Context Sensitive Design (CSD) is too often thought of as being synonymous with aesthetic design. It is also considered a tool used only in the public sector involving highway and bridge designs. These misconceptions must be changed as CSD has a definite place not only in the transportation engineering industry, but in the land development sector as well.

Context Sensitive Design describes a process! Professionals (architects, engineers, landscape architects, and land surveyors) too often want to go straight to the drawing board once we meet with a client to demonstrate our effectiveness in illustrating the client’s vision. We can’t wait to get to that first public meeting to show Anywhere, USA how great our graphical and professional skills are. In theory, there is nothing wrong with this, but it eliminates a major stakeholder, the community. Context Sensitivity is defined as an approach in planning and designing projects based on forming active and early partnerships with all stakeholders and community groups. It is part of a nationwide trend, recognizing that all participants have an integral stake in the ways in which a new project can affect the quality of their lives.

Context Sensitivity teaches us first and foremost that a proposed development project starts with the identification of all stakeholders. Yes, the client/developer is a stakeholder and a very important one, as they are paying the bills and in most cases taking huge risks. Neglecting the community as a stakeholder, however, draws battle lines and creates an antagonistic atmosphere that will tend to delay the project. By ignoring the community, the client is actually being harmed.

Community stakeholders have many faces. They are the governmental officials - local, county, and state. They are the fire, police, and other emergency services personnel. They are local groups, such as business associations, youth organizations, senior groups, schools, and religious institutions; and they are the neighbors, not only the abutting property owners, but all the local residents that will be affected by a development. They live and work in the project area every day. It is the developer and his consultants who are outsiders.

Stakeholders are often treated as if they are peripheral to the primary objective of the project rather than significantly involved. None can be ignored. When a design professional or site consultant shows up at that first public meeting, plan in hand, ready to show how great the plans for their community are, battle lines have been established!

Obviously in the development business, time is money. We all know this. Conventional wisdom tells us that the quickest sprint to the finish line saves time and money. A Context Sensitive approach asks that everyone involved step back and listen. This tends to get considerable resistance from the developer and understandably so. It is up to the design professionals to convince clients that a more managed approach, involving the community, will actually lead to a faster approval process. I have seen this work successfully many times. The more one tries to dictate to the community, the more resistance one encounters.


Addressing Community Concerns
Is it easier to push or pull? As a developer, you and your consultants cannot show up at the first, second or even third meeting with plans that dictate to community stakeholders how you, an outsider, are going to develop their neighborhood. This may seem counterintuitive, but these early meetings should be listening sessions. Listen to what the community perceives to be its problems. Listen to how Mr. Smith, the adjoining neighbor, has to deal with runoff issues every time it rains. Listen to how Sergeant O’Connor sees frequent traffic accidents at the nearby intersection because the right turn lane is too narrow. Listen to how the local little league team is in need of a new field. You may not be able to solve everyone’s problems, and it’s okay to say that. However, you may be able to solve some of their problems or suggest design alternatives that have worked for another community. In some cases, consideration alone is all that is desired.

As an example, consider the little league problem described above. The project can’t afford the space or money to build a new regulation field. Through the listening process, it is discovered that the major issue really is apportioning time on the field to the “T-ball” groups. Creating a smaller “T-ball” field may eliminate the real issue with much less space and cost required, freeing up valuable time for the existing fields. Problem solved and you’re a hero!

In the case of Sergeant O’Connor, in all likelihood, widening the right turn lane would probably have been required anyway. It may have taken two or three meetings to hear that and get it right. Understanding this reality before anything is designed will enable you to get it right the first time, again saving both time and money in unnecessary plan revisions.

A typical subdivision of a parcel laid out in strict accordance with municipal regulations could certainly be approved, but might also run into community roadblocks, as there was no pre-discussion with the community to determine joint objectives. After several meetings, it comes to light that there are community concerns hidden behind their opposition. There is an historic oak tree on a significant knoll; a desire exists for more open space and a trail system to connect to a larger municipal system. There is also an adjacent piece of ground where a road connection to this development would solve existing traffic issues.

By meeting first to discover these issues, the initial plan submitted should have addressed all of these concerns after the community identified them. The local stakeholders became part of the process and were instrumental in crafting the solutions. This project now has a much better chance of proceeding without delay and with the community very possibly helping to sell the product to their friends and relatives.

Cedar Grove Farms Development in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, is indicative of such a project borne out of these community pre-negotiations. Traditional developments at that time were accomplished by following the script, dictated by the underlying zoning. In this case, a minimum lot size of one acre was required. In early conversation with the community there were two pressing issues, one being open space and the second being additional traffic on the local rural road system.

Our project team approached the client to see if he would be amenable to creating a cluster design, currently more popular today but unique in the late 80’s. The resultant plan and development created 146 lots on 124 acres, leaving 62 acres as permanent open space. The developer also worked with the municipality on solving traffic issues that had plagued the community for a number of years. The development was quite successful for the community, the future residents, and Marple Township.


A Nontraditional Approach
The Shoppes of Longwood is a traditional strip shopping center with the usual national and local tenants one would expect to see in these types of developments. The design problem was that the front of the site was traversed by low-lying wetlands considered very valuable and critical to the site’s downstream neighbors, one of which was Longwood Gardens, a major horticultural tourist attraction in historic Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

A traditional approach, and one used frequently in shopping center development at that time, would have been to push the center as close to the highway as possible, pipe a majority of the stream (which could have been done in the years the center was planned) and pave for the parking field. There were two other major community concerns, screening of the residential properties to the rear of the site and the demolition of a house on the site that was the boyhood home of baseball hall of fame player, Herb Pennock.

In working with the community in the very early stage of the design process, it was decided to save all of the wetlands areas and turn them into significant water features and site amenities, pushing the parking field and stores more to the rear of the site. Significant dollars were spent to landscape and screen the rear of the shopping center to the satisfaction of the adjoining neighbors and a monument was installed along the front of the center honoring the Pennock home. The result is a successful center for the developer and a community that knows it was part of the solution.

With this type of approach, the antagonistic environment can be softened. The project team can become a working partner with the community - sympathetic to community concerns and assisting in actively finding solutions.

Moving forward with land development projects presents a host of options. One option is to show up at the first meeting with YOUR outsider plan in hand, all mouth and no ears. After a series of meetings and plan revisions, YOUR plan may eventually resemble THEIR plan. However, you’ve wasted your time, the stakeholders’ time and the client’s money. You’ve also created a perception of yourself as the enemy, never trusted by a community that will always sleep with one eye open. That’s a huge expense.

Instead, opt for a Context Sensitive Design approach, where a sense emerges that you are working together toward a common goal - yours being the delivery of the best product and theirs being resolution of the community issues that they were living with long before you arrived. You will also have created a community of allies, more apt to trust and work with you cooperatively on future projects.

Context Sensitive Design clearly is a process that involves compromise, but results in the ultimate realization of project goals. Most important, it does so in such a way that all stakeholders reap the rewards. There is an old adage, “Stop, look, and listen”. It works! SLDT