On October 29, Rethink Coalition Community Engagement Team invited residents, business owners, and local organizations to our first Workshop for the SE Gateway Reconnecting Communities Planning Study. Over 75 people attended in person or online.
Read more from the Indy Star.
For 90 minutes, neighbors came together in small groups with our Community Engagement Team members to discuss, dream, question, and (not surprisingly) complain about living with the I-65/I-70 interstate cutting through traditional downtown Indianapolis neighborhoods. Workshop participants gathered around maps and renderings of the SE Gateway Study Area and talked with urban designers, community leaders, and each other. Of the many ideas, challenges, and problems people identified, one word and aspiration emerged as the dominant theme: connectivity. “We want our neighborhoods reconnected” is the message we heard from almost everyone.
This Workshop is the first of five planned for the coming months. The Community Engagement Team is also planning Webinars to offer a “deeper dive” into the issues and solutions we are exploring.
Our first Webinar will be an interactive Zoom hosted from the studio of some of our urban designers, planners, and transportation experts. The topic will be connectivity and how cities can achieve better walkability, multi-modal transportation, proximity of resources, and quality of life.