Denmark Trip

The second visit to Denmark was much more informative than the first visit. The class drove to both colleges and walked all over the main street area. Its much easier to understand what Harry refers to now after seeing and documenting it. We started off the tour meeting with Jim Harrison and had some killer BBQ sandwiches, then we were off.

Points of interests for me were the Police Station/ Library, the run-down golf course, City Hall, and the overall streetscape of the "main street." With a technical school near by there is a lot of potential for the golf course to receive free help with collaboration with a class. This is done in Charleston with the turf/grass or course management class. This enables students to get a hands on lesson while the course gets much needed help.



I helped with the imagery group and focused on showing the potential with the City Hall and main street. All the changes to photos of these sites were small economical changes that can really enhance the pedestrian experience. The City Hall has potential to be a focal point on the street and a destination spot. Hopefully seeing these images will increase the excitement for change.

Design Day Workshop

The workshop was helpful even with most of the room having already participated in a design charrette. The role playing was entertaining especially since they include the students as the facilitator and scribe. Most of the information was self explanatory, but there were several points that applied to setting up a charrette that will prove to be helpful in the future.

Later in the day we broke up into our town groups and discussed the game plan for Design Day. The Allendale group decided to split into 2 groups (both gateways). I did most of my initial analysis at the USC-Salk gateway so I joined up with that group. We laid out the ground work for what we want to accomplish on March 7th. We all have our separate tasks to do before that date to prepare for the all day Design Day. We really want to promote pedestrian traffic from the campus into town. Its currently automobile oriented with no real streetscape. A driver can actual speed right by the campus and not even know they are entering the main street of Allendale. We'll be working on ways to tie the residential and campus streets to downtown. I'm real interested to see how it turns out.