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David Blake

Principal

David Blake is an urban designer and licensed landscape architect with more than 20 years of comprehensive experience in town planning and site design.  Mr. Blake’s background brings a unique perspective to the table, with special attention to open space, and sensitivity to challenging site topography.  His hand drawing talent has proven cornerstone to the evocative quality of his project designs and complex working drawings.  Mr. Blake’s professional experience includes master plans, residential and recreational park designs, site and landscape development plans, town center designs, and amenity plans.

Mr. Blake has been a senior designer and project manager on a variety of projects, including:

  • Arabian Canal - Located in Dubai, UAE, the Arabian Canal is the largest infrastructure project in the world. Planned as a 75 kilometer waterway, the Arabian Canal will provide a special amenity for inland developments. Limitless, the project developer, owns approximately 13,000 hectares of land encompassing the canal and expects upwards of 2.5 million residents and over 1.5 million jobs to inhabit its environs. The canal will function as a navigable waterway at sea level through creative excavation, providing a new arena for tourism and recreational boating. A combination of mixed-use urban centers, town centers, a mix of housing types and public greenways will all interact easily with the water amenities providing relief from the desert heat. Regional and local transit and sustainable practices will be implemented to provide the Arabian Canal with state of the art practices. Mr. Blake has been both project manager and senior designer for all aspects of the canal planning process.
  • West Bench Master Plan - An environmentally sustainable Master Plan for more than 90,000 acres of mining land reuse and new development along the western edge of the Salt Lake Valley, Utah. The plan represents 7 years of detailed and comprehensive design studies, development programming, environmental study, capacity analysis, and scenario building and modeling. The Master Plan features a community structure based on an organized hierarchy of walkable mixed use centers, a balanced transportation network, a rich open space network, and terrain-responsive residential types. As Project Manager and Lead Designer for the community plan, Mr. Blake has overseen all aspects of this project, from initial conception to implementation of site elements, including a detailed slope and housing study for a site plan at Little Valley, an early test site. See www.kennecottland.com for more info.
  • Issaquah Highlands – A completed project, located 17 miles east of Seattle, Washington and in the hills above the town of Issaquah. This 2,000 acre “new town” project is based on a regional growth management plan including a major office component, a combined town center and lifestyle center totaling over 1 million sq. ft., and 3,250 dwelling units all on 800 acres of land. This walkable, medium-to-high density community serves a range of income and lifestyle groups, with activity focused in and around the town center and a neighborhood village center to the east. A complex open space system plays a major role with over 1,200 acres of wooded hillsides, protected wetlands, and community and neighborhood parks interwoven throughout the site. As Project Manager and Lead Designer, Mr. Blake has overseen all aspects of this project, from initial conception to implementation of site elements.   
  • Navy Housing Redevelopment – This public/private venture in Honolulu, Hawaii was conceived to improve the residential communities for Navy families. Considered to be the Navy’s version of Urban Revitalization, existing housing sites were redesigned with new amenities and community based features such as civic centers and neighborhood parks serving as the focal gathering spot. Additional amenities included swimming pools, tot lots and recreational fields.  An interconnected system of new streets, sidewalks and trails added to the walkable, community feel, with new homes for each Navy family providing a clean and safe living environment. Mr. Blake served as project manager and lead designer.
  • Stapleton – The nation’s largest redevelopment project, the former Stapleton International Airport covers 4,700 acres within the city of Denver, Colorado. Commercial, employment, civic, and a mix of residential uses will all be linked by walkable streets and a continuous, 1,200 acre armature of open space, including a restored prairie park and creek system. Mr. Blake was instrumental in the planning of the phase 1 town center and residential neighborhoods, and designed a schematic plan for Central Park, the site’s centerpiece for recreational activity.

Prior to joining Calthorpe Associates, Mr. Blake worked at the land planning and landscape architecture firm Land Plus in Atlanta, Georgia.  He later consulted independently to various landscape architects in the Bay Area, including Robert Lamb Hart and Merrill & Associates in San Francisco, and Howard Fields & Associates in Sausalito. Mr. Blake worked in various capacities, including as project manager and lead designer on schematic plans, site planning and park design, design services for single-family residential, and resort development plans.

Mr. Blake graduated with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Louisiana State University-College of Design in 1985. He has presented his work at conferences, including the Congress for New Urbanism and the California chapter of the APA. He has led workshops internationally, including projects in Perth, Australia and Dubai, UAE, and has spoken at the Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany.