We had a great time participating and send our thanks to St. Catherine College, The City of Harrodsburg and the University of Kentucky Landscape Architecture Program for asking us to participate!

Please click here to read the article “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?”…

If you would like to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and Louis in their efforts please e-mail Louis at LJohnson@urbancollage.com for information on how to do so!

 Much like the experience of the Chinese and American students in Shanghai, the practice of urban design involves people from many different backgrounds and experience.  Given a common underlying goal to improve quality of life and leave things better than they were found, these relationships between planners, architects, engineers, residents, public officials and other stakeholders can be understood in a positive light- that the resultant community is richer for the varied perspectives that it embodies.

In this flurry of design and development, many public and private projects have graced our newspaper covers.  Surely Lexington has never lost the community’s role in planning and design but I venture to say it has been many years since those voices have been loud enough to make the impact that they have recently.   Several notable projects, including the Newtown Pike Extension, have demonstrated the increased attention to community dialogue about the city’s future that has typified recent planning efforts.

Our firm’s work on projects such as East End, the Lexington Distillery District, the Red Mile Development Plan and the Bluegrass Community and Technical College Newtown Pike Campus Plan have all heavily involved community groups, stakeholders and residents to make sure that where the design was heading was in agreement with the community’s vision.  It is also important to note that each of these entities (private and public) have gone out of their way and spent money they are not necessarily required to spend in order to support a community dialogue.

While the planning and design “machine” still may have its kinks, I think it is important that one of those kinks, lack of public involvement, is being worked on.  Each of us as individuals in the greater community bring differences in ideas and experience to the conversation, but we must speak up and when we do it is good to know someone is listening.

The Prattville Comprehensive Plan began in the Fall of 2008, and continues through September of 2009. An integral part of the process, as with almost any comp plan, is the public participation. A stated goal from the City was that the community outreach be both engaging and effective, and that community members should feel like their input was heard and included. This charge was most evident in the third public meeting – the Design Workshop. In that meeting, UC needed to get input from the community on a wide variety of questions and issues, at a wide range of scales. The question was how best to format a workshop – one that would be both diverse and specific in its topics – so that the attendees felt engaged without getting overwhelmed. We needed some smart thinking to solve the problem… and where else can you find smart people but on Jeopardy!

The popular game show became an inspiration for the workshop, primarily because its use of categories helped UC organize the questions into understandable sections – “Crystal Ball” asked participants to look into the future for their vision of Prattville; “Getting Around” provided a series of transportation questions; “Missing Pieces” asked folks to locate things that the City would need as it grew; and of course “Pot Pourri” was everything else. The format not only allowed us to jump from topic to topic (thus avoiding anything getting overworked or stale), but it also provided a level of comfort (who doesn’t know how to answer in the form of a question?) and no shortage of fun.After all, the word “workshop” has “work” in it; “Gameshow” has “game”!

There was even a Final Jeopardy question… but in this case, the winner was the City and people of Prattville.