Executive Summary
The document which follows represents the fruit of a continuing effort by the Warren Wilson College Land Use Committee to develop a planning tool that goes beyond an identification and analysis of current problems in the physical environment of the College to address the needs of the future. It is unique in the history of physical planning at the College in integrating the needs of the present with principles, tools and parameters capable of guiding all future planning efforts. The Committee始s approach has been to identify current problems and to seek ways of addressing them in the context of shared governance. This analysis has then been scrutinized under the light cast by our history and such illumination as can be imagined for the future in order to ensure the comprehensiveness of the tool that we are crafting. Our goal has been a means of planning and management that is sufficiently universal for its utility to survive the unknowable demands of the future while being specific enough to guide the hands-on work of the ongoing present. At the heart of the document is the College始s commitment to pattern language, now entering its third decade. The problems of the day will be solved or managed, will drop away with time to be replaced by others or will evolve as ongoing challenges. The patterns which we apply to them should be as universal and ever-applicable as we can make them. They are the actionable expressions of our principles. Implicit in the concept of comprehensive applicability is the ability of this set of tools to evolve and adapt, and we recognize that this will not occur without active management. For that reason many of the action items and patterns herein include provisions for assigning responsibility and delegating authority. Without these provisions the problems described may fester and the tools intended for their solution may lie idle. Our hope is that the College will accept this document and will commit such resources and effort as are required to move this plan forward as a robust, active program for the management of change.
The Warren Wilson College Land Use Committee
September 17, 2010
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