Engagement

Community Engagement brings Identity to Urban Design

Referring to our mission, good civic design should reflect the people, culture, and history of a place in order to improve quality of life for all. This will not happen unless the community is engaged in conversations around how their neighborhoods and their cities are about to change. Most community engagement is done through public meetings, activities at local public events, and surveying, whether those surveys are in-person or online. Developers are required to engage with the community in some way, but this can often be discretionary. A goal of ours is to encourage those connections between developers and residents, city planning and young people, nonprofits and activists. 

We work with all sectors to help engage community members at all times—before, during and after projects. Working with council members in Nashville, we hosted community meetings and organized a playground installation in an empty lot that would be the future Kossie Garder Sr. Park. Through this engagement, we heard from people of all ages and interests, especially calling out the need to build a park that does not displace residents around it.