The Block Vision Project

Why this project

Most “what could be” content is published by an organization, with a designer hired by that organization, depicting a neighborhood that organization doesn’t live in. The neighborhood reads it as an outsider’s plan, defends accordingly, and the conversation goes nowhere.

The Block Vision Project flips that. Neighbors nominate the site — a tired strip mall, a dead corner, a parking lot that owns the block — and LVBT facilitates a session producing a vision the neighbors authored themselves. We bring the design help and the rendering. They bring the place and the call. The published brief carries their names and goes to the city council member who represents them.

Approach

• Open nominations through a simple form on the site; LVBT picks first sites based on stakes, geography, and willing neighbor leads
• Facilitate sessions in person at a venue the neighbors already use — church basement, library room, school cafeteria
• Bring a designer or landscape architect partner to translate the room’s ideas into a credible rendering
• Publish under the neighborhood’s authorship, with LVBT credited as facilitator only
• Feed concrete neighborhood visions into the Zoning for the Valley project’s code-reform fights