EDP404. Stony Brook Station. Creative Writing. Research Paper

My major is environmental policy, planning and design. This is my major report. My project is to redesign the Stony Brook LIRR train station on Long Island, you can look it up on Google Map, including the whole parking area on the side of the station (parking lot is the side of stony brook university), school bus station. I will upload instruction, Q&A, and all the photos. You can use map and photos from the folder to finish the report. Let me know if there is any question.

EDP 404 // Spring 2020
Report Draft 1: Due 11:59pm on April 7



This first draft of your individual report will mostly provide background on your project and allow you to start organizing information in one place and iterating drafts while simultaneously working on other aspects of the project.
 This should NOT be just a bunch of text in a word processing document. You should be starting to create a report that is visually appealing from a graphic design perspective, and includes useful images (maps, photos, sketches, etc). 
These rough guidelines are meant to help you. While you probably can’t address every single thing I mention here, my goal is to help you understand the kinds of information that ought to be included. You may go beyond this and it’s OK if you don’t cover every single thing, but you should try to include the majority of them. It’s also OK if you feel certain items work better in a slightly different order, but your first draft should contain the majority of the following content in roughly this order, and you might want to think of this as a checklist. I urge you to look at some of the example reports that I have provided in the Google drive, showing the ways that professional firms and graduate students at other schools have conveyed this kind of information in similar types of reports.

At this stage I do NOT want any information about what you would propose to change about the site or add to it. That will come next. At this stage I only want you inventory, analyze and document what we know about the site. The design part will come next.  
REPORT DRAFT 1 CHECKLIST:
 Introduction and overview (1-2 pages)
❏ Identify the client
❏ Identify the project site
❏ Explain the client’s reason for wanting/needing to redesign the site (NOTE: For this section you want to focus on the client’s REASONS for redesigning the site. This is NOT the same as the goals and objectives that we developed as a class and which you will deal with later in this report).
 Client and stakeholder meeting recap (1-2 pages)
❏ Recap any meetings with the client and any other stakeholders (include time, date, location and who attended) and list any goals or “dreams” they have for the site, any restrictions or parameters they identified, etc.
 Site description (2-4 pages including visuals)
❏ Describe the site in some detail including the broader campus context, a physical description of the site, etc.
❏ Include at least 2 maps, sketches or diagrams of the site
❏ Include at least 6 additional photos of the site or nearby context
❏ Additional graphic elements are welcomed if you desire
❏ Note that this may have some overlap with the content of the 3 Site Analysis sections listed below, but should be more of an overview or summary DESCRIPTION, while those sections will be more in-depth and more analytical. In other words, this section should describe what is there, but the later sections will be more in-depth about physical elements as well as how people use the space, and what elements work/don’t work/are missing, etc.
 Context (~2 pages)
❏ Describe the history of the site and any historical factors, context, etc. that could be pertinent for our design proposal (For example – when was the campus founded, when was the station built, when was the station building redesigned, what are some of the historical/contextual issues that Englebright mentioned in his visit, etc?)
❏ Describe any current/future changes that may affect the use of the site (e.g. the new strip mall across the street, planned changes to campus, potential technological innovations, etc.)
 Constraints and challenges (1-2 pages)
❏ Start to think about the aspects of the site (existing conditions, location, context, etc.) that will have to be overcome in order to create a better site and list them here with some explanation of why or how these will create a challenge.
 Goals/Objectives/Vision (1 page)
❏ State our group’s “vision” for the site.
❏ List the goals and objectives we decided on as a group.
❏ Also add some additional explanation (1-2 paragraphs) about why or how these goals, objectives, visions, etc. were developed and/or why they are important.
 Site Analysis: Access (2-4 pages depending on how many images you use)
❏ How do people get to this site?
❏ Why do they come there?
❏ Where do they go from the site?
❏ How do they move through the site?

❏ How well does the design of the site facilitate these various uses?
 Site Analysis: Uses (2-4 pages depending on how many images you use)
❏ What do people do when they are at the site (e.g. while waiting for train, after arriving on train, while passing through to go someplace else, parking, waiting for bus, etc)
❏ WHO uses the site, and for which uses?
❏ What things are available to accommodate various uses and how functional are they (e.g. bike racks, shelter from elements, seating, power, water, food, information, etc.)
❏ What natural elements are present?

❏ What sustainability elements are present?
❏ How welcoming is the site? How safe does it seem? How easy is it to get information?
 Site Analysis: Users (2-4 pages depending on how many images you use)
❏ Who are some of the different demographics of users (e.g. daily train riders, first-time visitors, faculty, staff, students, local residents, commuters, etc.)
❏ What issues are pertinent for various types of users (pedestrians, train riders, bus riders, bikeshare users, personal bike users, skaters, rideshare users, people parking in the lot, people using carshare, etc.) and how might these be distinct from each other? 
As you can see, there is no specific word count required at this stage, but I would guess that in order to cover all of the topics listed above you will end up with somewhere between 14 and 25 pages depending on how you write, how many images you use, etc. I really don’t think you should need more than about 30 pages maximum, but I also think you would be very hard pressed to do an adequate job in just 14 pages.
 Remember also that anything you do now means less that you will need to do later.
 This draft does not need to be perfect, but it should have some basic formatting (e.g. graphic elements, colors, headlines and banners, etc) and images. And it should be fairly comprehensive and well reasoned even if not 100% polished.  
It will likely be easiest to type all of your text (or at least the longer passages) in Word or Google Docs and use Powerpoint or Google Slides to actually design the booklet. (If you know InDesign or some other design software, you are free to use it, but see the note below on how to turn the assignment in).
 TO TURN IN THIS ASSIGNMENT: When you’re done with this draft, please create a PDF and place it in the class Google Drive in the “Report Draft #1” folder with your name in the PDF file name, for instance “EDP 404 Draft 1 Finn March 31 2020.” 
As you recall, we will trade these and you will also be responsible for providing peer input for someone else’s report, so it will be easier if all the drafts are available as PDFs in one place.
 PLEASE NOTE: I only want a PDF. Do NOT share your original document. I don’t want to be responsible if it gets deleted or modified accidentally.