Placemaking Week

The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency has adopted an Area Plan framework, which overhauls traditional land use with a palette of "Place Types" for the City and County. Place Types are based on the fundamental principle that people do not relate to "uses" they relate to places that are defined by a unique combination of uses, form, scale, green spaces and transportation amenities. Place Types provide a more complete representation of the urban, suburban and rural communities that defines "home" for the citizens of our region.

An introductory overview of the tool will provide lessons learned from the RPA in creating a usable palette of Place Types, as well as some of the direct applications of the tool. A variety of community engagement strategies that enable the paradigm shift from understanding future land use as a collection of vague descriptions, to the identification of unique Places will be highlighted. Following the introduction, hands-on learning exercises will provide the participant with the opportunity to apply the Place Types tool to real-world scenarios. Exercises will focus on building an archetypal Place Type with attention to the development form and pattern parameters, as well as integrating a mixture of uses and transitions to adjacent Place Types.