I - Introduction The fundamental task of land use planning at Warren Wilson is to ensure that land use practices honor the College始s mission and its pattern language principles while providing the flexibility to accommodate change over time and respond to new conditions. This document is intended to establish the parameters within which a master plan for the campus of the College may be developed. It will set forth a master pattern for the analysis and pursuit of solutions to problems that are perceived currently and in the future. This master pattern will be applied in the development of a master plan with the guidance of five principles set forth below, which reflect the philosophy of the College with respect to the application of its physical resources to its educational mission. Campus master planning at Warren Wilson College has been pursued several times in the past thirty years in a series of efforts that were generally not seen through to completion. In the 1980始s Robert Marvin and Associates began assembling analytical maps pursuant to a planning study, but a lack of funding brought this work to a premature end. Likewise, Charles D. Hight and Associates started a study that produced some preliminary conceptual planning notions, but again the work was limited by an insufficient commitment of funds. In 1994 the Long Range Land Use Committee of the College, with the assistance of Wade H. Macfie, Architect, began a descriptive inventory of the campus lands intended to characterize the value of its holdings with respect to the mission of the College. The resulting document was published in 1996 and remains extant. Its principal limitation is in not addressing the character and value of core campus to the same depth that it treats surrounding campus lands, and it does not engage in physical planning. In addition to the funding constraints that have hampered past efforts, the Marvin and Hight studies were not preceded by analysis of land management practices and the establishment of a program of goals and objectives for the planning efforts tied to College mission, and protocols for evolutionary planning with the further passage of time were not set. Subsequently a positive step toward future planning was taken by the College in the adoption of the principles of a pattern language as set forth in the book of that name by Christopher Alexander, et al. The new planning course set herein by the present Land Use Committee envisions the thoughtful and intentional development of tools that will enable the administration, land managers and the College community to collaborate in the management of the land to the benefit of the College mission and the daily lives of those who pursue it. Pattern language is at the heart of this approach, in the form of patterns representing the tools and basic building blocks of an evolving plan for the future. This approach also differs from past attempts in its inclusion of an action plan which can be initiated on the day of adoption of this document.
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