Sponsored by the City of Palo Alto Department of Planning and Community Environment to implement Comprehensive Plan Program L-47 "undertake a Community Design Workshop for the East Meadow Circle Area."

What is a Charrette?
The French word, "Charrette" means "cart" and is often used to describe the final, intense work effort expended by art and architecture students to meet a project deadline. This use of the term is said to originate from the École des Beaux Arts in Paris during the 19th century, where proctors circulated a cart, or "charrette", to collect final drawings while students frantically put finishing touches on their work.

Today, "charrette" has come to describe an intensive creative work session in which a design team focuses on a particular design problem and arrives at a collaborative solution with stakeholders from the project area. Charrettes are product-oriented and ideally result in a breakthrough event that helps to create a meaningful design plan. Properly executed, this technique can produce a design plan that is more useful, better understood, and more quickly produced than one formed by any other method.

The Issue:
Properties in the East Meadow Circle Area are individually redeveloping from light manufacturing to multi-family residential without cohesive design guidelines. Comprehensive Plan Policy L-47 identifies the East Meadow Circle Area as a potential site for higher density housing that provides a transition between existing housing and nearby industrial development. If housing development occurs in this area, including a component of neighborhood commercial uses would benefit residents of existing homes in the area as well as the new homes.