ABSTRACT
The community designer needs to make decisions about the formats of planned participatory decision-making activities when starting a project. Like community design methods, the activity formats available to the community designer have strengths and weaknesses depending on the project area, context, the community, and the resources available. Overall, community design activity formats are of two types: workshop-or meeting-type formats and informal formats. Workshop-or meeting-type formats include interactive workshops, booth-based workshops, informative/reactive meetings, and charrette. Informal formats include the planned street presence, the on-the-spot street presence, and the plan van gathering. Workshops and meetings provide an organized, formal environment for community design activities. The interactive workshop format tends to promote an informal, comfortable environment. Booth-based workshops tend to be used for projects in which large amounts of project-specific, technical information need to be conveyed to participants. The informative/reactive meeting format is commonly utilized by local government bodies around the United States.
