Brighton/Monroe Avenue Corridor Community Design Charrette June 5, 2010

The Town of Brighton and the Rochester Regional Community Design Center invite those interested in community planning to participate and help improve the public realm along Monroe Avenue. Join us all day Saturday and offer ideas, information, and comments. Within your workgroup and area of interest, walk segments of the Avenue and then help draw plans.

Next year Brighton updates its long-term comprehensive plan, which it last updated in 1997. By when the current plan expires, it will have endured 14 years, and the next plan may endure just as long, way beyond current and foreseeable market conditions. The process, from planning to proposal to construction, takes years, for infrastructure that lasts yet 30-plus more years. Thus the update ought plan for the next 40+ years, by when oil-based transportation will have peaked. The danger lays not in ideas too bold, but in ideas not bold enough.

Another purpose for this charrette, presenting options for town boards, lets them compare alternatives when developers propose projects. All too often, projects like those along South Clinton Ave and Brighton-Henrietta Townline Rd consider only car-centered design, with few options for those who don't drive.

To survey ideas already in discussion and to gloss more detail, see Democrat & Chronicle article http://ROCnow.com/article/local-news/20106040337. For background on charrettes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charrette

In preparation for the charrette, try posting geocoded street photographs to http://panaramio.com/map/ and http://flickr.com/map/, and within a few days Google Maps Street View can incorporate them. To see some ideas already presented, see http://8.ideavine.com/MonAvCor

Official Website: http://rrcdc.org/ourwork_charrettecenter.html