![Award-winning design firm has more city-shaping work ahead A large public square with trees and murals spills from the street into an alley.](https://taprootyeg.blob.core.windows.net/photos/2023/11/29/EDA-2228.jpg)
Award-winning design firm has more city-shaping work ahead
After receiving significant recognition at the recent Edmonton Urban Design Awards, EDA Planning + Urban Design is set to continue shaping Edmonton's neighbourhoods, with projects in Garneau and Oliver, as well as downtown on 103A Avenue NW.
Jason Pfeifer, senior urban designer and landscape architect with EDA, told Taproot that his firm works on urban design layers by considering culture and community. "It's how do you recognize, celebrate, and enhance community, culture, and infrastructure?," Pfeifer said. "Along with that, it's being sensitive to the social issues in the areas that we're working in."
At the design awards, held on Nov. 24, EDA received honourable mentions in the urban design plans category for its Boyle Street and McCauley analysis and preliminary design, and in the civic design category for its Jasper Avenue New Vision.
EDA also received an award of excellence in the sustainable urbanism category for its work on the Strathcona Backstreet Neighbourhood Renewal.
The Strathcona backstreets project was essentially an addendum to EDA's work on Strathcona Neighbourhood Renewal, which dates back to 2017. It was funded in part by the Old Strathcona Business Association, the city's Neighbourhood Renewal Program, the city-funded Low Impact Development program offered by EPCOR and a Green Municipal Fund grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
"With that project, there's a lot of credit to share around," Pfeifer said. "By piecing together every bit we could, and overlapping different programs and working together with a lot of different people in a collaboration, we were able to maximize the outcome we can get out of the space."
A critical part was transforming two parking lots into pedestrian plazas. That's one way EDA made navigating alleyways more safe and inviting.
Though parking can be a hot topic with folks who rely heavily on cars, Pfeifer said attitudes are changing.
"We've worked on a few projects where we're reducing the number of parking (stalls)," he said. "It's easier and easier, year after year, to get people on board with that. It's an easier case to make when you're asking the business, 'Would you like to have one parking space for one, potentially a few, customers to visit your business? Or would you like to have a patio space that could fit 10 people?'"