Visioning our community : using urban design to move from "don't want" to "want"

Abstract

Communities often find difficulty in organizing against the siting of locally unwanted land uses. While residents find ease in expressing what they do not want, they often fail to express what they do want, causing their ultimate exclusion from land use decision. This thesis examines how communities can use urban design as a process and a product to move from reactive organizing to proactive organizing in order to build more complete and effective campaigns for land use and community visions. To detail how communities can use urban design for proactive organizing, this thesis outlines several case studies. The major case, the Mystic View planning and design effort, is outlined in detail. As comparison I used brief descriptions of five other cases where community organization used urban design for proactive organizing. Urban design as a process and a product has flaws as a community-organizing tool. This thesis points out these flaws and shortcomings and explores ways that community organization can better make use of urban design to impact land use decisions.