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On October 8th, 2005, the City of Charlottesville's Neighborhood Development Services Department
and the Charlottesville Community Design Center (CCDC) held the first
ever Charlottesville Neighborhood Design Day, “In My Backyard.”
Neighborhood Design Day officially launched the Charlottesville 2006 Comprehensive Planning Process,
and was the major citizen participation event. Public meetings were
held at 6 locations throughout Charlottesville, and teams of residents,
professional designers and city planners worked together to craft a
vision for the future of their neighborhoods and the city at-large. Over 150 residents attended, representing the city’s 18 neighborhoods, which range from dense urban
environments to spacious rural-like settings, all in just eleven square miles.
Each has its own distinct charms, advantages and issues it faces.Prior to the meetings, CCDC and city planners worked together, along with Siteworks Studio to create maps for each neighborhood and a toolkit of resources, concepts, and designs that incorporated guiding principles adopted by the city in 2005, and focused on such themes as connectivity, transportation, housing, civic engagement and environmental protection.
These tools assisted the community in developing creative ideas and
long-term strategies for the best possible future of their
neighborhoods.
Following Neighborhood Design Day, city planners
wrote preliminary plans for each neighborhood based on graphic and
text-based notes & maps from neighborhood conversations. In
December 2005 and January 2006, draft versions of the neighborhood
plans were displayed in CCDC’s gallery space on the Downtown Mall,
along with each neighborhood’s maps, comments and toolkits. During this
time, Neighborhood Associations held meetings at CCDC to review the
results of Neighborhood Design Day and make revisions to plans as
necessary. Based on the exhibit and additional feedback, city planners
developed final plans for each neighborhood, which can be viewed by clicking on the neighborhood links, above.
On
June 23, 2006, the City of Charlottesville and CCDC will hold an
evening reception from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. to celebrate the release of
all 18 neighborhood plans. The exhibit will be open until July 3, 2006.
The
neighborhood plans will be used by the
Charlottesville Planning Commission and City Council in the development
of the 2006 Charlottesville Comprehensive and Strategic Plans. Thank
you to everyone who helped make this neighborhood planning process a
huge success.
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