Down the street from Orlando’s theme parks lies the town of Celebration, a master-planned community founded by the Walt Disney Company in 1996. Today, the properties within the community are all privately owned, but hold just as much magic as always. And that’s largely because Celebration follows the principles of “New Urbanism,” a planning concept that focuses on walkability, sustainability, and quality of living.
Since 2016, when Mattamy Homes acquired the last areas available for development, we’ve worked side-by-side with them to develop a vision for Island Village, Celebration’s newest development. This vision needed to harken back to the original design intent of the acclaimed Celebration Village, as well as reflect the principles of New Urbanism that were incorporated in its initial phases.
These principles include:
• Walkability: Keeping most things within a 10-minute walk of home and work, implementing a pedestrian-friendly street design, and incorporating pedestrian streets that are free of cars in particular cases.
• Smart Transportation: Pedestrian-friendly design that encourages a greater use of bicycles, rollerblades, scooters and walking as daily transportation.
• Connectivity: Maintaining an interconnected street grid network that disperses traffic and eases walking; a hierarchy of narrow streets, alleys, and boulevards; and a high quality pedestrian network and public realm that makes walking pleasurable.
• Mixed Housing: Having a range of houses in closer proximity that differ in terms of type, size, and price.
• Sustainability: Having minimal environmental impact by implementing eco-friendly technologies, energy efficiency, more local production, and less use of finite fuels.
• Mixed-Use and Diversity: Referring to both a mix of shops, offices, apartments and homes on site, and diversity of people (age, income levels, cultures, and races).
• Increased Density: Buildings, residences, shops, and services that are closer together for ease of walking, creating a more efficient use of services and resources, as well as a more convenient and enjoyable place to live and work
• Quality Architecture and Urban Design: Placing an emphasis on beauty, aesthetics, human comfort and creating a sense of place.
• Traditional Neighborhood Structure: A neighborhood with a discernable center and edge, with a quality public realm at its core, that has a range of uses and densities within a 10-minute walk and incorporates transect planning.
• Quality of Life: Taken together, these principles create places that enrich, uplift, inspire, and result in a higher quality of life
Beginning with a sweeping vision that depicted classic, Americana-influenced streets, town squares, and plenty of open space, we nurtured the design through master planning, parks system planning, and urban design of all five phases of the future development. Then, we embarked on the landscape architectural design and implementation of Island Village’s first neighborhood. The design includes two waterfront promenades; a meandering system of fitness and nature trails; an abundance of parks, mews, and open spaces; classic, tree-lined streets; shelters; and wayfinding signage.
Taking the existing villages into account, we recommended neighborhood parks and community amenities in Island Village be distributed evenly across the development to supply similar service levels in each neighborhood. Due to the irregular layout of the developable land in Island Village, overlapping of service areas and additional facilities above the required level of service can be expected to adequately capture all home sites within a service area.
After leading public engagement with community members, including presentations and design workshops in conjunction with the town of Celebration and Mattamy Homes, we’re well on our way toward sprinkling our own bit of magic on this world-renowned community.