Congress for the New Urbanism Hosts Neighborhood Charrettes

Narrator 00:05

Ahead of our annual Congress, CNU invited municipalities and neighborhood organizations in the Charlotte region to apply for pro bono technical assistance from leading urban design firms. Each expert-led, legacy project is aimed at supporting local leaders, advocates, and residents in communities that might not otherwise be able to convene a project team or develop a vision that can help people and businesses in their communities to thrive. CNU's partner firms provide public engagement and collaboration, or a charrette. working directly with local communities. These charettes are intense, multi-day, multidisciplinary design workshops, and they allow stakeholders to work with experts on designs that best reflect the needs of the community and their vision for the future of their neighborhood. The goal of the CNU legacy projects is to deliver direct impact to local communities with both short term progress and long lasting momentum so that they can achieve the walkable, sustainable equity supportive urbanism that they desire.

Marques King  01:06

Let's let's come over here first and talk about the site a little bit. My name is Marques King, and I am the principal architect of fabric design in Detroit, Michigan. So we've been working on this for about two months, before we even got here. It's a parcel that's just underneath an acre. Lots of unique conditions, we have a lot of topography, that we have about a 16-foot drop from the front edge of the sidewalk all the way to the back of the site. Some of the biggest challenges that we've witnessed and unearthed here are challenges of affordability. From the way I understand it, Gastonia in the last 10 years has just received a wave of financial investment. So this is one of the preliminary versions that we came up with here. You know, that's, that's part of the way I think about buildings, it can't just be a pretty picture. It's got to come with some financing. It's got to come with some level of numbers behind it so that yes, we can make it look like this, but can we actually build it? And so that'll be a part of the package that we deliver to the folks here at Gastonia. Yes, we heard what you said we've embedded the social programs, the buildings look like this. And yes, along with that, here's a couple of financial pathways that you can now begin to seek out to be able to put this project together.

Tobe Holmes  02:34

We have three days to take a site here in University City to understand it better and how it can evolve into the future and become a student mainstreet for our local research university, UNC Charlotte. Over the course of these three days, we kicked off with a site tour, which took us to the site itself, explored the site. And from there, bring in stakeholders from the community, the people who use the site most regularly, a lot of students that come through the first day. From there, it's heads down. We figure out the site itself; figure out how transportation needs to work with regard to vehicles; how people enter next to the side on foot or on bicycle; and then create a program around it. 

Murphy Antoine  03:30

I'm Murphy Antoine, I'm an architect and planner and a principal at Torti Gallas and Partners, an architecture and planning firm, based in Washington, D.C. We've been here learning a lot about West Boulevard, a lot about the history, a lot about the current conditions, a lot about the concerns of the folks that live here, and more more than concerns the aspirations. So we've heard several physical things and a lot of social and service and even policy concerns. So that's really a little bit where we come in — is there an idea about a physical framework that supports that really deep sense of community and community commitment, that the people are already forming that node but that there's not the the specific locations perhaps to concentrate that enthusiasm?

Rickey Hall  04:33

In many ways it's a tale of two cities. West Boulevard is the same arterial as East Boulevard. You slow down in East Boulevard and see all the amenities and the access points. But when you come into the West Boulevard corridor, you don't get that same feel. So you're just traversing through. When the CNU opportunity came on board we applied for it and was fortunately selected. We're very excited about what This opportunity has given the community.