About Town Green
Virtually every region, city, town, and neighborhood, today or tomorrow, must successfully adapt to formidable physical, economic and social challenges or its citizens will depart. Our evolving mastery and committment to excellence in design and development will help us achieve resilience, to better reach environmental, economic and social health - in good spirit.
The deepest principle that guides me comes from a quote from physicist Richard P. Feynman: Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. Our communities reflect those patterns so we seek to make them durable, useful and beautiful.
Stephen J. Coyle, AIA LEED CNU, a free agent and quick responder. Town-Green is a registered Veteran-Owned Business (USMC Veteran) -
Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas : Durability, Usefulness, Beauty.
For the City of Woodland, CA I directed the design, financing and development, through construction and occupancy, of East Beamer Way, California’s first ground-up campus that includes an adult 100-bed shelter, a 61 permanent supportive homes and a community/health center, and continuie to assist on the development of a substance abuse treatment facility.
I helped raise and place public and private funds, completed environmental investigations, planned the complex, designed and construction-managed the shelter and housing, and assist with the provision of services. My practice includes planning redevelopement of a county neighborhood, the pursuit and provision of market and subsidized housing, and downtown revitalization. Through the 2020 and half of the 2021 pandemic, I remained the Planning and Intelligence Sector Chief for the City of Woodland's Emergency Operations Center. Now, I focus on assisting others in climate and economic adaptation and reducing the causes where possible in Northern California and beyond.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-coyle-9184038; https://www.facebook.com/stevejcoyle http://town-green.com/d/Lean_Urbanism_in_Central_Africa.pdf
The Project for Lean Urbanism: Making Small Possible https://leanurbanism.org
Lean Urbanism is a way to restore common sense to the processes of development, building, starting small businesses, community engagement, and acquiring the necessary skills. The Project for Lean Urbanism is collecting and developing tools and daylighting techniques to enable and encourage those activities. This collection is the result of a survey to identify tools developed elsewhere and to track ideas for those that are needed. As tools are developed by the Project for Lean Urbanism, they will be made freely available at www.leanurbanism.org.
THE CNU CALIFORNIA COUNCIL FOR ADAPTATION
The California chapter of Congress for the New Urbanism (CACNU) led the Climate Adaptation Council in Sacramento from February 29 to March 2, 2020, through an iterative and comprehensive investigation and planning process to create climate adaptation measures at the regional, community, neighborhood, block and building scales in California. The invited private and public community and regional planners, civil, environmental and energy engineers, architects, designers, financial, and real estate professionals, led by Andres Duany, DPZ and CNU co-founder and Stephen Coyle, presented the latest findings on projected climate impacts, and proposed and evaluated physical, economic, regulatory, social and market strategies, programs, and actions for 2030, 2050 and 2090. CACNU published and distributed our findings and research, and will present to the National Congress for the New Urbanism in June 2022. The entire Council was professionally videotaped and podcast will become available of specific sessions.
American Planning Assocation 2016 Pierre L’Enfant International Planning Achievement Award: Sustainable Growth Strategy for Gabon’s Capital City, Libreville, Gabon, Africa
Steve Coyle was Prince's Foundation for Building Community's Project Manager in Gabon, part of PF's Team with Ben Bolgar, Kim Hitch, and Tom Perry in London.
President Ali Bongo Ondimba commissioned the Akanda Masterplan and SmartCode to protect the local environment while thoughtfully accommodating growth. The Masterplan establishes a new set of green, walkable communities of varying scales that also showcase the Gabonese nature, culture and commerce. The SmartCode is the first of its kind for Gabon. The Sustainability Guide and Tropical Building Design Guidelines address topics such as building and block energy design, as well as ensuring buildings are responsive to local climate. The vision for the Masterplan was developed through an Enquiry By Design process that brought together an international team, the expertise of the L’Agence Nationale des Grands Travaux (ANGT), and diverse array of local stakeholders including chiefs of local tribes, community members, and government officials.
The Palgrave Handbook of Bottom-Up Urbanism is now available https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319901305 “This handbook surveys the kaleidoscope of views on the agency of urbanism, and its 19 chapters on the nature, locations, and functionalities of bottom-up urbanism offer far more than the problem-solving title of any handbook typically suggests”. My chapter, Lean Urbanism in Central Africa, runs from page 179-199.