Routledge Community Visioning for Place Making: A Guide to Visual Preference Surveys for Successful Urban Evolution

Community Visioning for Place Making is a groundbreaking guide to engaging with communities in order to design better public spaces. It provides a toolkit to encourage and assist organizations, municipalities, and neighborhoods in organizing visually based community participation workshops, used to evaluate their existing community and translate images into plans that embody their ideal characteristics of places and spaces. The book is based on results generated from hundreds of public participation visioning sessions in a broad range of cities and regions, portraying images of what people liked and disliked. These community visioning sessions have been instrumental in generating policies, physical plans, recommendations, and codes for adoption and implementation in a range of urban, suburban, and rural spaces, and the book serves as a bottom-up tool for designers and public officials to make decisions that make their communities more appealing. The book will appeal to community and neighborhood organizations, professional planners, social and psychological professionals, policy analysts, architects, urban designers, engineers, and municipal officials seeking an alternative vision for their future. Review "The Visual Preference Survey process in an exemplary tool involving and educating the general public about the impacts of development and the choices that they have for improving their community." ―Jim McKensie, Executive Director of Metroplan, Little Rock, Arkansas "The Vision Planning Process by Tony Nelessen is an exciting new planning technique that allows people to become the planners and architects of their community’s future." ―Gordon Linton, Federal Transit Administrator, US Department of Transportation "While there are many ‘specialists’ in land planning, it is hard to find true leadership and methodology to bring the energy and determination of an entire community together towards the success of development. Tony Nelessen has proven his ability to do this very successfully." ―Richard Sharpe, President of Sharpe Architecture, Wilmington, NC "This is the most innovative and engaging process for community participation and generating a vision that I have ever experienced." ―Andy MacCabe, Redevelopment Authority, City of Bayonne, New Jersey "The Visual Preference Survey Process is an original and effective way for citizens to actively engage in the planning process. The Visual Preference Survey and the documentation of the results are both strong educational and involvement tools. They embody the bottom-up approach of trusting the public to intuitively know what makes communities desirable and safe places to live and work." ―Gretchen Karfour, Commissioner, City of Portland, Oregon About the Author Anton C. Nelessen Tony is the inventor of the Community Visioning Process using the Visual Preference Survey and Vision Translation workshops. He has applied it in nearly 400 communities across the country and world. He is a trained architect and urban designer, professor, author, film and multi-media producer, painter, sculptor, and visioning facilitator. He has led an award-winning urban planning firm since 1989. He has been Undergraduate Program Director for Planning, Public Policy and Public Health at Rutgers University. Currently, he is Professor of Urban Planning, Design and Visioning at Rutgers. He and his wife live in downtown Princeton, New Jersey.