Charrettes
A charrette is a vehicle for collaboration, particularly between educational institutions and their surrounding communities. Representatives from the North Philadelphia community used the charrette process to negotiate with Temple University.
The North Philadelphia Charrette
In early 1969 the University agreed to a moratorium on all new decisions regarding expansion of the campus. The University also decided to include community representatives on the University Planning Committee. The University made a commitment that year to not only work with the community, but to help it in any way that they could. Temple’s Board of Trustees proposed a program in cooperation with the community and public and private agencies to meet North Philadelphia’s needs for improved housing, health, education, and employment. Later in 1969, the University and the North Philadelphia community began discussing the possibility of using a ‘vehicle’ agreeable to the community which would negotiate the expansion problems of Temple and the community. This vehicle would be called a charrette.
A twenty-four member steering committee began planning the Charrette. The process of writing the Charrette agreement was actually much longer than either side had anticipated. The Charrette was to focus on the land dispute and the assurance of continued communication between the University and the community. The Charrette was also to contain the provision of programs, including supplementary education, economic development with an emphasis on job development, management and ownership, and political participation with the help of Temple’s resources.
At one of the very first meetings, representatives of Temple University informed community members and city officials present that Temple University is a member of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. They stated that its first responsibility is to the state of Pennsylvania, specifically to Southeastern Pennsylvania. For this reason, it must respond to the educational needs of the state. They informed all who were present that Temple’s expansion was a direct response to the expanding educational needs in the state. They further reminded everyone that the land involved in the dispute really is the property of the Commonwealth. Despite this message, the representatives did promise to devise a way to produce low-cost housing, to be creative around land use, and to reconsider community development and make land available to the community.
The North Philadelphia community representatives told the university and all present that Temple should demonstrate good faith and make reparations for past destruction of homes the community. They demanded that Temple University participate in housing development of “several complete city blocks,” that Temple subsidize the building of 100 single family homes, and that the community have control over land ownership. Community representatives told Temple University that they woe for the 7,000 families displaced by Temple’s expansion between 1965 and 1975.
Temple made proposals on supporting all of the programs and agreed to take care of a majority of the costs. The talks over land and land usage became the most hotly debated. Temple had placed a moratorium on building on land west of Broad Street. The discussions over land, specifically a seven square block area, dragged on for months. Finally, some governmental agencies had to offer five compromises to end the stalemate. Temple backed away from the compromises, and the community quit negotiations. Finally an agreement was reached. Although the Charrette was done and an agreement was reached, there continued to be a great deal of mistrust from the community.
The University tried to work against this perception and made some good efforts in the community, but continued trying to find avenues to accommodate their growing enrollment. The University established a Health Center in the Norris Homes for residents of the community. It established an Office of Community Relations naming Thomas Anderson, Jr., (an African-American man) Assistant Vice President in 1973.
During the course of the Charrette negotiations between Temple University and the North Central Philadelphia community, each party expressed commitment to certain principles. According to documentation, Temple University vowed that “the future form of the university’s growth pattern will be planned in cooperation with [our] neighbors” but that they “expect [their] neighbors to recognize the university’s need for self-determination” (Temple University Urban Archives). In stark contrast, the community’s expectation was that “the very human needs of housing, health care and economic development” and “the reconstruction of a neighborhood destroyed by Temple University” (Temple University Urban Archives) be addressed. The expectations of both parties were on opposite ends of the spectrum and none fully realized, although Temple University came within reach of their ultimate goal to acquire a larger portion of land to develop.
Charrettes as a Strategy for Community Power
The University of Louisville has compiled The Neighborhood Charrette Handbook. The handbook summarizes the definition and value of a charrette as follows: “A charrette workshop provides local officials and concerned citizens with a set of resources and a process that will help educate and involve the community in the decision-making process. The charrette (a Beaux Arts-derived term for a short, intensive design or planning activity) workshop is designed to stimulate ideas and involve the public in the community planning/design process. It is a valuable tool for laying the foundation for the development of a more formal plan (i.e. comprehensive plan, master plan, strategic plan, etc.). It is most effective as a component of the formal planning and design process.”
The Charrette is a short-term planning session devised by the United States Office of Education. The basic assumption that informs the Charrette is that a university often acts as a catalyst for redevelopment and revitalization in a community. The purpose of a Charrette is to elicit community cohesion, to generate economy, and to study and resolve the educational institution’s development problems within the context of total community needs.
An Educational Facilities Charrette is a technique for studying and resolving educational facilities development problems within the context of total community planning needs. The technique requires a majority representation of community residents as clients, and community leadership direction of a multidisciplinary group-educators, planners, architects, engineers, economists, psychologists, business representatives, local public officials, and students, together intensely studying community problems in open public forum to achieve creative solutions. Primary emphasis is given to educational facility and program as the natural catalyst for revitalization of the total community. The principal purpose is to arrive at implementable plans and solutions to community problems in a compressed time period. The charrette is kept practical and viable through commitment of local resources, which leads to a high probability of implementation of charrette solutions.
Incremental funds are usually committed by various organizations, including departments of education, public commissions, local agencies, and other public and private organizations. Commitments in kind by local government (i.e., key public officials, basic data, etc.) are as important to the success of the charrette process as commitments in dollars. Overall, the charrette technique can be less expensive than the “contemporary” planning process, and infinitely more effective in its attraction of effective talent, scope of problem analysis, and arrival of creative yet implementable solutions to community problems.
In recent years there has been a growing recognition that educational facilities and programs should be totally enmeshed in the social, economic, and physical vitality of communities. Increasingly society is asking that new schools be planned as community institutions, serving adults as well as children, performing social and cultural as well as education functions. Underlying this philosophy is the understanding that the physical integration of education facilities into the total fabric of the community will result in social, economic, and environmental revitalization of communities for the public benefit, and that if we are to improve education, we must integrate the whole social system rather that just modify the schools. This suggests that educational facility planning must become part of an overall strategy for community development and renewal and that new approaches to coordination of public decision-making and planning procedures must be found.
The need for a new school planning procedure has become self-evident. The old ways simply do not result in schools that serve either education or the community well. The evidence is overwhelming that today no school can fulfill its functions unless the life of the school and the life of the community are so actively and intensely interrelated that one is the extension of the other. The “educational facilities charrette” is a unique planning process designed to created new educational complexes that serve as a focal point for the revitalization of entire communities.
