Urban designer gives our city its vibrancy

Josie Schroder is used to getting confused looks when people ask her what she does for a living.
Ms Schroder is an urban designer - and that's not a landscape designer, an interior decorator or a graphic artist.
Urban design is about "looking at all the places and spaces that are the parts that make up the city", Ms Schroder said.
Urban designers aim to meet the social, economic, cultural and environmental needs of the community.
"It's essentially like the old-fashioned town planning, in that we look at all the pieces of the puzzle that make up the city, and how we can make it work better for the people."
Ms Schroder has recently started her own Tauranga-based business, Urban Opera. A redundancy gave her the push she needed to go out on her own.
"It seemed like a really good opportunity to do it. I thought it was something that I would eventually do anyway."
A qualified urban designer and planner, Ms Schroder offers her expertise in urban design, planning and landscape design.
And her job involves looking at everything from accessibility, cyclist and pedestrian routes, public transport, security and safety, as well as buildings.
"There's a lot of things involved. You want to make an attractive and creative city. It's about bringing that vibrancy to the city.
"It's about the interaction of buildings to the street, and it's all about the people."
Ms Schroder moved to Tauranga in 2004 to work for the Tauranga City Council - she developed and wrote the council's first urban design strategy.
In addition to extensive work for councils around the country, she's also worked for private developers and contributed to the design of subdivisions.
"From a council perspective I do a lot of character analysis and urban design analysis," said Ms Schroder, who also worked on The Lakes subdivision.
A recent project involved heritage and character areas in Thames/Coromandel and she spent two years working on a project in Christchurch.
She's also worked for iwi in developments such as tourism.
Although her work involves travel to other centres, Tauranga's proximity to Auckland, Hamilton and Rotorua makes it a convenient base.
And as Ms Schroder said Tauranga is "a great place to come back to".
"This city is an amazing city in terms of location and a whole lot of different aspects."
She's a fan of the boardwalk at Mount Maunganui and wants to see that kind of innovation happening elsewhere in the city.
And she wants to see better urban design in buildings, taking more consideration of the city's cultural background and environments.
A former landscape designer, Ms Schroder came to urban design after doing a degree in town planning at Auckland University and a Masters in urban design at Oxford Brookes University in England.
Urban design is a growth industry, as its importance is increasingly recognised, Ms Schroder said.
While she hopes to grow Urban Opera as a business, her goal is to celebrate and bring life to New Zealand's towns and cities.
"It's more about working with other professionals to be able to deliver all the things that we want to achieve, than building the business into something huge."