Full Report - Knight Program in Community Building

4The Public Process and New UrbanismBy Jennifer Hurley | 2001 Knight Program FellowThe term “public process” is a catch phrase that refers to a variety of contextsin which the public participates in planning and development decisions: publichearings with planning commissions, zoning boards, and city councils; citizen taskforces; and urban design charrettes. In trying to implement New Urban planningand development projects, New Urbanists frequently encounter problems generatedby the public process and these problems can be a source of a great deal of frustration.Of course, the public process is not the only situation that has presented obstaclesto New Urbanists, who have developed a methodology for dealing with obstacles:co-opt specialized fields, look to history, and develop new solutions. I suggest thatthe problems of the “public process” simply pose additional arenas in which NewUrban generalists must become knowledgeable: community organizing, politicaladvocacy, adult education, and dispute resolution.When New Urbanists had trouble getting good places built because of rules bytraffic engineers, they learned basic traffic engineering, found sympathetic trafficengineers to become New Urban road design experts, and re-wrote the standards.When New Urbanists were disappointed in the quality of built places, they looked tohistory and renewed the practice of using pattern books to guide builders. Whenmunicipal officials refused to approve New Urban developments because they didnot meet zoning codes, New Urbanists developed entirely new kinds of codes.It is time once again to turn to these methods. New Urbanists must learn thebasics of community organizing, adult education, and dispute resolution. We mustanalyze historical examples of political change for clues about how to be effective.We must find allies amongst the specialists in community organizing and publicparticipation, and teach them about urban design and charrette methods. And oncewe have used these time-tested methods, we will be able to develop creative newapproaches to this problem.Consensus-Building and New UrbanismTo help us down this path, this report shares some of what I know about publicparticipation and alternative dispute resolution, discussing what New Urbanists canlearn from specialists in this field, and what New Urbanists have to teach thosesame specialists.