Scotland's Approach to Participatory Planning: Characterising the Charrette

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONInvolving multiple stakeholders in spatial and community planning has become a salient concept with decades of legislative support in the United Kingdom (Jenkins, 2002). Many public services now lay claim to having been longstanding supporters of this participatory turn (Bishop, 2015); of which, planning is one. The 1969 Skeffington Report is often evidenced as one of the earliest national level documents to consider public involvement strategies (Baker et al., 2007;Damer et al., 1971). Since then, a plethora of techniques have come to the fore (Sanoff, 2000), and the Scottish Government in recent years endorsed the 'charrette' as an effective participatory design tool to generate strategies for community development (Scottish Government, 2010a, 2011b. The term 'charrette' derives from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, in which architecture students would hurriedly work until the 'little cart' came to collect their drawings for the examiners. The term has since been used to connote a sense of urgency, which frames the format of a typical charrette as it is approached today (Walters, 2007). The tool is a participatory 'model' yet malleable enough in the sense that its process constitutes a series of other participatory mechanisms, which can be matched to suit different scenarios (Sanoff, 2000).The model that was introduced to Scotland in 2010 was developed by New Urbanism's cofounder, Andres Duany as part of Duany Plater-Zyberk (DPZ) & Company. The charrette is often their go-to approach to community participation (Grant, 2006), which typically lasts between four to seven days and involves a multidisciplinary team establishing a temporary design studio within the study area. The team will work collaboratively with community members and key stakeholders in a series of interactive workshops, often producing a masterplan that has been developed through a series of short feedback loops (Sanoff, 2000;Walters, 2007). The compressed format has been lauded over other communicative approaches that may last weeks or months. Proponents argue these feedback loops condense the time between input and design to just hours, so not only do participants exercise more influence they can watch a transparent process unfold, thus fostering greater trust (Lennertz, 2003;Walters, 2007). Benefits of this approach therefore do not centre only on the physical; there is a commitment to social goals embedded in New Urbanism (Talen, 2002), and communicative processes more generally.Jurgen Habermas, who many communicative theorists are indebted to, also advocated collaborative discursive approaches to challenge the shortcomings observed in representative democracy (Bond, 2011). These approaches challenged modernist thinking that valued expert epistemologies, and instead believed knowledge to be something coconstructed; not a collation of ideas but rather that communication has the power to build shared meanings through reasoning and deliberative exchange (Brand et al., 2007;Innes et al., 1999). Equally, the charrette's consensus-seeking na...

Plurality and Diversity in Architectural and Urban Research

“…With a focus on charrette commissioning, construction, and delivery she examined over forty charrette reports developed and published between 2011 and 2016 utilizing a conceptual framework and a content analysis procedure (Kennedy, 2017). In essence, her work concludes with a typology of charrette-approaches unique to the context of Scotland.…”

Utilizing CBPR Charrette in Community-Academic Research Partnerships – What Stakeholders Should Know

“…Charrette discussions about assumptions regarding research processes highlighted the need to learn about the protections for human subjects in research activity. (Kennedy, 2017). Using a novel conceptual framework to evaluate these cases, researchers derived the characteristics that defined the Charettes they examined.…”

“…In lieu of a vision statement, Charrette participants may instead develop a framework or master plan specific to their project which serves as a comprehensive roadmap to guide more detailed action. Charrettes may also produce documents such as a Potential Action document, which identifies areas in need of more research, or a Deliverability Work document, which assesses the feasibility and relevance of new projects (Kennedy, 2017). In the Latino stakeholder group Charrette, the objective was to identify an issue and draft a grant proposal.…”

“…Using 8 characteristics of Charrette derived from a meta-review of federally funded Charrettes in Scotland (Kennedy, 2017), this paper aims to guide stakeholders in how to effectively plan for incorporating Charrette into their partnership process. We also have included lessons learned and the challenges that arose from our two practical Charrette cases.…”

“…Various definitions of Charrette emphasize the importance of stakeholder involvement, immediate feedback, and development of a testable plan beyond the brainstorming stages (Kotval & Mullin, 2014;Lennertz & Lutzenhiser, 2006). A conventional Charrette consists of short, intense collaborative sessions between designers and community stakeholders, characterized by rapid progression toward a plan and immediate feedback loops (Kennedy, 2017). The National Charrette Association defines the Charrette process specifically as "a collaborative design and planning workshop that occurs over Utilizing CBPR Charrette in Community-Academic Research Partnerships -What Stakeholders Should Know…”