Urban Design is the art of making places and lies at the nexus of planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and public policy. It shapes the physical setting for city life, where buildings, landscapes, streets, sidewalks and transportation, and the connections and transitions between them, combine to make a memorable “Public Realm” that is functional, attractive, comfortable, and safe. Our urban designers strive to balance vision and reality, aesthetics and function, heritage and change, to make people-centered places that are sustainable and enhance the property values of their surroundings.

DesignWorks is the Planning Department’s professional Urban Design team. This team takes on special projects, such as the Downtown Wayfinding sign system, Design Guidelines, and Placemaking throughout the city and county. Citizen participation can lead to design concepts that incubate in the DesignWorks studio, before being developed and executed by other departments, or by private sector practitioners, as in the Civil Rights Heritage Walk and the Smokey Hollow Commemoration in Cascades Park. Committed to quality in the public realm and in private development, DesignWorks works with neighborhoods, property owners, and developers in conceptual site planning, and assists architects and engineers in producing their best professional work. If you are considering developing land in Tallahassee and Leon County and would like a design consultation to explore concepts for your site, please call (850) 891-6400.