PROCESS (Community Outreach)

A Charrette is the method of planning which Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Inc. has adopted and developed in our traditional planning practice. The term is derived from the French term for "little cart" and refers to the final intense work effort expended by architects to meet a project deadline. At the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris during the 19th century, proctors circulated with little carts to collect final drawings, and students would jump on the "charrette" to put finishing touches on their presentations minutes before the deadline.

The charrette provides a forum for ideas and offers the unique advantage of giving immediate feedback to the designers while giving mutual authorship to the plan by all those who participate. The charrettes that DPZ orchestrate are not wholly unlike the creative bursts described above. During this intensive session, many goals are accomplished: 1) all those influential to the project develop a vested interest in the design and support its vision; 2) the group of design disciplines work in a complementary fashion to produce a set of finished documents that address all aspects of design; 3) this collective effort organizes the input of all the players at one meeting and; thereby, eliminates the need for prolonged discussions that typically delay conventional planning projects; and 4) a better product is produced more efficiently and more cost effectively because of this collaborative process.

A primary feature of the charrette is that it is specifically organized to encourage the participation of everyone who is interested in the making of a development, whether they represent the interests of yourself, the regulators, the development community, or the general public. The level of involvement is up to you, although it has been our experience that an open process has a higher probability of success than a closed one. The pre-charrette process begins with program assessment, and charrette planning.

The DPZ Project Manager works in advance with your team to explain the traditional town planning concepts and their possible impacts. Project data, preliminary development programs, and building/zoning regulations are collected and reviewed prior to the team's arrival on site. Together we outline the political approval process and generate a strategy to include all the appropriate regulatory agencies, city departments, developers/builders, and community interest groups, into the charrette process.

The charrette itself commences on or near the project site where architects, planners, engineers, environmental consultants, CAD operators, and local public officials assemble for approximately eight to ten days. A team of design experts and consultants set up a full working office, complete with drafting equipment, supplies, computers, copy machines, fax machines, and telephones.

The Principal delivers an introductory lecture on traditional town planning on the first evening of the charrette. The team is thoroughly briefed by on the site data and project design parameters. Formal and informal meetings are held with various approving agencies, development interests and citizen groups during the first two to three days. The remainder of the charrette consists of daily design and review sessions with a final presentation on the last day.

Specifically the Charrette scope of services include:

An opening lecture on the first night of the charrette. This lecture can be made to only the immediate participants or can be used as the first real PR event to serve to let the public know what is planned for the next several days. At the lecture all of the basic principles of good neighborhood design are reviewed, establishing some common reference points.

Leadership of the DPZ design team. We typically bring a team of between 8 and 12 individuals to prepare all of the graphic documents and provide technical information as required. We are responsible for paying all of the consultants that we bring for their time at the charrette. Should additional reports or studies be required as a result of the charrette, these services will be contracted separately, directly with the sub-consultant.

Organization and coordination of all charrette meetings and presentations. With the client's assistance, we arrange the necessary meetings with all appropriate governmental and/or constituent organizations. The design team starts drawing right away, while the principal and project manager attend all of the meetings and bring what they learn back to the designers. The design team's proposals and strategies are "reality tested" on a daily basis, so it is impossible to take an unacceptable scheme too far.

A final presentation on the last night of the charrette. As with the opening lecture this events media exposure and size is based on the needs of the project. The presentation of the plans shapes the public perception of the project. All of the work produced during the charrette is presented and explained.

Completion and refinement of the drawings subsequent to the charrette. After the charrette, there are always minor refinements that need to be made to the documents. Often, new information becomes available that affects the work. Included in our fee is a full generation of post-charrette changes to the planning documents. The completion period varies depending on the review cycle but averages 60 days from the last day of the charrette.

PRODUCT

Downtown Development/Re-development Plans can be best understood as providing two different categories of product: one is the Regulating Plan consisting of General Controls and Diagrams, and the other is the Master Plan consisting of Specific Interventions and Perspectives. A third "product" developed as part of the Community Outreach process is the Town Paper. We have found this format to be the most successful for public sector projects and the following description outlines this approach in greater detail. (We can also provide services based on different formats, including Findings Based Reports addressing specific issues within a community. The report addresses a series of findings based on a list of issues derived from observation, suggestions from officials, and anecdotal information offered during the public process. Following each finding is a discussion, the recommendation, and references to support the finding).

Regulating Plan

The General Controls are the least glamorous part of the Development/Re-development Plan, but they are its heart and soul. They provide the fundamental systemic framework that will allow and encourage new growth to occur in a form that improves urban vitality rather than undermining it. Central to these is the SmartCode, an alternative zoning ordinance described below. Diagrams are provided to support and illustrate the specific elements addressed. Some are designed to be politically persuasive while others will form part of the regulatory documentation of the SmartCode.

The General Controls and Diagrams can be broken down into the following documents:

- The A/B Frontage Assignment: One key to a successful downtown is to acknowledge that not every street must correspond to the highest pedestrian-friendly standards. Some streets will inevitably provide sites for muffler shops, fast-food drive-through, and other automotive-oriented businesses. Rather than dreaming that such places can be eliminated entirely, our plan will locate these streets in a way that they do not undermine the integrity of the downtown pedestrian network. A-Streets, serving pedestrians as well as cars, will be asked to correspond to the highest frontage standards of the SmartCode, while B-streets will be available for those businesses that focus primarily on automotive traffic. Both are profitable uses; the key is keeping them separate in order to create a continuous network of high-quality pedestrian frontage for the downtown.

- The Street Reconfigurations: In many cities, years of widening travel lanes to higher-velocity standards, the removal of parallel parking, the implementation of one-way pairs, and the diversion of traffic have contributed to the demise of downtowns. Central to our work is analysis of streets within the study area, and as necessary, reconfiguring them to a more pedestrian-friendly design. In many cases, such reconfiguration can be accomplished for the cost of paint alone (through re-striping), but other more significant changes can be implemented over time in conjunction with the planned replacement of under-capacity downtown infrastructure that will require major street excavations, and through regular public works maintenance required of the downtown streets, curbs, sidewalks and street trees.

- The SmartCode: As mentioned above, the SmartCode is an ordinance that provides an alternative to a City's current zoning, Comprehensive Plan, and/or Growth Management codes that are currently in effect. Such an alternative is necessary because most existing ordinances include regulations that work against the realization of a revitalized, pedestrian-friendly downtown. The SmartCode, in contrast, focuses on the creation of mixed use, walkable neighborhoods. As part of the implementation of downtown plan for example, the SmartCode would immediately be made available to developers as an alternative to existing regulations.

- The Regulating Map: The SmartCode is organized on the basis of the urban-to-rural Transect, a tool that is used to create internally consistent environments of varying urban intensity. For example, an area in the Urban Center zone would have taller buildings that would be spaced closely adjacent to one another to form a pedestrian-friendly street wall, with wider sidewalks and more intensive downtown streetscape, while an area in the Urban General zone would be composed of low rise, detached buildings and possess a more residential character. Clearly, an instrument is needed to distribute these different Transect zones in an organized fashion throughout the downtown, and this instrument is the Regulating Plan.

- Political and Regulatory Diagrams: in black and white, which may include regional structure and/or existing conditions, neighborhood structure, public buildings and spaces, private lots, open space network and vehicular network (circulation and parking) plans.

If implemented, the documents above would, over time and with careful monitoring, produce dramatic positive change. The dynamic and interactive nature of the charrette process allows us to discover a large number of additional opportunities for improvement that serve to set the standard for all future development. Some may already partially be underway in the form of existing plans or projects, others may be suggested to us by citizens or business people, and many come from the design team. The most promising are developed into the Specific Interventions that make up a large part of the plan. These provide an insurance policy against misinterpretations of the vision.

Master Plan

The Specific Interventions, in contrast, are the pilot projects and other sometimes-flashy ideas that get most of the attention, but these are most useful not as mandatory construction efforts but rather as illustrations of how new construction can occur along the lines of the General Controls. While it would indeed please us to see all of these projects built as designed, their real value is to communicate the types of projects that the city should encourage in its efforts to improve the downtown. Rendered Perspectives capture the look and feel of the various elements proposed by the project plans.

The Specific Interventions and Perspectives include the following types of projects and illustrations:

- Private Development of Private Land: Many private properties within the study area are currently laying fallow because their owners are unable to find a profitable way to develop them according to existing zoning ordinances. For the largest of these properties the sheer size of the site demands a scale of investment that could have a significant impact on the dynamics of the downtown. For such sites, the plan will recommend the best course of action so that investors may immediately begin to build along the lines of the SmartCode. In other areas the scale of investment is already healthy, and a Specific Intervention is provided simply to illustrate the sort of development that the SmartCode would encourage.

- Private Development of Public Land: many cities greatest material assets consist of large amounts of undeveloped or underdeveloped city land. Such properties may be leased on a long-term basis to builders who are prepared to develop them along the pedestrian-friendly lines of the SmartCode. This is a strategy that cities such as West Palm Beach and Boca Raton have employed with great success in recent years, and has the benefit of catalyzing development without selling off the City's prime assets. For such sites, the DPZ team will propose a Specific Intervention. These proposals should be put forward by the city in the form of public Requests for Proposals, where the terms of the lease and the opportunities for public/private partnership would encourage developers to create projects similar to those proposed in the plan.

- Public Works on Public Land: No smart downtown revitalization plan relies on public funding to accomplish its goals - the money simply isn't available. However, it is expected that the leasing of public land for private projects, and the tax revenue from those projects, will eventually generate a pool of funds large enough to support a wide range of public improvements. The team will propose specific plans that address these conditions.

- Public Works on Private Land: Finally, there are a number of locations within the downtown where private property can best be used to serve public functions. In the same way that the city would joint-venture with private developers on its own land, the city is also encouraged to collaborate with these individual parties to convert certain private lands to public use, either through the outright purchase of property, a land swap, transfer of development rights, property tax breaks or development bonuses involving the mix and density of the project, so long as the bonuses are consistent with the master plan.

- Perspectives: Up to five (5), water colored renderings are completed showing typical streets, squares, parks, and other locations depicted by the various project plans.

Community Outreach

In addition to the Charrette described above, DPZ uses the Town Paper to help raise community awareness. The paper maximizes the spread of information by disseminating the concepts and techniques developed during the charrette to the general public in a simple to read format, which can be easily circulated to the community. It is designed to help achieve understanding and acceptance of the Master Plan and insure its implementation, because in the end, no matter how great the vision, if the plans are not implemented the process is a failure.

The Town Paper includes the following:

- The Charrette Edition: focuses on the project and the charrette process providing easy to understand educational information about New Urbansim. It includes four custom pages project specific information, local history, a charrette schedule, the design team, photographs and maps, as well as the vision for the project. In addition, featured articles include discussions of old towns, new towns, suburban development vs. new urban development, benefits of mixed-use communities and defining public and private spaces.

- The Post Charrette Edition: documents the results of the charrette. Four custom pages show the plans, renderings, photographs, the next steps, and possibly letters from city officials, developers, and consultants. Additional articles include New Urban terminology, and practical resource guides to inform readers of the benefits of New Urban development.

SCHEDULE & FEES

Please contact Senen Antonio to discuss fees and schedule.

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