The Small Town Design Initiative is a program begun in the fall of 1999 by the Auburn University Center for Architecture and Urban Studies as a successor to Design Alabama’s Community Design Program. The program makes available the talents and resources of the Center's professional staff, students and other affiliated consultants to assist small towns and neighborhoods with community design services in support of development, revitalization and preservation efforts. The program also provides the necessary design components to inform the development of (or revisions to) comprehensive plans. Through partnering with local and regional planning agencies, the program provides a dimension to planning that all communities need. The Small Town Design Initiative is specifically intended to serve those traditionally under-served small communities for whom this type of design is not always available.

 

Your Town: The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design is a leadership initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Arts that responds to the design needs of small towns and rural areas. It is coordinated by the Faculty of Landscape Architecture at State University of New York Syracuse with assistance from the Carl Small Town Center at Mississippi State University and preservation consultant Shelley Mastran.

Your Town: The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design addresses a range of critical problems that rural communities face. In some cases, the main concerns are heavy out-migration and loss of employment opportunities; in others, rapid growth from suburban sprawl, location of new facilities, or influx of retirees. These problems affect the vitality of the community, its design, and its sense of place. Your Town: The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design addresses these issues of community integrity and character through the process of design in a two-and-a-half-day participatory workshop.

 

The Mayors' Institute on City Design (MICD) is a partnership program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Architectural Foundation, and the United States Conference of Mayors. Since 1986, the Mayors' Institute has helped transform communities through design by preparing mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities.

The MICD achieves its mission by organizing sessions where mayors engage leading design experts to find solutions to the most critical urban design challenges facing their cities. Sessions are organized around case-study problems. Each mayor presents a problem from his or her city for the other mayors and designers to discuss.

Every year, the partner organizations plan and manage six to eight Institute sessions held throughout the country. Each two and one-half day session is limited to less than twenty participants, half mayors and half a resource team consisting of outstanding city design and development professionals. Mayors present a range of challenges, including waterfront redevelopment, downtown revitalization, transportation planning, and the design of new public buildings such as libraries and arts centers. Following each presentation, mayors and designers identify important issues, offer suggestions, and discuss potential solutions. The interchange sparks lively debate, opens new perspectives, and generates creative ideas. Members of the resource team also make presentations on the role of their profession in the process of city design, illustrated by outstanding examples and best practices.

Despite the intimate nature of its proceedings, the Institute has graduated more than 700 mayors. Many of these are still in office, and a half-dozen are either in Congress or in a governor's mansion. The program has also graduated over 500 designers who have often commented on learning as much from the mayors as the mayors have learned from them. Design is a two-way street, and the Mayors' Institute was founded both to educate mayors about design and to educate the design community about the latest practical needs of our cities.

 

ISBN 9781932364330

This is the go-to guide for planners in small towns.

For decades, The Small Town Planning Handbook has helped small towns and rural communities plan for change. It is a step-by-step guide to drafting and implementing a comprehensive plan through zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations, and capital improvements programs, with sensitivity to local character and limited resources.

The third edition shows how technologies such as GIS and the Internet can improve the planning process. This edition contains a wealth of information on ways to maintain or improve the design of small towns and explains how to create a small town economic development plan. The authors emphasize strategic planning for economic, social, and environmental sustainability both in remote towns and in towns on the edge of metropolitan regions.

The authors are planners with more than six decades of experience in small towns, rural counties, and planning departments—including hundreds of evenings before rural planning commissions.

 

A charrette (pronounced [shuh-ret], often misspelled charette and sometimes called a design charrette) consists of an intense period of design activity.

 

What is a NCI Charrette?
The NCI charrette combines this creative, intense work session with public workshops and open houses. The NCI charrette is a collaborative planning process that harnesses the talents and energies of all interested parties to create and support a feasible plan that represents transformative community change.

A NCI Charrette is:
At least four consecutive days
An open process that includes all interested parties
A collaborative process involving all disciplines in a series of short feedback loops
A process that produces a feasible plan
A generalist, holistic approach
See our Dynamic Planning page for the key strategies for success

A NCI Charrette is not:
A one-day workshop
A multi-day marathon meeting involving everyone all the time
A plan authored by a select few that will affect many
A “visioning session” that stops short of implementation

Who uses Charrettes?
Planners and Designers
Architects
Public Officials and Organizations
Planning and Community Development Directors
Public and Private Developers and Land Owners
Citizen Activist Groups
Non-Governmental Organizations

Charrette Project Types
Though Charrettes can be used virtually any time a product needs to be created or designed, the NCI Charrette model results in feasible plans for:
Regional Planning
Comprehensive Planning
Rewriting Development Codes
New Community Master Planning
Specific Planning
Redevelopment Projects
Affordable Housing Developments
Buildings