• bakersfield charrettes
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• willits community design

Bakersfield Charrettes

Location: Bakersfield, CA
Client: City of Bakersfield
Award: Outstanding Planning Project Award from the Central Section, California Chapter of the American Planning Association

Mogavero Notestine Associates worked with the City of Bakersfield to implement a Downtown Design Charrette. The charrette came out of a community driven process called Vision 2020. The visioning process had been active since May 1999, and as of September 2000, over 12,500 participants had actively participated.

The City of Bakersfield has experienced much adversity throughout its history. In the early 1900's the town was devastated by a major earthquake and also has had the unfortunate experience of being burnt down twice. Due to these disasters much of the historic foundational presence is no longer there. Through the charrette, Mogavero Notestine Associates developed images that reinforce the vision of downtown and include implementation strategy for the future. MNA facilitated the workshops utilizing local architectural, landscape and planning professionals as well as the general public.

The final product included discussions on: the context of downtown's place in the larger community; the existing conditions and images for the year 2020; how to reach objectives through catalyst projects, opportunity site projects and other activities; and financing, implementation partners, and schedules for the implementation of the various projects.

In addition, the community wanted to create additional parks, streetscape improvements, and allocate district uses for cultural elements, government use, educational use, and retailing. Entrances and additional downtown housing are also important components to this strategy.

The design charrette was so successful that the City of Bakersfield brought MNA back to conduct an additional design charrette for the Southeast Bakersfield Neighborhood Design planning process.