There will be a lunch conversation on Monday, February 28th at noon, on the topic of community participation and involvement in urban planning at MIT building 7-431.

Join us for a conversation on how we can help support community participation and involvement, encourage the development of environmentally-friendly communities, create an equitable access to community commons, and much more. What are the mechanisms whereby new policy initiatives can mitigate barriers to well-being — and in the gap between policy implementations, what are the other mechanisms and tools we can create to foster healthy communities?

This is definitely an important topic, and of considerable attention recently.  A few weeks ago Ethan Zuckerman spoke on communities and urban planning, and one of the topics brought up in the Q and A was how the design process for cities misses out on considering values of the individuals of the targeted communities.  The communities will live with the design choices, whether or not good decisions were made, without having a say in the process.

More info : http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/events/view/143