Placemaking seminar helps foster vital communities

Images courtesy of Renaissance Planning Group
Leonardo daVinci's "Vetruvian Man" (upper right) defines human proportions, which demonstrates proportions to support harmonious communities (images on left).

Everyone knows intuitively that people shape places. Over time, the people who live and work in a community define its “fingerprint” — its collective history and cultural identity. Placemaking is the art of shaping healthy, attractive communities by cultivating the proportion, scale and density that best reflect the community’s natural setting and its character.

A team of U.Va. faculty and nationally recognized Virginia planners will offer a three-day course on placemaking July 26-28 at the Charlottesville Community Design Center at 101 East Main Street. The course, which is
co-sponsored by the School of Architecture, will address a broad array of perspectives, experiences and ideas about placemaking in rural, urban and suburban communities. Each day will feature lectures and hands-on exercises exploring the ways in which planners can apply placemaking principles to integrate land use, transportation and design within Virginia’s political and regulatory context. Topics will include:

• Successful Communities: Placemaking principles
• Vital Regions: Integrating transportation, land use and community design
• Placemaking in Virginia: Sustainable and feasible policies, regulations and incentives.

The nonprofit seminar is supported by U.Va. For information, contact Hannah Twaddell at 296-3025 or htwaddell@citiesthatwork.com.