Urban Landscapes, LLC - Landscape Architecture + Urban Design

We Are Urban LandscapesCreating Places People Want To BeGet In Touch With Us

Infill, Urbanism, Landscape Architecture & Holistic Sustainability

downtown Colorado Springs streets and parks

WHO WE ARE

Urban Landscapes exists as an ethos dedicated to making communities across Colorado more vibrant, sustainable, and livable.

We are a boutique Planning, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Studio founded to develop timeless neighborhoods, majestic parks, and dynamic communities for people from all walks of life to enjoy.

In this work, we partner with developers, local government officials, architects, engineers, and the broader public to create memorable places that develop stronger connections, foster a deeper connection with our natural environment, serve as a catalyst for new perspectives and experiences, and create financial value for clients.

PLACEMAKING

TOWN PLANNING

URBAN PARKS

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

OUR STORY

john olson - owner - urban landscapes in colorado springs

We pride ourselves on working with clients to create a cost-effective, dynamic, and innovative public process — often resulting in unique and inspired design and planning solutions.

We believe that great neighborhoods, inspiring parks, dynamic communities, and memorable places are fundamental elements of vibrant civic life. Urban Landscapes understands that inspired design embodied with experience and understanding, can create projects of lasting impact, beauty, and success for clients and communities.

At Urban Landscapes, we highly value:

Shared goals, Partnership and Collaboration.
Designing for the Future.
Building to Make an Impact.
Change, Adaptation and Innovation.
Engaging with Clients and Communities to Create Memorable Projects.
Ecological Design that Creates Strong Connections Between People and the Places They Live.

Urban Landscapes founder, John Olson, came to the table with more than twenty years of planning and design experience on projects across the United States. From community—led planning projects in small mountain town communities to mixed-use development projects in the Front Range, his diverse portfolio gives our team the knowledge and experience to effectively advance projects from vision to implementation and beyond.

Our public engagement process has proven to enhance the relationship between community, local government, and the places we design.

Our wealth of experience also crosses over to the Private Sector through numerous rezoning successes in multiple jurisdictions and a plethora of innovative development projects across varying scales and project types. With a vested interest in the future of our state and our community, we bring a passion, dedication and knowledge that will make your project a success.

Our team’s projects are defined by a pride of work, a commitment to meeting the goals of our clients, and a relentless desire to create inspiring places that enhance the relationship between community members and their environment. We recognize the value of bringing together a wide variety of stakeholders and defining a shared long-term large-scale project vision.

We are excited to present a project approach that will fuse our team’s extensive experience in site-sensitive feasibility studies with a community outreach plan that will build consensus and create excitement for clients. We see a well-designed, well-executed project approach as being essential to create the community, partner, and visitor excitement necessary to make projects a long-term success. Our team is extremely excited to partner with you to share our experience, knowledge, and record of success.

CLIENT REVIEWS

"Working with John and his team on our multifamily project has been very productive and enjoyable. He helped us navigate the development process, knows how to work well with the city officials and other designers and created a great landscape plan. Definitely recommend!"

EcoFriends Homes

Laura Larsen + John Bittner

OUR SERVICES

With each project comes the complexity of balancing the triad of sustainability – people, planet, and profit. The best places are ones where it is obvious that each is equally balanced. Similarly, these places provide the greatest value for our clients. That’s why Urban Landscapes is focused on being well-versed in all aspects of design.

Town Planning & Neighborhood Development

With a passion toward new urbanism and Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND), we look at how to build positive and healthy experiences by integrating the public realm with intimate places. These are places where the community live, work, and play. Our work pushes the boundaries of conventional practice and utilizes time-tested placemaking principles to create civic spaces that are vibrant and enduring with the full contextual range of mixed-use, walkable, pedestrian-friendly environments. We are skilled in balancing the demands of both landowners and developers with the needs and concerns of citizens all while fitting inside a policy framework.

Urban Design & Placemaking

Placemaking is all about creating places that people love to spend their time and converse with others. Placemaking, when done successfully, is not only memorable - it is catalytic. You know these places, they’re where others congregate - where you see long-lost friends - where a barista, waiter or bartender knows your order. True placemaking can have an economic investment ripple of several blocks. Not only does our team design places that stand out, we also thoughtfully push back on the status quo that can sometimes block the path of high quality design. Urban Landscapes is here as an advocate and partner so that urban spaces become urban places.

Parks & Streetscapes

When it comes to parks and a streetscape, the right vision, design, and plan is essential to building for a community that will not only use it, but care for it long-term. Parks come in all shapes and sizes and our team members have had a part in designing at scales ranging from State Parks to Urban Pocket Parks. Our niche in this realm is in the town square and pocket park with our principles and practice of creating outdoor spaces that are enjoyable and catalytic for nearby areas. Similarly, the streetscape requires careful calibration to the places adjacent. As the Ecological Transect sheds light on how flora and fauna relate, we look to the rural-to-urban transect in how streetscape elements relate to the adjacent uses and intensities to create the spaces between the places.

LATEST POSTS FROM OUR BLOG

December 28, 2021

Therapeutic Gardening is Healing

Horticultural Therapy is an alternative or a supplementation to traditional talk therapy, similar to Equine Therapy or Art Therapy. Therapeutic gardening is a time-proven and highly researched practice that …

November 27, 2021

Ruxton Avenue – A Woonerf?

In 2015, during my tenure at ALC, I was approached by the now former Mayor (2017-2019) of Manitou Springs, Ken Jaray, on behalf of the Friends of Ruxton Canyon …

November 20, 2021

A Potential Path Forward for Old Colorado City

With Downtown in the midst of a renaissance (See recent CSBJ article, ‘Skyscraper’ points toward Springs Future), it’s time to focus some attention and love to some of the …

November 14, 2021

Two Years of Urban Landscapes

The holidays are coming and today, I reflect back on the past two years. Urban Landscapes, LLC was technically created as a business December 1, 2019. I state that …

November 3, 2021

The Perfection of Imperfection

In the year of Seaside’s fortieth anniversary, it seemed appropriate to reflect back on the many years and generations of the new urbanism movement. Seaside was the pioneer project …

GET IN TOUCH

Colorado communities are constantly growing and building — specifically across the Front Range. We’re looking to partner with clients who align with our passion to pour character, quality, and impact into what’s being built. If that’s you, please send us a note below!