Architecture Sarasota’s Downtown Sarasota: Hindsight, Insight and Foresight and the Urban Studies Speaker Series hosted by Hoyt Architects brought renowned global urbanists to share their vision for the downtown.
Building on the success of last year’s sold-out speaker series, Downtown Sarasota: Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight, Architecture Sarasota introduced a new series in 2025, Downtown Sarasota: Beyond Our Borders. This series featured prominent international urbanists who offered fresh, global perspectives on Sarasota’s development and future. The lineup included Gil Penalosa, Brent Toderian and Paul Kalbfleisch, each chosen for his distinctive viewpoint, extensive experience and engaging delivery. The series aimed to inspire and inform, continuing to elevate community dialogue and drive meaningful progress. Also focusing on urban development was the 2025 Urban Studies Speaker Series. Hosted by Hoyt Architects, the event featured Robert Gibbs—a respected retail expert and urban planner—who discussed how national retail trends are reflected in downtown Sarasota. Wes Marshall, a professor, engineer and author, was also a speaker. He discussed the shortcomings of modern transportation engineering and the steps society can take toward creating a safer future.
GIL PENALOSA
Penalosa is a leading advocate for creating cities that serve all people, with a focus on sustainability and inclusivity. He has worked in over 350 cities globally, offering valuable leadership and advice. His lecture attracted a full-house which he says was not because of him, but because people care so much about Sarasota. “Each of the attendees had many options—they could have stayed home or gone out to dinner but they chose to spend two hours with other community members searching for ways to make their city even better,” he said. “I think that that is a very good sign for Sarasota.”
Your lecture was titled ‘Cities for Everyone.’ How can Sarasota work toward being a more inclusive and equitable city? If cities are good for children, they’re good for everyone. A city where a child on a tricycle or an older person in a wheelchair can safely and joyfully go anywhere is a good neighborhood. Unfortunately, few neighborhoods in North America meet this simple standard. Twenty years ago, I started a movement in Toronto called 8 80 Cities. The idea is simple: what if every part of the city, from parks to libraries, was designed to be great for both an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old? We need to stop designing cities as if everyone is 30 and athletic. The movement urges us to consider the most vulnerable, including people with disabilities, those from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and the economically disadvantaged. Sarasota, with a median age of 55, has an aging population, many of whom live in houses that are too big and expensive. What if the city allowed these homeowners to split their homes, with city hall providing a one-stop shop to navigate the process? This would create opportunities for both aging residents and younger people to live in the city. Regardless of income, everyone should have access to good schools, libraries, sidewalks and bike lanes. That’s how we can make a great city even better.
Having worked in over 350 cities, what are some common challenges you see across cities when it comes to creating healthy, sustainable communities? One is that people talk but often, they don’t do anything. Twenty years ago everyone talked about having walkable cities—a big challenge is how to move from talking to doing. Many cities fail to be good to two groups of the population. One is the zero to four-year-old group. It seems like planners think that children are born 5 years old. You even go to the parks and there are areas for ages 5–12, 12–18 and nothing for 0-4 when that is by far the most important time in our lives. Kids that are being born today in Sarasota are going to live to 90. In those first 48 months of life, contact with nature and physical activity is going to be the highest determinant for the next 86 years so if they don’t get all of this, I think most cities fail the age group. The other segment is people over 60 who are amazing and healthy. Older people are our assets to the community, not liabilities. The surgeon general in the US reports that the number one health problem today is loneliness—older people need socializing. Many people living here are retired and have a wealth of knowledge and experience. The city could be setting up all kinds of facilities from yoga to tai chi to history lessons and lectures and all kinds of activities.
What aspects, if any, of Sarasota’s urban planning or design stand out to you? Are there any specific opportunities you see for Sarasota to enhance its urban environment?There are some issues between citizens in Sarasota about the height of the buildings. I agree with them but in my lecture, I showed examples of how you can have the same number of units with five-story buildings next to each other as with 50-story buildings every other block. Most people hate the 50-story buildings except the developer doing it, but most people like the five-story buildings. Sarasota can be a world-class city. God was already very generous with the Gulf and the Bay—it’s all very nice. You can complement this but there has to be a shared vision. Sarasota could also be an amazing cycling city. The distances are short, the weather is perfect and it is very flat, but you need to have the infrastructure. There are some bike lanes but they are empty. That is because paint is not infrastructure. If you have a street at 40 miles an hour and you have a painted bike lane, very few people are going to ride if the only thing between them and the car is a painted line. If at every six feet, you put in some plastic poles, it will transform the bike lanes but also you need a network because even if you have one or two nice bike lanes, they don’t connect anything. Neighborhoods should also lower the speed to 20 miles per hour and put humps every block or so to enforce it. This way, you can mix cyclists with cars. Then you’ll have the network of protected bike lanes and you are going to have many more people walking and socializing when the cars are going slow.
What would you like to see Sarasota achieve in terms of urban design and sustainability in the next 5-10 years? They’ve got to start today. If they really want to do it, they can do it in less than three years. I think the worst thing that some cities can do is make plans for 40 years because then you ask about anything and they say, “it’s in our plan.” We need it now. For example, the schools could be the heart of the neighborhood. During non-school hours, we open all the outdoor areas to the community and indoors, we could open the gymnasium and maybe two or three classrooms. This is where you could have classes like yoga and garden markets and cooking lessons. The schools could be the heart of the community. Part of being sustainable is how we use the existing infrastructure in better ways.
BRENT TODERIAN
As a part of the Downtown Sarasota: Beyond Our Borders speaker series, Architecture Sarasota also welcomed renowned urbanist and former Vancouver Chief City Planner Brent Toderian. Toderian, whose lecture was titled Cities for Thriving: Creating Innovative and Successful Urban Environments, is the founder of the Vancouver-based consultancy firm Toderian Urban Works and consults with cities around the world on best practices and how to develop sustainable, thriving urban areas.
As a first time visitor to Sarasota, what are your FIRST impressions? I’m impressed by City Hall. I’m impressed by Architecture Sarasota. I’m impressed by the passion of the elected officials I’ve talked to and the civic leaders. Your city is well positioned, so I think you have all the opportunity in the world to get better and to prosper more as you go forward. I didn’t expect to see as many tall buildings and as much density around downtown as I did. It’s also more contemporary than I expected. I had a mental picture of what Sarasota looked like, as a relatively low-rise coastal city, but it’s much taller than I thought it would be and that’s not a bad thing.
As a former city planner for Vancouver, a city filled with tall buildings, how do you do tall buildings well? We tend to mistake height for intelligence and quality. In other words, if it’s tall it’s bad and if it’s short, it’s good. I can point out, however, tall buildings that are better than any of your low or mid-rise buildings from a public interest perspective. So height is not the important variable. Design choices are. Sarasota is already doing a fair number of tall buildings, but the pressure is on. I believe that you have the opportunity to do tall buildings in a more productive way than you have been. I don’t mean that in regards to the architectural details—I can tell that there was architectural interest on the part of developers on the quality of materials, the colors, etcetera—but more in the sense of giving people access to Sarasota’s biggest asset, which is the water.
How does a city work towards productive growth and change? I’m often asked, “what is the most important first step” in urban planning and in creating a better downtown. I say that you need to have a conversation about how the city can get better and that’s a tough and scary conversation, because people don’t always like change. I give a lot credit to Architecture Sarasota for initiating that conversation and having this series as a basis for inspiring the new downtown master plan. Sarasota is about to do two very important things: initiate the new downtown master plan and appoint a new city manager. The factors that differentiate the cities that do remarkable things and the cities that do not are the culture of leadership and the ability to create smart plans for the future. Now is a good time to have a blunt conversation about what the city wants to achieve and how to get there. I’ve heard others talk about how Sarasota needs to decide on the one thing that it’s good at, but I don’t buy that. Sarasota is a successful city in many ways. It has many advantages and assets that other cities do not have. What I think Sarasota should do is get as good as possible at smart, strategic city building.
What are the attributes that define a “strong” downtown? There are two different ways of looking at the role of a downtown. One is that it continues to be the magnet, the destination for the city. There’s that strategy that says we have to do everything we can to make downtown the best magnet that it can be. That’s place making and having great streets, great retail opportunities and great entertainment that create a fun experience. That’s about bringing people in from the outside, however. The other half is creating a rich, dense, urban neighborhood downtown, which has become particularly important since the pandemic. That’s not just about creating housing units, however, it’s about creating an area where people want to live and to stay. What you really want is the benefit of being able to ride down the elevator, which is a form of public transit, and walk to get your fresh food, your groceries, your hardware. It’s part of what I call the urban contract—you’re asking people to trade their backyard and their media room in the basement for urban downtown living. The only way that it’s a good trade is if you replace those suburban amenities with public parks and amenities so that you never have to get in the car for anything.
PAUL KALBFLEISCH
As a part of the Downtown Sarasota: Beyond Our Borders speaker series, Architecture Sarasota hosted Paul Kalbfleisch for his lecture Cities for Joy: Creating Urban Spaces That Promote Social Vibrancy. Kalbfleisch, who previously worked as the vice-president of creativity and brand strategy at Research in Motion, the creators of BlackBerry, is a writer and speaker who now actively consults city builders in the quest to create more human-oriented communities
Is it possible to create strategies to turn strangers into friends in a car-dominated city? I believe it is. When you apply a different set of perspectives and different priorities, you can start to look at projects differently. For a couple of years, I’ve been working with a developer that builds primarily subdivisions and in these subdivisions, the big complaint is that we have lots of trails, but the trails don’t lead anywhere specific. So how do we start to create destinations? How do we start creating activities that help define a community and give a community sense of shared experiences and shared stories? In that instance, what we ended up doing was working with one of the local grade schools, because in subdivisions the thing that binds people together are the children. With the kids as the binding actor, we asked them to create public art for some of the areas in these car-dominated subdivisions and sprinkle them throughout the subdivision almost as a scavenger hunt. We started to layer all of these different stories that people had created with their artwork—it’s not a major infrastructure shift, but it’s an example of what we can do with what we have to start applying the idea that we have to find ways to connect ourselves to each other.
You’ve talked about creating a sense of collective joy. What do you mean by that? Joy, in actual fact, are these moments where you feel connected to something bigger than yourself, whether it’s a community, an idea, a feeling or a person and it’s an outburst of joyful optimism that comes out of everyday experiences. These are the things that give individuals and cultures and communities the resilience to carry on. To me, joy is a tool of resilience. It’s not a reward for getting somewhere, it’s a tool to help us work to get into a better world and a better life. Big cities have these moments of serendipity, these moments of collective joy all the time. We’ve gone through a period of time where we thought the future is all about growth and then the future is all about technology. I think now that the future is societal. The deciding factor in whether our future is going to be better or worse is on what we do and how we divide or unite society. Cities are this place where we can actually make that difference. I heard someone give a talk not too long ago where he said that cities are serendipity machines. I thought it was an amazing idea, because it questions how we’re going about building our cities. You can say “let’s create bike lanes and better parks and more interesting architecture,” but what’s the point of it? What’s it leading to? What’s our why? Maybe our why is to build cities that prioritize the connection of citizens because that will make them vibrant and economically viable in the innovation era. Until we find a way of bringing people together a little better than we are currently, the big, complex challenges facing society in the future are going to be hard to overcome.
ROBERT GIBBS
The 2025 Urban Studies Speaker Series hosted author and retail expert Robert Gibbs, founder and managing director of the Gibbs Planning Group. Gibbs, who has taught “Urban Retail Planning” at the Harvard Graduate School of Design Extensive Education program for over 20 years, is one of the founding members of the Congress of New Urbanism and the author of Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development. Gibbs has been visiting Sarasota for the past 25 years.
What are some of the new trends in retail, particularly in this age of delivery? Believe it or not, internet sales account for about 60% of soft goods. There has been a letdown—a lot of people don’t like returning things. There’s room for error in delivery, plus it’s not a social experience. So there’s been a massive boom to build new stores. Barnes and Noble, for example, is building one store a week this year. The big women’s fashion stores announced they want to build 100 or 200 stores in the next three years. People are shopping again. Men are wearing pants again and women are wearing dresses. They want to shop in person, they want to touch the fabric and they want to be with their friends, which is all very positive. They realize that malls, aside from the top 10 luxury malls in the country, don’t work for them. They want to be in real urban places, in real historic cities.
What are the types of retail stores that succeed in downtowns today and what does the future look like? The number one business is always food and beverage. Restaurants and bars always do well in downtowns. You can have too many of those, though, and it negatively affects the rest of the businesses for downtown. The strongest businesses are always home design furniture stores. It sort of gives an edgy place where designers like to hang out. Women’s and children’s fashions stores are also some of the most popular right now and believe it or not, discount stores like Kohl’s or Target are popping up in downtowns. They’re appealing to the average income, middle class family.
I think Sarasota is going to be more of a year-round city. A place where even more people live year-round, instead of having a second home up in Maine or something like that. I also think that you’re going to see a lot more diversity, a lot more families and a lot more children here. Sarasota was one of the first cities in the country to bring in a very big, popular store like Whole Foods into its downtown. Whole Foods is typically very selective with where they put their stores, they would conventionally go into suburban shopping centers, and that’s an indicator to me that the city planners of Sarasota saw the future, that this could be even more of a year-round place. Their futurists proved to be right. There weren’t that many people living here when they opened that store. They were opening it based on the future, which is very gutsy to think that people living in the eastern gated communities would get out of their houses, drive downtown and park in a garage.
WES MARSHALL
As a part of the Urban Studies Speaker Series, Hoyt Architects hosted Wes Marshall, PhD, PE, a professor, transportation engineer and author. Marshall, who is a professor of civil engineering at University of Colorado Denver, recently wrote Killed By a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System. Through his teaching, engineering and writing, Marshall looks to create safer transportation systems for a better, brighter future.
What were your impressions of Sarasota? Downtown is fantastic. Walking around here is great, the shops, the streets, the slow speeds, the narrowness, it all seems to work well— but you don’t have to go very far to get outside of that niceness. There’s no sort of transition zone, however, between downtown and those arterials or big roads that lead into it.
Can you speak to the design intention behind the larger arterials? When you do see any sort of crash that happens on large roads like those, as a road safety researcher, we look at the data and try to figure out what’s wrong with it. The data is going to indicate that there was a human error problem, be it someone was speeding or jaywalking, whatever it is, it’s always a human error problem. From the traffic engineering mindset, our solutions go towards, well, how do we fix human behavior? We need to educate people or enforce the rules better. In reality, if you look at what people are doing on those streets, it’s not an error. When they’re speeding on a big road, the road is telling them to do that or if someone jaywalks, sometimes they shouldn’t do it, but a lot of times it’s their best option, because the sidewalks are terrible. These people are doing rational things. If we can think about designing streets from their perspective, to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, then you can start getting into engineering as a solution. Instead of just education and enforcement, we can look at designing the roads better to get the behaviors we want, instead of just trying to corral people into what we think they should be doing.
How do traffic and civil engineers shift that mindset to creating more pedestrian-oriented streets and roadways? What we’re doing now is that we’re sort of sitting around playing whack-a-mole, waiting for people to get hurt, before we actually do something. We’re putting a band-aid on a bigger, fundamental problem. To really switch things up, we need to have a different mindset. When I was taught to design a street, you started from the center line out. You first figure out how much roadway you need to give to the cars—not just the cars today, but the amount of cars we think there are going to be 20 years down the line—then we tried to give them that much roadway and then I’d say, “What do we need for public transit or bikes?” Whatever’s left ends up going to the pedestrian, which is like three feet on the side of the road. We’re all saying that we want to prioritize pedestrians and bicyclists—if we want to put our money where our mouth is, then maybe we should start from the outside in. Give enough space to them, first and foremost. Make sure they’re safe and keep them away from fast, speeding cars. Then start working your way in and whatever’s left over can go to the cars. It’s a totally different mindset and nobody is doing it that way, but that’s the sort of big shift we would need to create the kinds of places that people would actually want to be in and not be in their cars.
