New Port Richey, FL (August 24, 2016) – People Places, LLC invites the public  to join in another Talk About Town discussion series on Urban Design and New Port Richey. There will be two more dates for the late summer series, all taking place at 5:30 pm at the People Places studio (5742 Main Street) in downtown New Port Richey.  Talk About Town is free and open to the public.

Talk About Town will be focusing on how to refine the built character of New Port Richey utilizing the existing channels. Mr. Starkey has invited his colleague Andrew Georgiadis to lead a discussion on using Form Based Code to create the dynamic and lively City we all know New Port Richey can become.

The Talk About Town Series was developed to start a conversation on the nature and nurture of New Port Richey. Residents in and around the City are invited to participate. Guests will leave with a better understanding of how to identify Urban Design principles around them, and how that affects their behavior and influences the character of their community.

August 30 – Parks, Greens, Squares and Plazas:  The many living rooms of great towns.  Great streets should lead to great gathering places where community life happens.  But not all public places are the same, just as all community activities are not the same.  We will talk about how different kinds of outdoor “rooms” foster different kinds of rituals and events.

September 13 – Form-Based Codes: Putting together Urban Design tools to shape a town’s character.  Over the series so far we have discussed some basic urban design tools.  Form Based Codes assemble these tools into a development code unlike typical zoning codes.  Form Based Codes shape the physical character of new development while preserving the best attributes of existing buildings.  We will discuss how a Form Based Code could be enacted in a town near you!

About Our Guest Speaker

Andrew Georgiadis is president of Georgiadis Urban Design, a firm that designs walkable cities, towns, corridors, and neighborhoods.  He graduated from theUniversity of Miami School of Architecture in 2000.  After graduate school, he worked for Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning for eleven years.  One of his first projects with the firm was a week-long charrette to produce the conceptual site plan and renderings for Main Street Landing, New Port Richey.  He also worked on Pasco County planning initiatives, including a redesign for Highway 19.  Andrew then returned to teach undergraduate architecture and urban design at theUniversity of Miami School of Architecture for one year.  He moved to Sarasota to establish the city’s urban design studio and author the city’s form-based code in 2013-2015.  During the last year, he has worked on plans for the extension to the capital city of El Salvador, a complete streets project for the Florida Department of Transportation in Lakeland, Florida, and has designed several buildings in Sarasota that are under construction.  During these years living in Miami and Sarasota, Andrew, his wife, and two sons, were travelling to and from New Port Richey, a city that feels like home, and where his parents are part-time residents.

About New Urbanism

New Urbanism promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the same components as conventional development, but assembled in a more integrated fashion, in the form of complete communities. These contain housing, work places, shops, entertainment, schools, parks, and civic facilities essential to the daily lives of the residents, all within easy walking distance of each other. New Urbanism promotesthe increased use of trains and light rail, instead of more highways and roads. Urban living is rapidly becoming the new hip and modern way to live for people of all ages. Currently, there are over 4,000 New Urbanist projects planned or under construction in the United States alone, half of which are in historic urban centers.

Source: www.newurbanism.org

About People Places, LLC

People Places is a Real Estate development company that was founded by Frank Starkey with the goal to create vibrant, people-oriented residential and retail places in walkable settings.

Frank Starkey holds undergraduate and professional degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from Rice University, is CNU (Congress for the New Urbanism) Accredited, and a member of Urban Land Institute and Leadership Florida.