Competition Program

Boundaries

The competition site is bounded on the South by Girard Avenue, on the North by Cecil B. Moore Avenue, on the east by 5th Street, and on the west by 9th Street. Entrants should keep their design concepts focused on this area, but if desired, should feel free to demonstrate connectivity and context by linking the study site to a larger area.

Objective

The 3rd Annual Ed Bacon Student Design Competition asks entrants to develop fresh design solutions for reviving Ludlow and similar disinvested communities. Entrants are asked to create design solutions, addressing a range of challenges emerging from the historical and physical realities of the Ludlow site.

Design Challenges

The Ludlow area brings to light several major issues and challenges dealing with contemporary planning and design for disinvested areas. Entrants may wish to focus on one or several of these issues, from a design standpoint:

1. Urban renewal was successful in some cases, such as Yorktown, just to the west of Ludlow, separated by the railroad tracks. Yorktown today is still a successful, middle-class community. However, the energy of Yorktown did not flow to the east, and the City was not able to direct the same kind of private investment to Ludlow. The railroad tracks proved a major barrier to the flow of reinvestment energy. Today's challenge is to find effective strategies for rebuilding these forgotten communities.
2. A study published in October of 1958, entitled "Implications of Renewal in South Temple," referenced the impending threat of "suburban renewal." The pattern of much of the City's redevelopment in the 1950s and 1960s was lower density. However, PHA and other public entities today continue to build suburban-style homes in the city, with detached houses, front garages and lawns. Farther to the east of Ludlow, private sector investment through the 1980s and 1990s have transformed the neighborhoods of Fishtown and Northern Liberties into hip, vibrant, communities, attracting young professionals. Northern Liberties and Fishtown developed through large-scale restoration of historic architecture and new development that was largely dense and urban in form. The question today is what is the appropriate building style for each unique inner city community?
3. A major challenge that faces housing for low- and moderate-income families is how to build quality homes within a very restricted budget. This problem faced the recent Ludlow Villages project, where the developers understood the need to build into the urban fabric, but were faced with public funding sources and a zoning code that code facilitated modular, suburban structures with either a driveway or a garage. Are there new models for building affordable construction that is quality, sustainable, and urban?
4. Another issue has to do with the reuse of vacant land. Starting in 2001 the City of Philadelphia floated bonds to invest close to $300 million in its Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. The goal of the program was to deal with the city's tens of thousands of vacant lots and abandoned homes. However, the focus on demolishing properties and greening lots, while it impacted the visual quality of some areas, did not have the desired result of attracting private investment to communities like Ludlow. How can the City treat its abandoned areas so that it supports transformation, rather than just keeping areas from further decline?
5. Designers and public officials have learned lessons about how to work with local groups. The federal dollars of the 1950s and 1960s are no longer available. Funding community investment has become very complicated, relying on community development corporations, and a wide array of local, state and private funding sources. The relationship between community developers, civic groups, the public and private sector is one of the greatest challenges facing reinvestment in America's cities today. How do we plan for a climate where development and funding are so de-centralized?
6. Oftentimes development focused on low- and moderate-income communities does not value topics such as historic preservation and sustainability, considered privileges of wealthier areas. However, in Philadelphia historic preservation has been one of the strongest strategies for reviving parts of the city, and sustainability is increasingly recognized as the key to reducing long-term impacts and affordability of construction. How can these issues be valued in reclaiming a disinvested area?

Program Elements

Successful entries will achieve the following objectives:

• Create modern urban design solutions for rebuilding and reviving the Ludlow neighborhood of Philadelphia, providing innovative ideas that may be applied to other similar, disinvested urban areas
• Demonstrate an understanding of the history, successes and failures of Ludlow's 20th-century development, as well as the successes and failures of the public and private sectors in redeveloping disinvested areas
• Address the range of issues related to Ludlow's contemporary situation, including the large tracts of open space, abandoned housing, lack of commercial and recreational facilities, physical separation of the railroad, and inconsistent pattern of new development
• Utilize the opportunities related to the site's position near Temple University and near communities that have seen successful revitalization, and design solutions that harness the opportunities of Ludlow's large amounts of open space
• Focus on issues of connectivity between Ludlow and surrounding areas

Entrants are additionally encouraged to:

• Create design solutions that freely combine architecture, planning, urban design, development, and theory in a way that is not constrained by the artificial limits of these various disciplines
• Develop ideas that are visionary yet feasible, that can offer innovative ideas while actually informing the real-world discussion on inner-city reinvestment
• Create highly visual submissions, giving viewers a true sense and experience of the entrant's imagined future space. Entrants should utilize text as needed to enhance the design, while ensuring that the primary means of communicating ideas is through the visuals.
• Focus on design solutions that are innovative and sustainable