LAEP department plans for makeover
All 162 students in the USU Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning program participated in a week-long project, developing ideas to enhance Main Street and downtown Logan.
“It’s amazing what the students can do in a week. It is just mind-boggling,” said David Bell, LAEP professor. “The students gain hands-on experience with real situations, and they are free to dream, which makes it fun,” he said.
The project was called Logan Downtown/Cache Valley Main Street 2008 Charrette and consisted of 14 groups comprised of mixes between all grades. The charrette is designed to flush out ideas in a short but intensive period.
The charrette was headed by Bell and John Nicholson of the LAEP department. They said students had one week, starting Jan. 28, to build a solution to various problems facing downtown Logan, such as increasing pedestrian traffic, improving public art and history awareness and creating a green infrastructure.
Billy Kaufman, senior in the LAEP program, has been a part of three charrettes and said this experience, working with Logan, was the very best.
“To actually change a place I’ve lived is really neat,” he said.
Kaufman worked on the project to enhance pedestrian traffic in downtown Logan and said doing work that could actually be implemented is his favorite part of the charrette.
For the past five years, the LAEP department has done charrettes that have included projects in Richmond, Heber City and a strip of Highway 89.
The ideas will be presented before the end of the school year in a public meeting before many Logan City officials. The city will then present the various ideas to a national consultant, who can use them to expand the downtown area.
Bell said the charrette is good promotion for USU and the LAEP department, and it is a reasonably real project for Logan City.
-adam.pollock@aggiemail.usu.edu