Living Shoreline Design Charette: A New Twist on the Charette Technique

Abstract

Design charettes are a common outreach technique that planners and landscape architects use to obtain input on planning issues. The desired outcome is a design solution that takes into account participant feedback. Because design charettes bring people of diverse backgrounds together to work toward a goal, exploring uses of this technique for purposes beyond the traditional is valuable. At a living shoreline design charette, we used the technique not to devise design solutions but to engage interested parties in an activity that provided them with improved awareness and understanding of what regulators permit regarding living shoreline designs. Here we describe our process and its results.