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Public Engagement
May 6, 2013 | 12:01 am

The Pendulum Shifts: Expertise is now suspect

Slow and steady progress is built on an ongoing series of course corrections. Subtle variations in direction based on new variables, new challenges, and new innovations.

As times and circumstances change, some things inevitably become less productive. Or effective. Or conducive to contemporary sensibilities. So, we make changes.

Historically, they’ve been made by a matter of degrees. A minor turn here, a more substantial turn there. But today, in the modern era, we seem overly-fascinated with just one increment in particular. The most extreme increment. 180 degrees.

Out with the old, in with the new.

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Category Community Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Theory and Practice13 CommentsTags expertise, experts, Modernist, placemaking, Scott Doyon
April 29, 2013 | 12:01 am

Bryan Jones: Portrait of a Municipal Official Takin’ It to the Street

Since meeting Chuck Marohn, I’ve advocated for his rational Strong Towns approach to reforming our inefficient auto-oriented infrastructure system. Chuck’s message to focus infrastructure decisions on their long-term return on investment is radical because he is a Traffic Engineer. Honestly, the most frustrating and irrational meetings I have held are not with any citizen group or elected officials, but with local Traffic Engineers. Over the years, smarter growth traffic specialist like DeWayne Carver, Rick Hall, Rick Chellman, and Peter Swift have protected me from having too many direct encounters, but all are located east of the Rockies.

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Category Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy, Transportation2 CommentsTags Bryan Jones, Carlsbad, Chula Vista, Dewayne Carver, Howard Blackson, Kirk Ammerman, Peter Swift, Rick Chellman, Rick Hall
April 22, 2013 | 12:01 am

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 02: Make it Mandatory Citywide

A while back, we talked about Connections, Community, and the Science of Loneliness, and how our laws have separated not just building uses — residential, commercial, retail, civic — but have also separated people. And that separation has led to a spate of ills — ill health, ill economies, and ill environments. We looked at some of the places that are reversing those use-separated laws of the last 80 years, allowing a mixture of compatible uses where people have a better chance of growing up healthy and aging in place.

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Category Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy15 CommentsTags FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Hazel Borys, Ranson West Virginia, smartcode
February 28, 2013 | 9:32 am

Next Urbanism Lab 05: The Value of Visuals

In simple terms, a plan is an adopted statement of policy, in the form of text, maps, and/or graphics, used to guide public and private actions that affect our future built environment. A plan provides decision makers with the information they need to make informed decisions affecting the long-range social, economic, and physical growth of neighborhoods, districts and corridors. Regional, city-wide, neighborhood, and specific area plans usually provide a visual representation of the plan’s objectives and intent.

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Category Back of the Envelope, Development, Legal, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy1 CommentTags Daniel Burnham, Howard Blackson, James E Oglethorpe, Kevin Klinkenberg, Next Urbanism Lab, placemaking, placeshaking, planning, San Diego, Savannah Georgia, visuals
February 21, 2013 | 12:01 am

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 01: Don’t Articulate a Vision

Last week, we were talking about how the form of a neighborhood either provides gathering places that build social capital and local resilience, or else makes for a lonely, disconnected, nowhere. Some towns and cities are using form-based codes to help reconnect people with each other and the places they call home.

At the end of last week’s discussion, I quickly mentioned ten points that can create problems with form-based codes. My friend, Bruce Donnelly, commented that some of these points bear elaboration. So today, I’m doing a back of the envelope on the biggest challenge to form-based codes: failing to establish a community vision that can then be codified — that is, made into law.

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Category Back of the Envelope, Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy7 CommentsTags Bruce Donnelly, El Paso Texas, FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Gianni Longo, Hazel Borys, Kona Hawaii, Miami Florida, Ranson West Virginia, Richard Florida
February 14, 2013 | 9:46 am

Planning for People

It wasn’t intentional but a look back at the past few weeks of PlaceShakers reveals that we’ve been working a bit of a theme. It began when I wrote about the failure of planners to ask meaningful questions, and how that not only sets the stage for unmet community expectations, but devalues the art and craft of urban design at the same time. I then followed it up with a look at the other side of the coin — corrosive elements lurking within communities that undermine collaborative progress.

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Category Back of the Envelope, Community Development, Experience, Planning and Design, Public EngagementLeave a CommentTags Building is People, city of the future, city of tomorrow, Lyndon Lorenz, Scott Doyon, vintage planning
February 12, 2013 | 12:22 pm

It’s not me, it’s you (and you, and you)

I had the pleasure of presenting at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference last week in Kansas City, Missouri with Nathan Norris, Chad Emerson and Eliza Harris. Nathan assembled an entertaining panel (100 points to anyone who can identify the former Broadway star) to present the top 20 municipal placemaking mistakes. As we debated exactly what those top 20 were going to be, a lot of the usual suspects emerged — giving away connectivity, failure to provide resources for implementation, lack of a meaningful vision, ill-suited codes, and a host of others — all pointing to ill-advised actions or techniques. But what the discussion danced around was the software of the process: the personal leadership role of staff, advocates and elected officials.

In short, all the placemaking techniques in the world will fail if you embrace the tools but discount the skills of the person wielding them.

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Category Community Development, Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement11 CommentsTags Amanda Thompson, community engagement, Decatur Georgia, New Partners for Smart Growth, Zoetic Dance Ensemble
January 28, 2013 | 9:46 am

Corrosion of Community: Impossible standards as an excuse for inaction

Community fascinates me. Not just the idea of it, but the dynamics, and how those dynamics end up stoking or choking our collective efforts to be together. Having worked in a lot of different places, I’ve had opportunity to study community in action, at both its strongest and weakest, in all different contexts — economic, political, cultural — and have tried to identify patterns that lead to results.

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Category Community Development, Public Engagement, Resilience10 CommentsTags bike lanes, Corrosion of Community Series, Resilience, Scott Doyon
January 24, 2013 | 12:01 am

Public Process and the Perils of Dismissive Engagement

“What would you like to see here?”

And there it is. Perhaps the most inane question ever posed in the course of a public design process. And posed it is, constantly.

“We’re doing a master plan for downtown. What would you like to see here?”

It’s crazy. In one sweeping question, practitioners not only set the stage for unmet expectations, they devalue the art and craft of urban design at the same time.

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Category Back of the Envelope, Community Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement14 CommentsTags engagement, iPhone, master planning, public process, Scott Doyon, Steve Jobs
November 26, 2012 | 11:50 am

Municipal Placemaking Mistakes 04: No models for emulation

Emulation is more than just the highest form of flattery. It’s also a key factor in effective placemaking.

Yes, in the course of a meaningful visioning process, the naming of a specific place as a model for emulation is not absolutely necessary, but its benefits are so great that failing to do so constitutes one of the most critical mistakes you can make. Not because you should be identical to somewhere else but, rather, because you’re more effective developing a vision in terms of something real, proven and reliable, employing whatever tweaks or qualifications necessary to make it appropriate for your own community.

Mistake #4: Failing to identify an existing place as a model for emulation.

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Category Development, Economic Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy11 CommentsTags consensus-building, Greenville, Municipal Placemaking Mistakes, Nathan Norris, synoptic survey, visioning
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