Skaneateles (2010)

Skaneateles (2010): Strategies for Sustainable Skaneateles is the product of work commissioned jointly by the Town of Skaneateles and the Village of Skaneateles, which are located at the northern end of Skaneateles Lake, the easternmost of upstate New York’s Finger Lakes. Its basic premise is that the rural and agricultural character of the Town and the traditional urban character of the Village are connected historically, and must continue to be connected in the future if each are to retain their respective rural and urban characters. To combat the slow but steady sprawl occurring throughout the rural Town(ship), Notre Dame students proposed a strategy similar to that proposed earlier for Northampton: preserving the Town’s rural and agricultural land from residential development in favor of promoting more concentrated mixed-use development in the Village of Skaneatleles, and in several existing hamlets within the Town, including Willow Glen, Mottville, Skaneateles Falls, Shepard Settlement and Mandana. To promote increased growth in the Village in particular, students proposed the employment of constructed wetlands wastewater treatment cells as an incremental approach to sewage treatment for a Village government short of funds and with an at-capacity sewage treatment plant. Strategies for Sustainable Skaneateles received the 2011 Grand Prize (Academic) Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism.