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THE CHARRETTE
The CORE project had three phases:
1. An introductory period of citizens’ meetings to
define key issues.
2. Focus group interviews, a market study and the
four-day design charrette.
3. Production of the Planning and Design Charrette
Report and a General Development Guidelines
Manual.
The pre-charrette meetings, carried out by planners
in the region over a period of several weeks, high-
lighted some of the key issues and goals noted above
and laid the groundwork for the main element of
the process, the four-day charrette in April 2002. The
opening presentation at the charrette included the
findings from these background interviews and meet-
ings and our team’s overview of market conditions
and trends. Then town planners, urban designers,
architects, transportation planners and real estate
market analysts worked for four days, and some
nights with hundreds of residents, property owners,
elected and appointed officials, local and regional
agency staff, developers and business leaders to iden-
tify opportunities for the CORE area over the next
generation (See Figure 7.1). The charrette tackled the
key issues by addressing the following questions:
1. Was the current development pattern in the study
area a sustainable model? If not, what changes
would need to be made?
2. Were there other models of development such as
traditional neighborhoods, transit-oriented employ-
ment centers, transit-oriented village centers and
neighborhood centers that could be incorporated in
future planning decisions?
3. Could these other models have enough impact to
affect the required change?
It was clear to most charrette participants that conven-
tional land-use planning strategies were not effective
in dealing with the challenges facing the region.
Accordingly, instead of conventional categories of land
use, we introduced four new development typologies
into the debate to structure the master plan: 
the
Neighborhood, the Mixed-use Center, the District
and
the Corridor
. (These four typologies were defined in
detail in Chapter 6.) We wanted to shift the thinking
of the CORE partners away from the hackneyed
planning of large, single-use housing subdivisions,
office parks, apartment complexes and shopping
centers, and instead base all future planning on these
interlinked components that comprise the building
blocks of a sustainable city. During the charrette, these
spatial and development typologies formed the basis of
planning and design discussions, and the results culmi-
nated in the production of the overall master plan.
THE MASTER PLAN
The CORE charrette concluded with a full digital pre-
sentation of the strategies and solutions generated by
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the many participants. We presented the master plan in
four main graphic components dealing with the main
environmental, mobility and development patterns of
the area – 
Green Infrastructure, Transit Infrastructure
Street Infrastructure
and 
Mixed-use Activity Centers
–
plus another two sections, 
Neighborhoods
and 
Districts
that featured urban design recommendations for proto-
typical developments. These are discussed in the next
section.