife Ann Moss moved to Tucson AZ and lived in the Sonoran Desert from 2008 until June 2011 when he and Ann returned home to Boulder. While in Tucson he volunteered and advocated for the City of Tucson Landscape Advisory Committee, The Loft Cinema, Tucson Pima County Arts, Cyclovia Tucson, The U of A College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Imagine Greater Tucson, Downtown Tucson and the Arizona Chapter of ASLA. Jerry is also an active photographer, illustrator and artist, and loves to spend time sketching in Italy documenting and being inspired by communal events, crowded streets, active piazzas, beautiful hilltowns and productive and vernacular agricultural landscapes. Jerry has an M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and for six years early in his career was a full time professor at the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado at Denver.