How to Facilitate a Large Group Agreement Quickly
Quick agreement is needed during the visioning exercise that often occurs during the first public meeting of a charrette. Participants are seated in groups of no more than eight people per table. Each table has a facilitator and recorder. During this exercise, each table creates a long [...]

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Avoiding Project Failure Due to Inaccurate Stakeholder Information
When an opposition group moves in after a charrette and undermines project implementation it is usually because the project team either was unaware of their existence or did not fully understand their true position. One powerful method for verifying information is to conduct confidential stakeholder interviews.
Confidential interviews conducted [...]

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Excerpted from the NCI 2005 Best Practices Report
By Keith Covington, Principal
Third Coast Design Studio
Some of the toughest people to deal with during a planning process are those who did not attend the charrette. In the public sector, we have tried just about every method to notify and encourage people to attend. After all, [...]

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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. It is [...]

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NCI recently had a chat with PR expert Ben Brown about working with social media in public projects and found his following advice and insights valuable.
Ben recommends that if there is a hot political climate surrounding your plan, perhaps you should avoid starting your own project blog. Rather, do some homework to seek out [...]

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The topic of social media’s role in public planning processes is a hot one. NCI continues to research and present on the topic as we did at the annual Congress for the New Urbanism in June where Bill Lennertz of NCI and Ken Snyder of PlaceMatters spoke on “Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch Public Meeting Facilitation Tools for [...]

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The participation of children in charrettes is a hot topic at our trainings these days. At ASU last week we discussed these major benefits.

Kids can add important content. They are, of course, brutally honest and also quite smart about planning issues.
Their presentations can change the whole tenor of the charrette. Kids very often speak [...]

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Changing project users mindsets and preconceptions about sustainability is a prerequisite to implementing sustainable design projects in which users take ownership. Charrettes create an immersive, shared-learning environment that promotes a shift in mindsets.
Sustainable projects have a complex set of environmental, economic, and social variables plus a large, diverse set of stakeholders. The NCI Charrette [...]

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I had an interesting discussion with the students at our D.C. training this month. We were debating the trade-offs of workshops in which a select group of stakeholders participate in virtually the entire event participating in the design sessions elbow to elbow with the professional design team.
We talked about the obvious advantages of having [...]

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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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