Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan Receives Prestigious Award

The groundbreaking Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan continues to earn national acclaim. The plan was recently named winner of a prestigious Charter Award by the Congress for the New Urbanism, earning honors in the "The Region: Metropolis, City and Town Scale" category.  

The annual Charter Awards honor the best of New Urbanism. The Congress of New Urbanism will present the Charter Awards on April 5, in conjunction with the 16th Congress for the New Urbanism in Austin, Texas.  The 14 winning professional submissions and one student/faculty submission were chosen by a seven-member jury of leading urbanists, including Andrés Duany, who served as chair.  The awarded projects are found in the U.S. and four other countries: the Bahamas, India, Saudi Arabia, and Scotland. Duany and other jurors said winning projects demonstrated excellence, often in the face of difficult contexts or other challenges requiring ingenuity to overcome.

"The Charter Award is a very special recognition and it provides further validation that the Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan is a unique and important accomplishment," said Elizabeth "Boo" Thomas, president and CEO of the Center for Planning Excellence, which coordinates implementation of the Louisiana Speaks Plan. "The plan represents the input of more than 27,000 citizens and stakeholders. It integrates coastal restoration and protection, land use, transportation, economic, and social planning and can serve as a model for future planning efforts throughout Louisiana."

In fulfilling and advancing the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, the projects "reveal the power of well-executed urbanism to strengthen communities, achieve broader sustainability and create places worthy of respect and admiration." The Louisiana Speaks Regional plan was lauded for being a "cutting-edge regional plan" that "integrates wetland restoration and persuasive plans to steer the growth and sprawl that threaten wetlands into livable cities and towns."

"The Louisiana Speaks planning process engaged and empowered Louisiana residents. It provided a unique and unprecedented opportunity for them to speak up about the direction of their communities and the region, making us all citizen planners," said Donna Fraiche, chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority's (LRA) Long-Term Community Planning Task Force. "This tremendous honor from the Congress for the New Urbanism only serves to illustrate that this is truly important document that must not be allowed to sit on a shelf. Rather, we must all do our part to insure that Louisiana Speaks Plan recommendations are brought to fruition in the years to come."

The input of world-renowned planners, local experts and more than 27,000 Louisiana citizens formed the basis of the Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan, which provides a broad strategic framework and priorities for land use, transportation, community growth and economic development in South Louisiana. The Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan was developed by Calthorpe Associates, a Berkeley, California-based design firm internationally recognized for its innovative leadership in urban design, community planning, and regional growth strategies. 

Louisiana Speaks is the long-term planning initiative of the Louisiana Recovery Authority that is supported with private funds provided by the LRA Support Foundation. For a full list of honors earned by the Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan or for more information about Louisiana Speaks, visit http://www.louisianaspeaks.org/. For more information on the Charter Award, visit www.cnu.org/.