Next C Water City is a new, fully self-contained sustainable city planned for 500,000 residents. Water was central to the Next C planning concept, supplied by two adjacent rivers and monsoon rains. The city is a system of wetlands, rivers, lakes, and canals, cleansing the water from up-river communities and managing floods during the monsoon season. Working with SOM’s urban design team, Thomas Balsley Associates strategized an open space plan that consisted of seven primary landscape typologies: Central Parks, Civic Squares, Urban Promenades, Water Edge Parks, Canal Parks, Neighborhood Parks, and Wetland Parks filtering and polishing poor quality water from the Chaobai River prior to discharging into the new city’s extensive waterways and eventually into the Yongding River. Each open space typology collectively provides green links throughout the city, and open space programming relates directly to adjacent land uses. Parks along waterways were designed with each season’s environmental extremes in mind, from dry to flooded, creating unique parks for every season.
Bridgeland Prairieland Village
Located in the southwest quadrant of the Bridgeland master-planned community, which will house 70,000 residents upon completion, Prairieland Village comprises a variety of land uses adjacent to natural spaces that connect to the Cypress Creek boundary to the north and John Paul’s Landing to the south. At the heart of Prairieland’s design is the rel...
Birla Arika
Within Birla Arika, the development is designed to encourage exploration and celebrate activity. In Gurugram’s Sector 31, 30 kilometers southwest of New Delhi, where high-rise towers border a forest preserve, the new residential community spans 13 acres, prioritizing flexible greens and pedestrian corridors, bringing accessible greenery into a densely situated...
Crest Apartments
Situated within the suburban context of the Los Angeles Valley, Crest Apartments provides 64 residences for the homeless, including 23 reserved for disabled veterans. The building’s striking geometry is complemented by a flexible, multi-layered, and multi-textured landscape that support social, experiential, and environmental programs. The ground cover plant s...
Santaluz
This planned community 30 minutes north of San Diego is a testament to the collaboration of a visionary client, talented land planner, and creative designers and marketers. Set gracefully on its rolling site and preserving over half its acreage as open space, Santaluz is both a model of environmental planning and a financial success, out-performing all its loc...