COMMUNITY PLANNING DEVELOPMENT
What is Community Planning?
Community Planning = ‘Planning carried out with the active participation of the end users.
Similarly, community architecture, community design and so on.’
Community planning is a process that involves collaboration among local stakeholders,
including residents, businesses, and government entities, to create a comprehensive
vision and development strategy for a community that addresses land use, housing,
transportation, and environmental sustainability. Effective community planning employs
a participatory approach, ensuring diverse input and fostering a sense of ownership
among community members, ultimately leading to more vibrant, equitable, and resilient
neighborhoods. By balancing economic growth with the preservation of cultural and
natural resources, community planning plays a crucial role in shaping livable and
sustainable urban and rural environments.
The "planning process helps communities define their goals and a path to achieving
them.”
“Building capacity, readiness, and partnerships across government institutions and
community stakeholders such as community-based organizations, community
advocates, or residents is critical in order for an equitable planning process to unfold.”
What is the role of the Architect in Community Planning?
Communal existence is possible only when certain individuals agree to live together in a
geographical area with a sense of growth and development in creating a sustainable
community. Architects on the other hand need to integrate sustainability as a major
consideration for community development. In the rural setting there is usually undefined
precedence of development, therefore preparation for a sustainable built environment
is often neglected, hence the architect has a role to play in community development.
• Community architects as designers of “process”
- For architects, the process of getting to the product is as important as the
product itself. Many architects believe that achieving a good design solution
is defined by the quality and thoroughness of the steps taken to get there.
• Planners help the community visualize new possibilities and new solutions for
community transformations.
- These planners can quickly visualize a variety of solutions and design
possibilities when they are presented with a “design problem or solution”. In this
way, they can help the community to generate options for development that
are realistic.
• Helping to facilitate people’s thinking process
- They try not to judge what option, or solution may or may not be good for the
community. Rather, they help the people follow through with how they think a
certain solution could affect their way of life.
• Keeping a horizontal relationship with people and trying to break the professional-
people gap.
- In a participatory planning process, the architect plays the role of “facilitator”
rather than “decision maker”, and therefore their relationship with the
community does not become a vertical or top-down one. Conversely, the
community cannot demand from the community architect in the same way
that they do from government agencies.
• Breaking people’s and society’s mental fixation that the poor are incapable of
achieving their goals.
- The main aim if every activity should always be to allow people to gradually
build up their confidence so that they can take the lead role in planning,
designing and building their own houses and communities, and likewise, to
have the confidence to know when to seek technical help from architects,
engineers and planners.