What? The Citizen’s Guide to Urban Design is a four section resource guide, commissioned by the Foundation of Louisiana in 2012, intended to guide the general public on how to play an active role in the design of their neighborhoods, communities, and cities. This guide works to create a common language that everyone can understand, facilitating working relationships among residents, designers, real estate developers, and government officials - overall, facilitating dialogue among all the different stakeholders within a community.

Why? Effective communication, and common understanding, are the foundation of communities who work together to collectively create a vision, and character, for the future of their environments. We strongly believe that local residents play a vital role in the shaping of that vision, just as much as the designers, planners, and government officials do.