Culture in the Urban Plan - Creating a Sense of Place

 Regarding our transit subcommittee and the efforts for a Design Competition that partners with an educational or cultural institution:

One of the concrete things that came out of the UDGA meeting Wednesday was to intersect a policy goal from the comprehensive plan with a specific site, nonprofit, or stakeholder.  (several specifics were mentioned, but we have not secured a commitment from any one site or partner) That would help ground this project as a physical manifestation of something that we are trying to advocate on an urban design level.  Briefly, it sounds like our policy goal is "public art as a catalyst of creating a sense of place and connecting residential neighborhoods with community infrastructure", but we need to get active in the comp plan task force that deals with Culture and refine our policy goal to the point that it becomes part of the City vision.  This comp plan phase wraps up in a few weeks, so we would need to get active at both May 2 and May 9 meetings.

Prior to soliciting competition projects based on our policy goal, there was agreement that we could plan a symposium that would show examples of projects, either in Austin or elsewhere, that showcase what we would like to achieve.  This might expand the possibilities, by providing education about the range of options for defining public space.  This symposium could be a lecture format, a gallery exhibit, a pecha kucha, or whatever you are interested in.

The other thing that came out of our meeting Wednesday was the need to get more concrete about the task to be achieved, so that we can be targeted in who we recruit and what they would be doing.  (we mentioned Architecture in Schools committee, Young Professionals committee, Uplift Austin, Art in Public Places, etc as possible resources for advice or assistance)  To get volunteers/approval/advertising from AIA members or grant sponsors, we need to be very clear about what we would like to do and why.