A Charrette Brings Together Brainstorming and Focus
A charrette provides the benefits of deep community or stakeholder involvement in site planning, general land use planning for a neighborhood, and arguing over and compromising about an architecture look and feel. They obviously are less suited for working out a technical matter such as an implementation or financial plan in most cases. In a charrette, over a period of days, hours, or an hour and a half, people design something from scratch or react to other people's designs. The term and concept are from architecture, and the original idea was that a short, intense burst of energy (often involving all-nighters) would give a range of solutions to energize a public or private decision-making process. Sometimes only design professionals are involved.
However, charrettes now have been adapted to planning, and often include open community engagement. They also have become considerably more versatile in their length, detail, and format. To be successful, it's wise to give people the same initial information, often a handout describing existing conditions and any constraints that the event sponsor feels are important to emphasize. For example, constraints could be zoning, deed restrictions, floodplains, needs of a proposed user of the property, or simply the desires of the sponsoring organization. Often participants arrive at the same time for an introductory presentation. If the topic is highly visual and the attendees will be sparse enough that everyone can get to a display or table to draw, the uniform arrival time can be waived. After the introduction, often the participants break into small groups voluntarily or by assignment. They may be working on different aspects of the issue at hand, or developing independent solutions that then will be contrasted or harmonized into a final outcome. So participants often are asked to draw and/or express their conclusions visually. The ones I like best are the three or four day processes where near neighbors of a prospective development are invited to participate each evening, and during the day a design team works to draw up, vette, and incorporate the community engagement record from the previous evening. Obviously this is aimed at a small group of intensely interested folks, but it also can work when there is a fairly large neighborhood to be impacted by an institutional land use, say a new community college. The neighbors then somewhat take turns in attending the evening event. It's great to take a weekend for this activity also, although it's increasingly difficult to obtain public commitment to attend and participate. Two consecutive Saturday mornings may provide better results than attempting to zap a whole weekend. The charrette works also, incidentally, when two different governments or a government and a university, major utility, railroad, or other large player need to iron out a plan for property in which they both have an interest. You may then plan about three sessions two weeks apart, perhaps from 4-6 pm. In the intervening weeks, the designers draw options and/or refine plans based on the previous discussion. Obviously, your charrette should be as short as you think is feasible for arriving at a solution, or at least a short list of options for further study. For more information, consult the National Charrette Institute. A final piece of advice is to assure that your planner or consultant either has experience in this method and feels comfortable with planning details such as meals that may not occur during the ordinary course of shorter events, or that you find a good event planner among your stakeholder group. Return from Charrette to Planning
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