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 participated in the NCI Charrette Planner® certificate trainings by using the Fayetteville Walker Park Neighborhood Master Plan project as a case study. At the training, Karen’s group analyzed the project and charted a NCI Dynamic Planning Roadmap for the project that included a charrette as the main public planning event. In September of last year, Karen’s staff conducted a weeklong charrette that involved over 200 neighborhood residents and business owners. The city council unanimously adopted the master plan in February. See the plan and vision document here. You can hear Karen tell the Walker Park charrette story by listening to the archive of the NCI KnowledgePlex Expert Chat on strategies for doing charrettes on tight budgets.