A Placemaking Journal

The Mississippi Renewal Forum was perhaps the largest charrette in history and included urbanists from across the country and around the world. Among them were PlaceMakers Susan Henderson, who led the Architectural Team, Howard Blackson and Geoff Dyer, urban designers, and Scott Doyon and Ben Brown, who ran the charrette’s web operation and kept both displaced residents and national media up to the minute on exactly what was happening.

In the years after the Renewal Forum, PlaceMakers returned to the coast for a number of initiatives, including Susan Henderson on the Gulfport SmartCode team, that successfully adopted the form-based regulations to help the City of Gulfport — and several other coastal communities — build back in keeping with local character.

After the Gulfport SmartCode was adopted, Geoff Dyer and Howard Blackson designed the Florence Gardens neighborhoods under the code, as well as writing the zoning applications and helping the project through approvals. Nathan Norris, Ben Brown, and Scott Doyon helped with communications and marketing, website development, social media strategy, as well as writing a plan book that would help builders and owners construct under the new plan and code.

Visit the website we developed at www.florencegardens.com.