Excerpted from the NCI 2005 Best Practices Report By Jennifer K. Lindbom, AICP “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford The places and spaces we seek to create as architects, planners, and design professionals exist for the people that inhabit, work in, transit through, or enjoy them. [...]

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It may seem basic, but the most important thing to tell a community the first time you meet them is that you haven’t started the design yet. In the first charrette meeting, the message should be that you are there to tell people about the project, and to hear about what is important to them. [...]

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People say that you can’t really understand what a charrette does unless you have seen one in action. The NCI Charrette System: Stories of Community Transformation DVD is the next best thing to being there. This DVD places you into key moments within the seven-day East Fort Myers, FL charrette. Hear what participants are saying before and after the [...]

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Honestly, it can sometimes be a challenge to convince a project sponsor to use a charrette. First you may need to redefine the term. People in the community planning and development world use the word charrette very loosely. To some it may mean a one-hour meeting while to others is means a week-long event. One [...]

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Sustainability planning requires an extra effort to educate stakeholders before the charrette. The techniques and issues related to sustainability are often too numerous and too complex to deal solely within the charrette. Waiting until the charrette to start a community conversation about sustainability can leave you with a steep learning curve that can consume valuable [...]

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Excerpts from the NCI Charrette Management and Facilitation Training A successful charrette depends on efficient operations. It can be very distracting and a drain on the team’s energy to be dealing with operational breakdowns like blown fuse boxes, slow internet providers, or lack of air conditioning. It may sound obvious, but there are numerous examples [...]

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Of all the arguments for using the charrette method, none comes into sharper focus in times like these than the bang-for-the-buck advantage. Well-planned, well-managed charrettes can save both public and private sector clients a ton of time and money. But here’s the hitch: To realize the savings, clients have to take on more responsibility in [...]

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One of our largest challenges may be gaining the trust of community members. Without trust, consensus is unlikely.  In order to address communities’ distrust of public involvement, we should design the Charrette as an open, transparent, and targeted process that responds to the capacities, conditions, and dynamics within the community.  Open means inclusive, non-judgmental, and [...]

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NCI recently received this inquiry by email. We thought the answer would be useful for others visiting this website. The answer depends on the scope of the charrette, however, budgets should always be considered early on. A major goal of the charrette and NCI Dynamic Planning is to reduce rework. This usually means that budgets [...]

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In response to shrinking project budgets, more and more planning agencies are developing the in-house capacity to conduct charrettes. Director of Fayetteville Long Range Planning, Karen Minkel, has assembled a staff of planners and designers who possess the diverse talents from both planning and design disciplines necessary to run a community charrette. Last year, Karen [...]

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