As part of its advisory services, Portico recently began offering comprehensive planning for communities, districts,
municipalities, incorporated towns, townships, counties and cities. Portico offers a wide range of planning for inner-city
(core), urban, suburban and rural (open-agriculture) land uses. Drawing from working experience in domestic and international
locations, Portico adds to its expertise by its affiliation with Columbia University's urban planning and real estate
programs. Portico remains contact with leading thinkers in land use / urban planning and is proud to be associated with
one of the foremost academic research institutions in the United States in this field. Mr. Roy Pachecano, as faculty
at Columbia University, also teaches zoning law / land use policy.
Above: Diagram and photograph of urban campus at Cooper Union, New York
Working with Roger Tooze, Superintendant
of Buildings and Grounds for Cooper Union, conceptual planning for a masterplan of the school's urban campus revealed a complexity
of land use patterns. Namely: the school's dormitory (housing), public domain right of way (transportation), and academic
buildings (educational) overlapping in historic and non-historic district overlays.
The masterplanned community of Somerset Orchards (below) located in the City of San Antonio's extra-territorial jurisdiction
(ETJ) and the City of Somerset to the south of San Antonio. Such planning for overlapping municipalities can become very complex
as different development rules apply. The governance of space overarches all planning and should be thoroughly understood
before municipalities pass land use legislation that will affect its land uses.
Figure-ground studies help illustrate densities (above).
The San Antonio Art Institute (SAART) study, below, illustrates
effective use of spatial planning that fits into the context of a city's existing built environment. SAART's urban campus
relates to the San Antonio Riverwalk and its newest expansion north at the Lexington street bridge.
