Strategic plan. Long-range plan. Upperclass residential plan. Master plan.
As the University attempts to create a holistic structure for its growth during the next 10 years, weighty documents are beginning to coalesce, outlining long-range priorities in academics, facilities and residential life.
The most recent iteration of the facilities master plan-which will guide the University's future construction and use of existing facilities and infrastructure-is on its way to University officials from the Seattle offices of Weinstein Copeland Architects.
"Because it is a physical master plan, it will figure out how to do things rather than what to do," said Executive Vice President Tallman Trask. The document will outline spaces and strategies for growth of each area of the University, depending on the type of programs the University wants to pursue.
The 60-page document, which will be presented to the Board of Trustees for preliminary approval in December, also promises evaluations of pedestrian and vehicular traffic interaction and discussion of outdoor gathering spaces on campus.
"It identifies the goals and policies relating to the continuing concentration on and development of the campus environment," said Lee Copeland, the University's master planning consultant. "In that aspect, it relates to issues of open space and landscape, all aspects of circulation, the potential for the development of new buildings."
Copeland's master plans, which have been used at Indiana University and the universities of Washington and Pennsylvania, among others, typically involve two levels of planning: short-term construction, renovation and adjustments, and also a 10-year facilities strategy guide.
The Residential Program Review is included in this short-term plan, which also involves creating pedestrian connections to Ninth Street and making other adjustments to East Campus's west side. It would also cut new walkways through the woods surrounding the Bryan Center, make pedestrian spaces on Science Drive and prompt an examination of Central Campus.
"There will be a fair discussion about Central, which clearly needs something," Trask said.
One of the main foci of Copeland's preliminary proposal is the interaction among vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians and the campus. "Our feeling is that in many instances, the automobile has a more dominant presence in the campus environment than it should," Copeland said.
His recommendations in this vein include closing part of Wannamaker Drive to help facilitate the linkage between Edens Quadrangle and Main West Quadrangle and standardizing Campus Drive bike lanes to encourage more bicycle travel.
"We are making recommendations for expanding the walkable scope of the campus," Copeland said.
"[The campus] depends very much on vehicular circulation, even within the West Campus to science area," he added.
The plan will encourage the University to incorporate open outdoor spaces into the composition of new buildings-like the dorms to be built behind Few II Quadrangle-and more recently built facilities like the law building.
"The new [Levine Science Research Center] is a good example of a new building complex that does create open space and a stronger sense of place," Copeland said.
Copeland is also working with Duke's parking master planner to help solve one of the University's perennial problems.
His plan includes a scheme to build a parking garage on part of the Ocean parking lot and turn the remainder into an open grassy space.
Perhaps master planning's greatest strength is this ability to synthesize institutional goals in strategic long-range planning.
Copeland said, "I think a master plan enables a university to define and direct projects whether landscape or new buildings or parking lots in an overall context-so it's not making isolated decisions but decisions understanding how they relate to the existing environment or a new environment in the future."
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