James Richards is co-founder of Townscape Inc., a town planning consultancy based in Dallas that specializes in downtown revitalizations, new town centers, urban villages and transit-oriented developments. He is a national award-winning designer whose work has spanned landscape planning and urban design for thirty years on projects in sixteen states. Richards often serves as a concept designer for creative interdisciplinary teams, where his rapidly sketched ideas shape long-range planning frameworks, developing designs, computer animations, and, ultimately, the built environment. He is the 2008 recipient of ASLA’s Bradford Williams Medal for his writings on creativity and visual thinking in Landscape Architecture Magazine.

Artist Statement: In 2005, I made field trips to several cities to study the design attributes of neighborhoods populated by creative professionals. I was taken by the funky character of this urban village in Washington D.C. and immediately knew I’d have to draw it. Notes were added to contribute a loose, calligraphic feel to the piece. An early pencil sketch for this painting appeared in my article “Placemaking for the Creative Class” in the February 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.