A charrette is a practical approach to initiate dialogue between planners, stakeholders and the public. The goal of a charrette is to encourage participation where citizens can be informed and provide feedback. Although the idea of a charrette may seem simple the planning and execution can be complex and problematic. The class of PLAN 346 tutorial 102 organized a public participation activity to address a planning related issue that was legitimate and would be inclusive. Bryson’s literature discussed the design process behind public participation one of the guidelines being establishing legitimacy. With that in mind the topic selected for the charrette was to improve bike storage at the University of Waterloo. This issue would establish both
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The executing the charrette was much easier than planning the charrette since this is where majority of the problems arose. One of the biggest challenges was picking a topic that was considered a legitimate issue that needed to be addressed. Legitimacy can be opinion based thus arguments were made for and against certain topics. In this case a mediator was assigned to assist in reaching a consensus. Since the topic was an issue of interest the public had a lot of input making it difficult to note all their feedback. In this case during the charrette a note taker was assigned who would take notes based on public feedback. Another challenge was coordination among subgroups within the entire tutorial. Even though Facebook was used to keep the group update its use was not consistent. As a result there would be changes that was not communicated to everyone making it difficult to plan in advance. For example if the charrette group made content changes the stakeholder group would need to be informed in order to relay that information back to the public. To overcome this challenge weekly meeting were held where the tutorial would spend 10 minutes to address any concerns and provide updates. The final challenge was time management with the limited time frame given it was difficult to host a charrette at an ideal scale. A compromise had to be reached where the scope of the charrette had to be narrowed down in order to be executed in the given time but also setting milestones that had to be finished each week made the process
The executing the charrette was much easier than planning the charrette since this is where majority of the problems arose. One of the biggest challenges was picking a topic that was considered a legitimate issue that needed to be addressed. Legitimacy can be opinion based thus arguments were made for and against certain topics. In this case a mediator was assigned to assist in reaching a consensus. Since the topic was an issue of interest the public had a lot of input making it difficult to note all their feedback. In this case during the charrette a note taker was assigned who would take notes based on public feedback. Another challenge was coordination among subgroups within the entire tutorial. Even though Facebook was used to keep the group update its use was not consistent. As a result there would be changes that was not communicated to everyone making it difficult to plan in advance. For example if the charrette group made content changes the stakeholder group would need to be informed in order to relay that information back to the public. To overcome this challenge weekly meeting were held where the tutorial would spend 10 minutes to address any concerns and provide updates. The final challenge was time management with the limited time frame given it was difficult to host a charrette at an ideal scale. A compromise had to be reached where the scope of the charrette had to be narrowed down in order to be executed in the given time but also setting milestones that had to be finished each week made the process