Modern Methods of Meaningful Participation: Collaborative Planning for all

Modern methods of meaningful participation: Charrettes

Design workshops with members of the local community can take many forms, and are often most effective when interactive and creative, to explore the challenges and opportunities of a site or area and explore how design can help improve the quality of that place for local people and organisations. They are most effectively used early in the planning process, to inform a vision or masterplan. Charrettes are a specific type of interactive design workshop that can be used to generate a shared understanding of the opportunities and constraints of a site between members of the community, other stakeholders including council members, parish councils and external consultees and an inter-disciplinary team of built environment professionals including local authority officers that leads to the development of options.

Join this sessions to understand the value of the Charrette process for a range of projects that JTP have been involved in.

The 4.5 acre site of St Clement’s Hospital, a former workhouse dating back to 1848, comprised 19 buildings of varying age and quality, was curtilage listed, and had lain boarded up since 2005. In 2012, the Mayor of London agreed to establish London’s first ever Community Land Trust on the site, following a campaign by thousands of East Londoners that sought to establish a new way of providing genuinely and permanently affordable homes. After an extensive and innovative community planning process and masterplan, the listed buildings are now refurbished and have been integrated sensitively with new buildings to create a residential quarter in this vibrant part of east London.

The CLT sells houses to local people at a price that is fixed in relation to local average wages, and with over 1,000 local members it worked with the developers to create the new design. Galliford Try/Linden Homes, with JTP as architect and masterplanner, worked to deliver the residential-led regeneration.

Upon appointment, JTP began a wide-ranging Community Planning process which focussed on ‘Creating a New Vision for St Clement’s’ through Community Planning Workshops. Hundreds of local people participated in co-designing the new Vision for the site. The resulting masterplan proposed: a virtually car-free neighbourhood; around 250 homes in restored and new buildings; a new north-south route connecting Mile End Road to Cemetery Park; a new central locus for the Bow community which was previously lacking; and a range of public, semi-public and private landscaped spaces. The planning application received unanimous approval from Tower Hamlets for Detailed Planning Listed Building and Conservation Area consent, with many letters from local people supporting the project.