2024 Chapter Awards

City and County of Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency; Civix; HHF Planners; Pilina First; Martin, Chock & Carden

The LTDR Plan integrates national best practices of long-term recovery with the socioeconomic, cultural, and governmental structures unique to Oʻahu. The Framework presented in the Plan identifies a governance structure, roles and responsibilities, and potential partnerships to leverage and organize disaster recovery resources in the months and years after a disaster event. It is flexible and scalable, allowing adaptability to each unique disaster event and specific needs of impacted households and communities. The Plan also includes engagement strategies and approaches that the City can use for an inclusive, community-informed, and transparent recovery process.

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Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, G70

The SAP introduces a community-based stewardship model where local organizations manage specific zones within the park. This ensures that the unique needs of each area are met through local expertise and fostering a sense of community ownership. The plan’s goals include maintaining the park as a cherished space for future generations, protecting native habitats, preserving cultural knowledge, promoting community economic development, and offering place-based educational programs. The SAP integrates traditional Hawaiian land management principles, particularly the ahupua‘a system, which views land as interconnected from the mountains to the sea. Strategies include restoring native coastal plant communities, wetland management, and addressing environmental threats such as invasive species. The plan also emphasizes minimal new development, instead focusing on the adaptive reuse of existing structures like the historic weigh station for educational and cultural purposes. The SAP serves as a model for other DHHL communities, blending innovative planning with deep respect for cultural heritage and environmental sustainability to protect Malama Cultural Park for future generations.

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Trust for Public Land

The Hawai‘i Sentinel Landscape spans over two million acres, featuring priority conservation, agricultural, and Department of Defense (DOD) mission lands on the islands of Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, and Hawai‘i Island. Given Hawai‘i’s scarcity of land, these areas offer a chance to promote the conservation of natural and cultural resources, mitigate threats from encroachment, and promote land use that complements military activities. In Hawai‘i, rapid urban and residential development threatens agricultural lands, native forests, and critical habitat while also obstructing low elevation flight and drone training, radar, and communication antennas. Climate induced threats further challenge military readiness, community resilience, and cultural resources. The Hawai‘i Sentinel Landscape enables more than 20 federal, state, local, and non-governmental partners to collaborate on landscape-scale solutions to address these shared challenges.

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Trust for Public Lands, University of Hawai‘i Community Design Center

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) brought its Parks for People Program to Hawai‘i with a pilot project at ‘A‘ala Park. The park presented an opportunity for community-driven redesign. University of Hawai‘i Community Design Center (UHCDC) is a non-profit teaching practice with a service-learning approach aimed at benefiting the community through public-interest design. Based on previous engagement and survey data, historical research, and site analysis—as a first step in the iterative co-design process—the project team developed three initial concept sketches and educational display materials to be used in interactive events. Subsequently, two revised concepts were taken back to the community for further hands-on feedback. During one final round of engagement, the project team narrowed down the previous design sketches to one proof-of-concept design plan, illustrated with eye-level renderings. Following the participatory design process, which included twelve community meetings between December 2022 and April 2023 that actively involved over 350 individual participants, a rough order of magnitude cost estimate was produced for subsequent design development purposes. In an approach novel to Hawai‘i, TPL will use this work to implement the community’s vision with the City.

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City and County of Honolulu (CCH) Department of Transportation Services; CCH Department of Planning and Permitting; HHF Planners; Toole Design Group, Austin, Tsutsumi, and Associates

Keʻeaumoku Street is a critical mauka-makai corridor in urban Honolulu that connects the Makiki and Ala Moana neighborhoods and supports a diverse community, including residential areas, parks, commercial districts, and a major transit hub. The Keʻeaumoku Complete Streets Project presented an opportunity to reimagine the corridor to prioritize safety and accessibility for people of all ages and abilities—whether they walk, bike, use a wheelchair, ride transit, or drive. The project team conducted extensive community outreach to businesses and stakeholders along the corridor, including planning charrettes, business canvassing, walk audits, and an online questionnaire and community map which generated over 500 responses. This community input, along with detailed traffic studies and multimodal transportation analyses, shaped the development of various complete street design concepts. The concepts were presented to the public and refined through a series of interactive public meetings to identify a proposed street design that will transform Keʻeaumoku Street into a complete street that is safe, accessible, and welcoming for all users, regardless of their mode of travel.

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