Fostering Community Aesthetic Decision-Making: Structured Public Involvement in the Milton-Madison Bridge Replacement Process.

摘要

Involving large groups of people in complex infrastructure planning and design problems hashistorically been a considerable challenge for professionals and elected officials. For even themost well-intentioned professionals, increasing complexity has dictated decreasing group size, sothat many complex decisions are based on the judgment of advisory panels, or even just thetechnical and professional team. This challenge is being met more directly by the profession, forexample with such documents as the recently-completed "Bridge Aesthetic Sourcebook"published by the Bridge Aesthetics Subcommittee of the TRB. While helpful, this is anincomplete substitute for the aesthetic tastes of the local community.However, this no longer need be the case. Using Structured Public Involvement, and needingonly one large public meeting to gather data, the planning and design team for the Milton-Madison Bridge replacement project was able to measure in some detail the complex aestheticpreferences of the residents of Milton, KY and Madison, IN. This included, for example,measuring how the public‟s preference for different design concepts was influenced by how lightor dark the final color of the structure might be, and how those aesthetic tastes varied acrosssubgroups, such as the Historic Preservation consulting parties. In this paper we demonstrateand discuss some of the information gathered and show how extensive aesthetic information canbe gathered by other design teams faced with similar problems, so that it can be incorporated intothe design process alongside cost, maintenance, and constructability issues.