Design Resources

Urban Giants Cover

The Next Urban Giants: A Practical Guide to the Future of City Building


The following reference guide or “greenprint” was developed to document and highlight the key issues that emerged from the Next Urban Giants convening. The goal of this workshop was to bring together a group of 50 experts from a wide array of sectors, disciplines and localities to discuss how growing megapolitan regions can increase resilience and equity through urban greening. This multidisciplinary workshop was funded by a National Science Foundation Sustainable Urban Systems conference grant (#1929824) awarded to Washington State University in connection with NSF’s Dear Colleague Letter (NSF 19-032).

Community Design Handbook Cover

Community Design Handbook

The Community Design Handbook (CDH) is a broad set of non-regulatory design principles and guidelines that express the community’s vision for the built environment. The CDH represents best practices related to design in support of several pillars of Envision Eugene.


The CDH is an integral component of Envision Eugene: Vision to Action. The CDH principles and guidelines are intended to be used to inspire, educate, communicate, and inform investment.

Urban Form Plan Cover

Urban Form Plan

The Urban Form Plan is the design volume of Envision Eugene: Vision to Action. Each document in this four document set plays a different role in realizing the community’s vision and was developed through extensive community conversations. The document contains sections on Regional Identity, an Urban Framework Plan and the Community Design Handbook.

Missing Middle Cover

Missing Middle Handbook


In 2010, architect and urban designer Daniel Parolek coined the term Missing Middle to define smaller, multi-family or clustered housing types. Missing Middle types were common within most single family neighborhoods in the pre-war era, but for the last seventy years they have been missing from most city’s neighborhood patterns as development focused on single family housing and larger multifamily types. The missing middle includes duplex, triplex, cottage, courtyard, rowhouse, and other smaller multi-unit attached and detached housing.


Reintroducing these housing types back into the neighborhood mix makes sense in Eugene where we have a goal to create more 20-minute neighborhoods, where residents can find most daily needs within a 20-minute walk from home.

Living In The City

Living in the City

Urban places require a strong connection between buildings and the street – a pattern that establishes the framework for the vibrant, walkable streetscapes associated with successful commercial centers. Residential uses are essential to an active street environment and contribute round-the-clock activity that provides for safe and lively neighborhoods. Well-designed frontages support compatibility between the mix of uses associated with walkable centers including shopping, dining, entertainment and living.

Storefronts

Successful Storefronts

The Storefront defines the character of a business and establishes the relationship between the interior of a shop and the sidewalk. They are essential to successful merchandising and should be visually integrated with the rest of the building’s architecture.