Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

400 offer ideas for W. Windsor transit village

A new transit oriented development is being planned in Greater Princeton Township, in NJ. It sounds like this workshop was pretty interesting, according to the article in the Trenton Times. I'd like to read the specific suggestions, but the website for the project, North Brunswick Transit Village, isn't updated with the latest community meetings.

From the article:

Norman Rockwell could have painted it, a sea of faces that stretched across the ethnic makeup of this township's 26,000 residents, as nearly 400 people packed a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency to plan their future...

After about 30 minutes of talk from people such as J. Robert Hillier, the architect whose firm is designing the proposed transit village, the 32 tables of people dove into their work, some standing over large maps of the township's 350-acre redevelopment area, others straining to hear what someone across a table was saying. The attendees were given an hour to arrive at a consensus. ...

Hillier pointed out the biggest waste of space in the township was used for parking at the train station and said there were "no pedestrian routes at all." "That's your town," Hillier said. "I look at each piece of land like a piece of steak. I don't want to eat the bone. I shouldn't eat the fat, and I certainly want to avoid the gristle. I want to get to the tenderloin." ...

After an hour of filling out forms listing their priorities and wishes, people at each table sent a spokesperson up to the microphone to tell, in a minute and a half, what it was his or her table decided. The experience was so intense that the groups of strangers, who were seated randomly according to numbers distributed at the door, suddenly emerged as teams who cheered one another on.

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