New public plaza adjacent to the historic Vortox Building in Village South

At their meeting on June 1, the Claremont Planning Commission unanimously recommended that the City Council approve the Village South Specific Plan.  Through a public process over the course of nearly 4 years, Sargent Town Planning has worked collaboratively with the City, the community, property

owners and prospective developers to produce a plan to deliver a 21st century mixed-use, transit-oriented development a short walk from a planned Gold Line Metro station and existing Metrolink commuter rail station.  The plan - including a form-based code, objective design and development standards, and detailed implmementation strategies and procedures - has been crafted to ensure human-scale, pedestrian-oriented urban patterns, building forms, and active public spaces that reflect the unique character, quality and scale of the historic early 20th century Claremont Village just to the north. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Commission Chair commented that the Village South Plan was the best specific plan she had ever seen, a much appreciated compliment coming from a senior principal of a prominent national architectural firm.

On June 1, 2020, Smart Growth American and the Form-Based Codes Institute announced that Rancho Cucamonga's Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood & Conservation Plan (EHNCP) was one of two form-based codes to be recognized with a 2020 Driehaus Award.

The award, now in its twelfth year, is made possible by the generous support of the Richard H. Driehaus Charitable Lead Trust, and recognizes communities that have adopted and implemented exemplary form-based zoning codes. 

The jury found the EHNCP commendable for the way in which it balances and connects walkable neighborhoods and very large amounts of permanently conserved rural open space and natural habitat. Sargent Town Planning prepared the plan and code in tight and seamless collaboration with a very talented planning and design team and the City of Rancho Cucamonga's professional staff, without whose strong and creative support this result would not have been possible.  This is the fourth time that Sargent Town Planning's work has been recognized by the Driehaus Trust and the Form-Based Codes Institute.

At their April 15 meeting, the Indio City Council unanimously approved the new Downtown Specific Plan.

Starting in 2018 with a partial draft plan begun by others, STP worked closely with City staff and the community to clarify the vision for a revitalized and expanded Downtown, and crafted a form-based code with customized development standards and design guidelines for infill commercial, mixed-use and residential development, and for a safe, comfortable, human-scale network of walkable streets and attractive community gathering spaces.  A top priority of the plan – established as part of the recently adopted General Plan Update, for which STP led the urban design vision work from 2017 to 2019 – was “putting Downtown back on the map”, re-establishing strong gateways from Highway 111, Indio Boulevard, and Jackson Street, which bound and provide primary access to the Downtown.  The historic Downtown is part of a larger envisioned City Center that includes the Midtown District to west on “Boulevard 111”, to which old Highway 111 is envisioned to evolve.

11th Floor

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, we began working remotely on March 17.  On March 20, in response to the mayor's and governor's orders, our office building was locked down until at least April 19.  Since thaot time we have adopted a hybrid work schedule, balancing time together in the stu

dio with remote working.

We have always been configured for flexible, mobile and remote working and have a wide array of online collaboration tools, cloud storage and remote server access, so the effect of this emergency on our ability to continuously conduct business as usual and respond to the needs of our existing and future clients and collaborators is effectively zero. 

Our office phone numbers all forward to our mobile phones, we are checking email as usual, conducting team meetings and client meetings of all types through screensharing and video-conferencing apps, and producing and delivering documents and presentations electronically, as is our usual practice.  Please contact us at any time for any reason.  

We continue to follow recommended social distancing and hygiene practices to keep ourselves and our families safe, and hope that you are also.  Please stay safe and be well, as we need all our valued collaborators and clients.  We look foward to seeing you in person when this crisis passes, which should be reasonably soon if most people follow the good advice of medical professionals who actually know what they are talking about.

And yes, that's a live shot of the office on that date.  Nest camera, we're were not there, but as of later 2021 and 2022 we are on a regular basis.

All the best,

David Sargent

Celilia Kim

We are very pleased to welcome another new member to our senior management team.  Celilia Kim joins Sargent Town Planning as a Senior Associate, bringing with her very significant academic accomplishments and professional experience.  

After completing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in urban planning from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, a Master of Urban Planning from USC, and over 10 years professional experience in the Los Angeles region, she recently earned a PhD in Planning, Policy and Design from UC Irvine, with a focus on land use regulation and form-based development codes.  For the past several years she has been a lecturer at Cal State Northridge on the subjects of graphic communication, qualitative research, and writing.

Cecelia will work closely with our principals and other senior associate to guide and direct the firm’s work, and will contribute to our constant innovation in documentation techniques and processes, coordinate the work of our in-house and consultant teams, and manage selected large projects. Her strong background in land use and development regulations, sustainability policy, information design, and community engagement very nicelly complement and balance our team’s already formidable strengths in urban planning, urban and architectural design, creative problem solving, graphic communication and form-based coding.

At their regular meeting on November 6, 2019 the Rancho Cucamonga City Council heard the second reading of an ordinance to adopt the 4,400-acre Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood & Conservation Plan.

The ordiance was passed unanimously on a 5-0 vote, culminating a 4 1/2 year process of intensive community and environmental analysis, planning, and design, and extensive community outreach and engagement. The specific plan was prepared by a large multi-disciplinary team of City staff and consulting professional firms, led by Sargent Town Planning and directed by the City Manager's office and planning department.

The Plan provides a clear vision, highly customized development standards and design guidelines, and robust implementation strategies and procedures for delivering up to 3,000 housing units, a small neighborhood-serving commercial center, an extensive network of parks, trails and and new school within the 800 acre Neighborhood Area, and for systematically conserving approximately 3,600 acres of rural open space and natural habitat in the Rural/Conservation Area along the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, abutting the San Bernardino National Forest.  The neighborhood development standards emphasize native landscape materials, a mix of housing options and indigenous architectural styles for the lower Neighborhood Area - consistent with earlier specific plans prepared for Etiwanda in 1982 and 1992 - and state of the art standards and incentives for habitat conservation and rural living in the  upper Rural/Conservation Area.  Following Plan adoption the City plans to submit an application for annexation to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) of the County of San Bernardino, to gain local land use control of the future of this unique area for the benefit of future generations.

Andrew Krizman, Javier Ballesteros,

We are very pleased to announce that three new members joined our core team of full-time staff in 2019.  In August Andrew Krizman has joined us as a Senior Associate, bringing to our team his distinguished educational background and broa

We are very pleased to announce that three new members joined our core team of full-time staff in 2019.  In August Andrew Krizman has joined us as a Senior Associate, bringing to our team his distinguished educational background and broad professional experience. Since his graduation in 2013 from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in architecture, he worked throughout the country and around the world as an independent urban planner and designer, a key member of large multi-disciplinary teams for urban and architectural projects of many sizes, scales and types.  As he joined us Andrew was finishing the thesis for his Master of Science degree in Sustainable Urbanism from Oxford University.  His role on our team is broad and focused on design, working closely with our principals and clients, and guiding our other associates and designers and subconsultants to shape, illustrate, and document each plan at the high level to which we always aspire.

In September we were joined by Javier Ballesteros Márquez, upon his graduation from Notre Dame with a Master of Urban Design degree, prior to which he received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Seville and completed professional internships in Spain, Poland and the U.S.  In October Martin Serrano Cordova joined our team, having been graduated from Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Architecture, with a minor in sustainability, and completed 2 years of professional experience as a designer with DPZ CoDesign. Please look for bios of all our staff on the Team page of this website. 

Speaking of which, we did not formally announce the arrival of Eryan Gwin and Russell Toler in our studio in October of 2018 and January of 2019, respectively.  We are equally pleased that they chose to join us, and have rapidly become the core of our growing team.  They have been working closely with our principals and long-time consulting associates, supported by a series of talented intern designers who each spent a few months with us in 2019, and have now returned to complete their degrees in Holland and at the University of Notre Dame.  We could not be more pleased with Eryan's and Russell's design, form-based code, and project management contributions to our work, and the opportunity to now expand our core team of full-time staff to 7.

We are extremely pleased to announce that Peter VanderWal is now a Principal of Sargent Town Planning.

Peter has for the past decade been a senior member of the firm, working closely with David Sargent and our clients and teams of collaborators on project and plan design, as well as directing the production of our plans and codes.  Peter has been taking an increasing share of the responsiblity for project, team and practice management, and this expanded leadership role is recognized by his designation as a Principal of the firm.  Simultaneously David Sargent's title becomes Senior Principal, other core team members receive the title of Associate, with one Senior Associate joining the team in August.