WHO DID WE TALK TO?

Planning Process Part 1 Launch & Discovery: Engagement

Adjacent Institutions

Adjacent institutions hold special interest in the future of the Parkway as their continued success depends on the public having numerous ways to access Center City and the Parkway. Their input provided user-specific insight into the challenges faced by their local visitors, tourists, and staff.

Guided Discussions & Operator Surveys:

These methods engaged various stakeholders to reveal existing obstacles and potential synergies for future partnerships during future phased development. The project team distributed operator surveys and held discussions with the following groups:

• Academy of Natural Sciences

• Association for Public Art

• Barnes Foundation

• Fairmount Sports Association

• Friends of the Rail Park

• Friends Select School

• Logan Square Neighborhood Association Design and Planning Committee

• Moore College of Art & Design

• Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

• Philadelphia Museum of Art

• Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation

• The Philadelphian

Registered Community Organizations (RCOs)

“Boots on the ground” staff and volunteers helped lead and guide discussions within neighborhoods. For example, registered community organizations provided a means to distribute project information far and wide, thus expanding the meaningful dialogue with stakeholders and broadening public interest and support for the project.

Email Blasts:

Numerous RCO’s received project updates through email blasts for the purposes of distributing Public Survey I and information sharing about the Community Ambassador Program. This method was geared toward members of the public who had not yet been engaged.

Local and International Experts

Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Philadelphia are unique in that a rich mixture of art, cultural, academic, and recreational institutions are sited in Center City creating an opportunity for knowledge-sharing between experts. This mixture attracted the best and brightest from around the world to study and learn from the successes of the Parkway during a design charrette last year.

Design Charrette

For two days, the project team partnered with local and visiting experts in a series of workshops to discuss the current and future state of the Parkway, review initial thoughts on a range of potential strategies, identify gaps in programming and infrastructure and pinpoint next steps. Each workshop was organized by the following areas of expertise to inform development of the urban design approach: