UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Stuckeman School in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture will host civil engineer and transportation visionary Ian Lockwood Oct. 30-31 as part of the Department of Landscape Architecture’s ongoing studio course that explores alternative options for a proposed Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) super highway through the local Penns-Brush Valley area.
Lockwood, a livable transportation engineer with planning and design firm Toole Design Group, will give a lecture on what has become locally known as the “Rethinking 322” project, from 7-9 p.m. on Oct. 30 at the Wyndham Garden State College, located at 310 Elks Club Road, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. Lockwood and his Toole Design colleagues Alex McKeag, urban planner, and Cindy Zerger, landscape architect, will share ideas and designs from transportation projects they have worked on around the country in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Lockwood will then visit the Stuckeman Family Building on the University Park campus on Oct. 31 to speak with landscape architecture students about the 322 project and exploring transportation options in different areas of the United States.
Initiated in 2019 by Paul Daniel Marriott, associate professor of landscape architecture, and the Centre County Historical Society, “Rethinking 322: Strategies for the Proposed State College Area Connector in Penns-Brush Valley” is a publication resulting from an upper-level studio course led by Marriott that centers around the State College Area Connector, a proposal by PennDOT to build an 8-mile, four-lane highway connecting the Mount Nittany Expressway to U.S. 322 at Potters Mills. There has been considerable pushback from residents whose land would be taken over and whose livelihoods would be affected by such a project, which is where Marriott and his students have come in to work with area residents to explore alternative options to the PennDOT proposal.
Marriott was honored for his work on the project by the Centre County Historical Society as the recipient of its 2023 Education and Advocacy Award.
“Rethinking 322 is facilitating an important conversation about the future of transportation in the Centre Region and its relationship to the communities, landscapes and natural systems that make this a special place,” said Marriott, an affiliate researcher with the Hamer Center for Community Design.
Lockwood’s current work focuses on walkability projects, restoring one-way streets to two-ways, shared spaces, policy forms, and designing main streets, campuses and downtowns. He previously served as the city transportation planner for West Palm Beach, Florida, where he transformed state arterial, local roads and parking to improve the city both economically and socially.