2008

Arcadia is proud to announce a new joint initiative with Biederman Redevelopment Ventures (BRV), the private consulting firm led by Daniel A. Biederman, co-founder of the Bryant Park Corporation and 34th Street Partnership, and creator of the largest complex of private urban redevelopment projects in the United States.

Our joint initiative aims to bring together BRV’s renowned expertise in public space revitalization and business improvement districts with Arcadia’s expertise in real estate development, master planning and project management.  We aim to serve clients throughout the Philadelphia region with consulting services focused on:

• Creating and revitalizing urban parks and plazas, from conceptual planning all the way through operations
• Creating, assessing and advising business improvement districts
• Innovative streetscape and capital improvement programs
• Self-financing downtown and neighborhood redevelopment programs
• Turning public space into a profit center for mixed-use developments

Dan has been a friend of Joe Duckworth and Arcadia for many years now, having first met when Joe and Dan served together as jurors for ULI’s prestigious Award for Excellence.  During the last year, one of our Arcadia project managers, Rich Wilson, has worked successfully with Dan on projects in Newark and Princeton, New Jersey, proving the value of this joint initiative.

For more information on how Dan has used public space to increase private real estate values click here.

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ROBERT S. DAVIS kicks off the sixth season of “The Forum at Redwood City: A Continuing Conversation on City Design” with a presentation on THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2 from 6 to 7:45 p.m. His presentation was titled “THE CITY OF IDEAS.” Since the early renaissance, as humanists began writing about the Citta’ Ideale (or “City of Ideas”), city building has looked to models like Pienza, Rome, Paris, Bath, Georgian London, Washington, the Chicago World’s Fair, Mariemont, and even Seaside for ideas about how to (re)make our towns and improve our lives. Each of these historical examples, as well as the words written by Alberti, Serlio, Burnham, Howard, Krier, Duany and others have much to teach those engaged in town building. Robert Davis explored the meaning and import of “cittá ideale” — Renaissance Humanism’s concept of the city. Heeding the humanist theories of Leon Battista Alberti and Sebastiano Serlio, Mr. Davis advised the audience to consider the “art of the possible”. Unlike “utopia,” the “cittá ideale” does not have to be perfect; in fact, the best examples (Pienza and Rome) maintained the existing medieval eccentricities that announced “character of place” while benefiting from periodic design interventions that aimed to make the city more legible, more livable and more elegant. The pre-existing town is still there, in all its ad hoc imperfection, and the beautiful street, square, obelisk, cathedral, and palazzo pubblico is made more interesting by its close proximity to the messy vitality of the pre-existing city.

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