Creative: Rooted in passion
By: Nicole Eaton, Charlotte Communications & Marketing
“Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re willing to take risks.” — Yo-Yo Ma
What if we could test ideas in a real space before implementing them into a project? This is the idea behind tactical urbanism and the Better Blocks Program. Erin Chantry, principal planner and urban designer with the Charlotte Urban Design Program, enjoys developing meaningful and impactful projects using creativity, placemaking and urban design processes. Placemaking is making public spaces livable and enjoyable for people in the community it serves using planning and design.
“I have a strong passion to work in neighborhoods that have experienced disinvestment over time. Every community should benefit from high quality design and infrastructure and I’m honored to work on every scale to bring that to our city.”- Erin Chantry, Principal Planner and Urban Designer
To Erin, creativity is integrated into every project. It’s asking questions like “What can we do better?”, “How can we do it differently?” or “What resources can we leverage?” She says, “Creativity and innovation comes from a strong passion to see change and growth for our city and our communities. Thinking outside the box or what we know to be true brings questions and discoveries that can lead to awesome transformations — usually always by taking risks.”
She recently worked on the Better Block Five Points project in west Charlotte. A Better Block is an example of tactical urbanism that helps cities, community groups, and emerging leaders create rapid prototyping in the service of creative placemaking and support of public life. Ideas and designs are implemented temporarily to a specific location to help communities and cities envision what a public space could be with the intent that it will lead to permanent change.
The Five Points project is a Comprehensive Neighborhood Improvement Program (CNIP) project which focuses on a city-owned plaza and turning it into a shared space the community can program and use. Timing was perfect to align it with Better Block since the project team was ready to test the conceptual design. In mid-November, a performance stage, moveable seating, vendor space, custom pavement treatment, open space and recreation components were installed at Five Points Plaza for a weekend to test ideas.
The surrounding neighborhoods, community groups and neighborhood leaders all participated to see how they wanted to use the space. This way of testing concepts and offering hands-on experience to the community is different from typical public meetings where the public may just see a presentation and then comment on renderings.
Five Points brings the project back to the hands of the community because everything was designed, planned and executed by the surrounding community. It’s a great example of how urban design should be. Erin says, “Urban design is creatively connecting people with their built environment and creating great places that easily integrate into a community and enhance people’s quality of life.”
This project was unique because it’s one of the few city-owned plazas, but in the end it’s the community that will decide on the programming and how to sustain the interest in this area. The next step is to take the feedback from the Better Block project and integrate that into the design. Erin says, “We will continue to ensure that we build an infrastructure project that can be sustained by the programming model identified by the community moving forward.”
While the Better Block is over, there is still a small plaza space that the community can use right now for programming events to keep the momentum going. The Historic West End Initiative can help those interested getting involved with this space.
Other city departments are starting to use tactical urbanism to test concepts before making large investments in a project. The city offers a Placemaking Hub where neighborhoods can find more ways to implement their creative ideas.
A special thanks to the Historic West End Initiative, Charlotte Center City Partners and Neighboring Concepts who were instrumental in designing, planning and executing the Better Block Five Points Project. Hundreds of hours of time went into making this project a reality. Additionally, the city coordination team made up of members from Charlotte Department of Transportation, Planning, Housing and Neighborhood Services and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department ensured the project was executed safety and successfully.
