The Rehabilitation of a Historic District of Murfreesboro

The rehabilitation of a historic district of Murfreesboro as the successful example of actions engaging the local community. Adaptation of the method to use a computer as communication tool.

Małgorzata Hanzl, dr inż. arch.

Article published in materials of the conference Local Authorities and the Protection of the Historic Cities, Zamość - Krasnobród, the 3rd-4th June 2004 The full text in the polish version)

In the eighties the ideas of public participation in the urban planning saw a great development both in the theory and in practice. The effect of these changes was on the one hand the introduction of new regulations, concerning public participation, into planning law of different countries. On the other hand, the new methods of preparation of plans with public participation were worked out. One of many examples of projects realised during the most radical development of the idea of public participation planning was the programme of rehabilitation of the historic district of Murfreesboro, North Carolina, USA. The actions undertaken when working at the rehabilitation project have been examined to check whether the methods used are possible to adapt to current conditions of technology progress and to the use of a computer as a tool for communication and presentation. The second important issue is an attempt to answer the question to what extent such practices can be introduced into Polish conditions. The process of plan creation has been analysed as well as its elements: goals, strategies, and the methods of their definition. The complete vision of proposed state for the area, called Ideal Future, was used when discussing the plans, in town promotion, in public debate and to indicate the directions of actions taken up by MHA. The images were also used in presentation of scenarios concerning particular fragments of the district. The effective non-professional participation requires understanding of conceptions and methods applied in decision making. Until people are not conscious of their environment and do not understand it, creative thinking about using it and changing is not possible. The range of actions should be undertaken to get public interest towards the issues of space shape. The experiences of other countries show that legal regulations and procedures are not sufficient to be able to help in creating people’s attachment to their place of living.

Fig. 1. Illustration of politics showing possible before and after appearances of the site: 1. shield parking lots; 2. widen sidewalks
(Sanoff H. 1978, p.134)

Fig. 3. Illustration of conditions which should be fulfilled to obtain a overall visual cohesiveness of buildings: proportion of building, rhythm of front façade, directional expression, scale (Sanoff H. 1978, p. 127)

Fig. 4. Use of computer presentation to show the vision of proposed state for the area. Drawings were created for competition project for Pasaż ZNP, authors: M.Janiak, W.Adamiak, Z.Bińczyk, W. Saloni – Marczewski; visualization - author