Charrettes are often confused with visioning sessions. The purpose of vision development is to establish a description of a future state based on shared community values that acts as a guide for the project decision-making process. The visioning process can include one or a number of efforts including educational lectures, workshops, neighborhood walks, and preference surveys. According to practitioner Gianni Longo, visioning sessions are driven by community members and comprehensive. They take into account the “long horizon,” and they work best for master plans. They produce goals, principles, policies, and initiatives. A visioning session, or series of sessions, gets a community ready for a charrette. Most of the time, visioning sessions are held well in advance of the charrette but sometimes a charrette begins with one, depending on the individual community’s needs. Visioning sessions are valuable during the process of preparation. Holding a visioning workshop is a great way for a community to come to an agreement on its basic values and the vision of those values as implemented. It is important to have a set of shared values, principles, and vision statements before the charrette begins.Excerpted from The Charrette Handbook, by Bill Lennertz and Aarin Lutzenhiser, published by APA Planners Press, 2006.