VI. creative partnerships
From BeyondVoting
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A growing tradition of project-based partnering among city agencies, community groups, and civic and academic institutions has begun to produce creative results. HPD partnered with the Bushwick community to develop planning teams and employed visioning and charrette techniques to develop site plans for the Rheingold Brewery project. More recently, it initiated the same process for the redevelopment of the “Brig,” a one-square block former Army prison in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. As mentioned on page 16, DCP formed a 100-member advisory group to initiate a planning process for 125th Street in Harlem and has established an interagency task force for the rezoning of the Sherman Creek area that has been effective in addressing community recommendations. These efforts are bringing community visions into the planning process at its earliest stages.
The city can continue to tap into the enormous network of non-profit and for-profit planning service providers, community-based organizations, planning schools, and civic organizations that work at the neighborhood level and have expertise in grassroots planning and organizing.
• The city, in partnership with the Community-Based Planning Task Force and non-profit civic organizations, should seek funding from private donors to establish a matching fund, that will allow communities to hire their own planning consultants. These funds would be matched by in-kind services provided by DCP and planners in other agencies.
• There are resources communities can avail themselves of to assist in planning efforts. Maps, data, GIS training, information on programs, best practice, and even limited technical assistance are available, but have not been made widely known to community boards by the city in any comprehensive fashion. The CAU, working with the Community-Based Planning Task Force, can become a clearinghouse for these resources, using its staff and website to publicize the information.
• The CAU can work with the Task Force to organize a curriculum on community-based planning that should be incorporated into required training for all new community board members.
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