ABSTRACT
Essential long-term commitment to community projects was established through a direct citizen involvement in the earliest stages of problem or need identification. Making those affected active partners in directing change, rather than eventual recipients of professionals' determinations, increases the likelihood that interest and advocacy will be maintained until and after the desired results are achieved. Since any town revitalization effort in the United States requires community support, an open invitation was extended to residents of the community to attend a planning workshop. Since the building occupants had identified many serious malfunctions in their working environment, a procedure was developed by the design team to permit the users to study the reallocation possibilities of their workplace. Like many mid-sized cities in America, Roanoke, Virginia, suffered economic and physical decline when suburban shopping malls began to overshadow locally based commerce.
