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.

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.