When a developer decides to do a project that involves many parcels and many buildings, they have to develop a “master plan” for the project. In this episode, I chat with Tim Magill of 5+ Design, who specializes in master planning some of the largest sites in the world. Cities often have comprehensive plans which they hope to use to steer the development of outside parties, but in this case we’re talking about master plans created by private developers, often for immediate use.

The background on my interest in this topic is an independent study I did in my last semester of my MBA program. I concluded that the best master plans seem to prioritize the design of the streetscape first, then the balance of public and private spaces. Finally, so that the buildings don’t look frozen in time, the constituent buildings of the development should be designed by different architects, lest they all look too similar. You can read more notes on my conclusions here.

As if this episode didn’t have enough content, here are some short breakout conversations I had with Tim about (you guessed it) driverless cars, and also about the heavy use of glass in places as hot as Dubai. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did!