Francis Chenurban planning & design portfolio

MADISON PARK | OAKLAND, CAUrban Design & Cultural Activity Mapping

In the process of developing the Lake Merritt BART Station Specific Plan, the City of Oakland and BART decided to choose Madison Park as a potential space for mixed-used redevelopment, given its close proximity to the BART station.

However, the elderly who use the park every morning for physical exercise and socializing: their voices were not being represented in Oakland Chinatown.

Our role: map physical and cultural activities in the park throughout a weekday morning, and create a 3D Google SketchUp model of future urban design guidelines of the park, based on interviews with key stakeholders of the park.

These visualizations served as tools for the elderly to show to city planning officials that the park is an important cultural asset to the community that should be protected and preserved for future use. As a result of a public exhib-it, BART Director Robert Raburn convinced planning staff to keep the park from redevelopment.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

source of photos: Francis Chen, Iris Corey

01: MADISON PARK02: WEST WALNUT CREEK DOWNTOWN SPECIFIC PLAN03: BIKE-SHARE STATIONS IN SAN FRANCISCO04: CALIFORNIA GREEN TECHNOLOGY PARK

cultural activity map using GIS map-ping physical and cultural activi-ty, based on several observations during weekday mornings

pan view of park in the morning, with qi gong exercise in the back-ground. The amount of empty space in the park makes the park underutlized in the afternoon, which lead us to make the 3D Goo-gle SketchUp model (see next pg)

birds eye view of park, with pro-posed improvements to meet needs of future residents near tran-sit development

proposed seating space with trees, seating, and a improved playstruc-ture to attract neighborhood chil-dren

proposed gazebo. purpose: pro-vide a performance space, seating and shade

I worked with an architecture student. I built the gazebo, place the playground as well as built the restroom.

I created the map using ArcGIS

WEST DOWNTOWN WALNUT CREEK SPECIFIC PLANUndergraduate Urban Planning Studio, UC Berkeley

The West Walnut Creek Downtown Specific Area suffers from a lack of community gathering spaces, public spac-es, and parks, restaurants, as well as social/cultural activities that can cater to the local community. Given the large percentage of space dedicated to the automobile, such as parking lots or asphalt for roads/streets, our class was assigned to develop proposals that could help improve the area in the next twenty to thirty years.

Our role: perform background research of the West Walnut Creek Downtown Area, do site analysis of exisiting conditions, and prepare proposals for improvements in the general area to City of Walnut Creek staff and urban planning staff.

note: the proposal stage is still in progresssite analysis of social and cultural activites in West Walnut Creek Specific Plan Area

WHERE SHOULD I PUT BIKE SHARE STOPS? | SAN FRANCISCO, CAGeographic Informations Systems Course Final Project

For our final project, our role was to create a bikeshare suitability map using ArcGIS identifying the best locations to place bike sharing stops in the City of San Francisco.

By identifying elements such as land use, access to transit, density, traffic safety, proximity to bicycle lanes, eleva-tion, and traffic speed limit, I mapped these elements, numerically weighed the positives and negatives of each element, and identified the best location to put bike sharing maps: this is my suitablity map (see left map on next page)

Next (see right map on next page), I created a map of key activity sites of locations in San Francisco such as neigh-borhood commercial centers, banks, transit stops, or farmers markets to compare with my suitability map. This helps me predict the success of potential bike sharing stations. I discovered that the best locations would be in the Downtown San Francisco area, as well as the Mission District.

photo credits to wikipedia

Electric Vehicle

Solar Panels

LED Lighting

Energy Storage

General Adminsitration

Incubator

Finance Center

Job Training Center

Convention Center

Logistics Center

California Green Technology Park (in Silicon Valley)

Draft Version

CALIFORNIA GREEN TECHNOLOGY PARK | FREMONT, CAGraphic Illustration, Mapping, Planning Intern

The City of Fremont, located within the heart of Silicon Valley, is striving to attract Chinese clean tech industries into what will become California’s first green tech industrial park. Industries that the park is trying to cater to include the solar panel, electric vehicle, LED lighting, as ell as energy storage industries. The goal of this park is to promote Joint Chinese & American collaboration and combining the resources and innovation of each side to create a successful clean tech park.

Working with the State of California Comissioner of Economic Development Henry Yin, my role is to create graphic illustrations to help visually communicate and articulate the Green Technology Park between different stakeholders. For example, the maps above have already been shown to Mainland Chinese clean tech companies to attract invest-ment into the green park, as well as the Chinese Instiute of Engineers in Silicon Valley.

Francis Chenemail: fncis.chen@gmail.com

phone: 01 510 504 3731skype: fncischen

University of California, Berkeley Bachelor of Arts, Urban Studies (2013)