Below is an excerpt from “NCI Charrette Planner Training in Practice: The US EPA Smart Growth Implementation Assistance Program” by Ilana Preuss of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. To read the article in its entirety, click here.
What has a multi-disciplinary team, stakeholder input, feedback loops, and a clear implementation plan — but is not a charrette? [...]

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A charrette is not usually the first model that a developer has in mind when choosing a project process. Developers are often concerned that broad stakeholder inclusion may lead to a loss of project control and demands for unfeasible design solutions. This fear is often based upon their experience with collaborative processes that waste time [...]

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Do you often have a tough time convincing a project sponsor of the importance of a collaborative process? One of the most important benefits of true collaboration in community planning is ending up with a plan that minimizes costly rework and results in a built project. Everyone suffers when a project in which many people [...]

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A common approach to NIMBYs in public processes is avoidance, but before we dismiss them as a group that needs to be either controlled or disempowered, we have to remember that it was NIMBYs who saved Grand Central Station. While there certainly are people who care only about disrupting development projects, most people that we [...]

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A bus tour can be one of the most effective tools during the vision development phase of charrette preparation. Ideally, the bus tour includes stakeholders representing all viewpoints including city staff, elected officials, community members, and the charrette design team. The best person to lead the bus tour is a local urban designer or planner [...]

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