The Local Angle
“Collaboration,” “sustainable planning,” “youth,” and “professional mentors,” are the keywords of Rockland P.L.U.S., an annual land use charrette activity that has, over the last five years, engaged over 500 high school students, their teachers, and a group of loyal professional mentors from the fields of planning, architecture, law, real estate development, affordable housing, and environmental science and advocacy. Our case study focuses on booming waterfront development in the Village of Haverstraw. According to Arlene Miller, one of our mentors and a senior planner with the Rockland County Planning Department, “The symposium is a fun, hands-on way for high school students to learn about the intricacies of land use planning and zoning-related issues.”

The program begins with classroom visits by Sonia Cairo (Keep Rockland Beautiful) and Margie Turrin (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory) to introduce students and teachers to our extensive case study booklet and the history of land use in Haverstraw, a poor, largely Latino village on the shores of the Hudson River, about 30 miles north of Manhattan. When finished, the massive “Harbours at Haverstraw” condo development on a brownfield site will transform almost the entire length of Haverstraw’s unique waterfront with apartment buildings, shoreline promenades, a commuter ferry terminal, children’s museum, and associated commercial ventures. The project is nestled between heavy industrial sites such as a quarry and a power plant, the majestic High Torridge overlooking the Hudson, and historic downtown Haverstraw, where new residents and generations of ethnic immigrants vie to define the village’s past and future.

Hands-On Experience
Rockland P.L.U.S. culminates with the convening of 125 students and teachers from seven high schools at the local community college for a day of planning charrettes overseen by professional mentors recruited and organized by Paul Trader (Cornell Cooperative Extension). In 2008, we began the day with a local documentary film in which bodega owners, youth, and other Haverstraw residents talk about changes in their village, resulting in an excellent question and answer session with Vera Aronow, one of the filmmakers. What, we asked the students, would a sustainable plan for the Haverstraw waterfront look like—one that serves current economic and social needs while preserving the environment and heritage for future generations?

Students then joined groups to use large base maps and movable chips and strings representing various types of buildings, paths, roads, and open space to envision a sustainable waterfront development plan. By the end of the charrette, the students had thoroughly explored a range of environmental and socio-economic issues associated with development—everything from effects on our watershed and open space to traffic, tax base, employment, and housing. With the help of mentors, the students explored concepts such as impermeable surface, green building design, and affordable housing, and they reviewed community character and needs. They used colored markers to record land use decisions on their maps for presentation to other groups. These young planners created an incredible diversity of entertainment and recreational options for development along the Haverstraw waterfront.

The students took their roles as planners and community members very seriously and felt empowered because their perspectives were important. Their opinions were also tempered by a real appreciation for the complexity and trade-offs inherent in the planning process. Student evaluations revealed these thoughts:
• “There was so much to consider and every little decision has pros and cons.”
• “It was extremely interesting being able to have a say in what would become of our community.”
• “I liked being able to collaborate with students from other schools because you get different ideas from people who live in different communities.”

The charrette offers students from predominantly white and wealthy school districts and students from mostly poor and minority districts a rare opportunity to mix together in an academic setting. The land use charrettes enable teachers to offer their students the kind of real-world, community-based, and collaborative educational experience that is difficult to fit into curriculum driven by standardized testing requirements. It is not unusual for participating students and teachers to subsequently get involved in local land use issues, such as proposed big box stores, main street revitalization efforts, and recreational area development.

Get Innvolved
Rockland P.L.U.S. is a collaborative effort of Keep Rockland Beautiful, Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Hudson Basin River Watch, Cornell University Cooperative Extension, and Rockland County AmeriCorps. The project grew, in part, out of our participation in the Pace University Land Use Leadership Alliance, a training program for local community “opinion-makers” focused on collaborative planning methods. Small grants from Orange and Rockland Electric Company and other local sponsors have helped this project grow. Our collaborative charrette kit and process design owes much to the work of Karl Kehde, whose Smarter Land Use Project also focuses on building trust and dialogue among stakeholders. Like these leading thinkers, we hope our project fosters the embrace of a collaborative, as opposed to an adversarial, approach to land use, and provides youth with the knowledge and skills they will need to help create a sustainable relationship between human settlement patterns and the natural world.

The project itself is “collaborative” with each local organization bringing its unique resources to the effort, whether local school and professional contacts, environmental science knowledge, or planning expertise. The project is at a crossroads, having invested heavily in case studies and teacher recruitment, but lacking the money to sustain the staff time this project requires. Many have suffered budget cuts and the project is actively looking for “investors” so that it may endure. Everybody loves this project, but who is willing to help pay for it? We welcome your ideas and questions!

Andy Stewart, Ph.D., Executive Director of Keep Rockland Beautiful, Inc., 10 Maple Ave, New City, NY, 10956, krbexdir(at)aol.com, 845-708-9159, www.keeprocklandbeautiful.org