The Mississippi Renewal Forum was a design
charrette
A charrette (American pronunciation: ), often Anglicized to charette or charet and sometimes called a design charrette, is an intense period of design or planning activity.
The word ''charrette'' may refer to any collaborative process by which ...
in which over 200 community leaders and design professionals worked together to plan the rebuilding of the Mississippi Coast post-hurricane Katrina. In the course of a week in October 2005, the charrette’s design teams generated new plans and codes for all eleven municipalities along the Mississippi coast, including
Waveland,
Bay St. Louis
Bay St. Louis is a city in and the county seat of Hancock County, Mississippi, Hancock County, Mississippi, in the United States. Located on the Gulf Coast on the west side of the Bay of St. Louis, it is part of the Gulfport, Mississippi, Gulfp ...
,
Pass Christian
Pass Christian (), nicknamed The Pass, is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States. It is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi
Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the ot ...
,
Long Beach
Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California.
Incorporate ...
,
Gulfport,
Biloxi
Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...
, D’Iberville,
Ocean Springs
Ocean Springs is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States, approximately east of Biloxi and west of Gautier. It is part of the Pascagoula, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 17,225 at the 2000 U.S. Census. ...
,
Gautier, Pascagoula and
Moss Point.
The Mississippi Renewal Forum was organized by Mississippi Governor
Haley Barbour
Haley Reeves Barbour (born October 22, 1947) is an American attorney, politician, and lobbyist who served as the 63rd governor of Mississippi from 2004 to 2012. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as chairman of the Republican ...
’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal, in coordination with the
Congress for the New Urbanism
New Urbanism is an urban design movement which promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighbourhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually inf ...
and
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
DPZ CoDesign (DPZ) (formerly Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. and DPZ Partners) is an architecture and town planning firm based in Miami, Florida, founded in 1980 by the husband-and-wife team of Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. The firm is one o ...
. Participants included 140 architects and planners from across the country, as well as more than 50 local planners and officials.
The week-long charrette – considered by some to be the largest architectural brainstorm in 100 years – saw local and national architects worked together in teams to coordinate specific design plans for each municipality, as well as regional plans for transportation, coding and retail. Designers aimed to plan areas which would be more diverse, less auto-dependent, more environmentally-efficient and more secure from hurricanes. Accordingly, the projects not only focused on reconstruction plans, but also on zoning and development codes.
Journalists from across the country attended the event, and the forum received coverage by The New York Times, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune, amongst other local and national periodicals.
External links
Mississippi Renewal ForumCongress for the New UrbanismDuany Plater-Zyberk & Company
Government of Mississippi
Urban planning in the United States
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