Kyle Kearns | Urban Planning Portfolio

KyleKearns

Urban Planning: Portfolio

Contents

Re-Development Design Studio

Greenfield Design Studio

Infill Design Studios

GIS Work

Writing Sample

Pages

1-6

7

8-9

10-11

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Re-Development Studio Pleasant Ridge, OH

Site Aerial View Current Conditions

In working with the community of Pleasant Ridge, as a studio, we broke up into several different groups to analysis possible ar-eas for infill development as well as develop a master plan for the community. My group of two other people selected an under-used area along Montgomery Rd., near the business district, a run down apartment complex with poor circulation and a single family neighborhood lacking pedestrian connection that was safe.

1

Proposed Land Use/Circulation

As a studio we conducted a study of Pleasant Ridge using GIS Data, Census Data and Community input in order to decide which areas each group were to focus on. After analyzing the various different aspects of Pleasant Ridge we were to propose our recommendations in three phases, how this would affect the traffic and what the new land uses would look like.

Proposed Circulation (Adobe Illustrator) Proposed Land Use (Adobe Illustrator)

2Re-Development Studio

Master Plan (Adobe Photoshop)

The master plan highlights the areas we choose as our focus areas for our location. The first phase consist of widening the sidewalks and making the residential areas more accessible to the library, business district and community center. The second phase takes vacant lots and corner stores converting it into a mixed-use area with a green space stretching the whole area. The third and most ambitious phase takes a failing apartment complex and converts it into a mixed-use complex, mostly residential.


Phase 1: Streetscape Improvements

Site Plan (Hand Drawn) 3-D Renderings (Google Sketch-up)

Here is the renderings of the proposed streetscaping suggested along Ridge Ave. that takes cars and pedestrians alike to the Okaley/Hyde Park area. The proposal would better suit these roads for pedestrians through better lighting and wider sidewalks in order to promote more walking to the business district of Pleasant Ridge.


Phase 2: Mixed-Use Business District Improvements


The second phase takes several under used or vacant properties as well as some corner stores and vacant buildings and re-places them with a mixed-used multi-family area. Across the street is an elementary school newly renovated and the retail area as well as the park would better serve the community both after school and during school extending the business district out one more block.


Phase 3: Adaptive Re-use


Finally, the third and most ambitious phase is to take an already existing apartment complex and re-work the existing layout to better provide access as well as add more uses to the area. The area surrounding the complex is crumbling consisting of mostly corner stores and run down carry out restaurants. The goal is to further extend the life of Pleasant Ridge as well as better con-nect the neighborhood to surrounding neighborhoods.


Greenfield Design Studio Complete Renderings


One the first full scale projects given to us involved taking a hypothetical client and creating a city as a studio, each two person group being assigned to a certain area, or their neighborhood. The area was completely undeveloped except for a few event centers and outdoor shelters. Above is the final product of my groups area which consisted of mixed-use, single family attached housing as well as single family detached housing with a park and several other amenities.

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Parking Lot Infill Proposal

This is a hypothetical design in downtown Cincinnati near the newly built Horseshoe Casino. Currently there is a surface parking lot there, and the task at hand was to develop an infill project to overtake the surface parking lot. The design above is a mixed use complex comprising of residential, office, retail and entertainment land uses.

8Infill Design

Reading Road Site ElevationKyle Kearns

Site Plan (AutoCAD &Photoshop) 3D Rendering (AutoCAD &Photoshop)

Profile Rendering (AutoCAD &Photoshop)

Suburban Infill Design

Working with Anderson Township in a joint program with the Township Planning Department and the School of Planning we had to develop a plan and design alternatives to add to the Township’s housing stock. They wanted to develop a system to better attract young families and professionals to their Township in order to keep up with the surrounding areas. The above plan is a proposed condo development within an existing neighborhood, attached to a main road in the township.

9Infill Design

Site Plan (AutoCAD &Photoshop) 3-D Renderings (Google Sketch-up)

GIS Work & AnalysisVarious Projects

Transportation Analysis Devou Park, KY Demographic Analysis Cincinnati, OH

This was apart of an overall analysis for the greenfield studio. We has to do an overall site analysis before we were assigned our specific area to develop.

Along with an analysis of West Price Hill, we had to compare the numbers we found there to Cincinnati as a whole.

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GIS Work & AnalysisVarious Projects

Circulation Analysis Anderson Twp., OH Zoning Map Anderson Twp., OH

0 0.5 1 1.5 20.25Miles

Legend

Best Connection

Average Connection

Poor Connection

Out of Area

Highway

Sherwood Boundary

Anderson Boundary

Buildings

Currently as a studio we are working with Anderson Township to see how we can increase residential uses in a built out suburb of Cincinnati. This is apart of the initial analysis for circulation within Anderson Township.

Of our selected area for Anderson Township, this is the current zoning that exist with in our neighborhood.

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Writing SampleCurrently, the power grid within Panka only uses one source of power that isn’t a fossil fuel, that being the power plant located in Karnafuli, Panka’s biggest man made dam and only hydro plant. Increasing the renewable energy supply within Panka will become a main priority in adding power to the power grid. In order to ease in to the switch to renewable energy an initiative will be started to test the possibility of adding solar and wind power to already existing power plants within Panka.

Given that Panka gets 250 to 300 sunny days a year, not including rainy days, solar energy provides promise for Panka’s sustainable future. The goal is to add forms of renewable energy to already existing power plants within Panka in order to re-duce overall fossil fuel usage of these particular plants by 15% within five years of installation of the solar power. The model that we will base this initiative off of will be based on a power plant in Palisade, Colorado, named The Cameo Station Power Plant. The power plant reduced its coal usage by 5% equating to roughly 350 tons of coal a year. It reduced coal usage by pre-heating the water before it went to the boiler in order to cut down on the heating process of the water (Turner, Alex, and Andrew Beat). Below is a diagram of the process that will model the ventures within Panka.

Initially the installation of solar panels will be small in order to test the effectiveness of adding solar panels to existing coal power plants, but given that the tests are successful, the size of the solar farm will increase. At a cost of $4.5 million dollars, two 1 MW solar farms will be installed in two different coal or natural gas plants in Panka to test the effectiveness of the solar panel installation. After the results come back it will then be decided if expanding these technologies will be beneficial in providing cost effective energy to Panka.

Another option to consider is combining these renewable energy technologies with gas powered plants. General Electric pioneered a hybrid power plant that combines natural gas, wind power, and solar power. The renewable sources of energy can be used one of two ways; either to feed directly into the power grid, or to supply the plant with energy in order to run more ef-ficiently. The plant will be able to provide 530 Megawatts of energy and be 70% efficient, a number that is almost unheard of in the energy sector (Yirka, Bob). Although the investment is steep in price reaching $1.5 billion dollars, the investment is one that can pay itself off in time. Below is a diagram of the hybrid power plant....

Above is an portion of a plan developed through a class related to energy planning in Third World Countries. We took a hypotheti-cal city based of a city in India, renamed Panka. This particular portion of the paper discusses the implementation of a hybrid power plant to be constructed to help meet the growing energy demand in the city.

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Kyle Kearns | Urban Planning Portfolio

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