2013 National Planning Excellence Award: Planning Firm

Goody Clancy

Boston, Massachusetts

Goody Clancy is an interdisciplinary architecture, planning, and preservation firm that over five decades of exceptional work has drawn inspiration from a commitment to creating sustainable communities defined by social equity, economic opportunity, and environmental responsibility. The firm starts every planning process with an intensive period of stakeholder interviews to build trust and allowing for discussion on core issues. The firm also places a consistent emphasis on research and widely sharing best practices through writing, speaking, and civic engagement.

The firm believes that the right approach to planning lies both in introducing essential information into each planning process — even when it risks aggravating existing divisions by challenging deeply held beliefs — and in communicating challenging information in ways that promote dialog and provide tools for overcoming differences. On the issue of density, the "Civic Initiative for a Livable New England" led to the creation of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance. The firm created the 1985 plan for Boston's Harbor Point, the model for HUD's HOPE VI program to transform failing public housing into mixed-use communities, and the 2010 master plan for the post-Katrina New Orleans.

Redefining suburbs: Creating a high-density, walkable, mixed-use downtown for suburban Dublin, Ohio, prevents roughly 20,000,000SF of expected development from following a sprawl-form model.