Jim Pashek, president of Pashek Associates was the first
of three lecturers from the firm invited to speak at Slippery Rock University
on park planning. The lecture Jim presented focused on the five steps
typically found in master planning for parks, (1) Community background data
collection, (2)Public Participation, (3) Site Analysis, (4) Programming the
Activities in the park, (5) Developing the concepts, final master plan drawings
and cost estimates. After an introductory lecture to orient students to
public processes, they participated in a mock town meeting, generating park
ideas and prioritizing those needs. Professor Christine Glenn commented
on Pashek’s mock meeting, “I
was struck by how effectively you guided the public meeting. I’ve seen
those types of meetings get quickly unfocused. Yesterday, you effectively
modeled key techniques which help to maintain control of the discussion and
direction of the meeting. I was very impressed with this, and learned a
great deal, which I hope to utilize in the future.”
After
learning about criteria often used to layout parks, the students were broken up
into teams of 4-5 each and given a park site analysis and program to fit to the
site. They were cautioned to respect environmental constraints, the
proper solar orientation of facilities, and important activity adjacencies.
Each
team then reported why they selected the park plan they developed and how they
were able to apply some of the design principles taught in the class.
John
Buerkle will be lecturing on the design of Athletic Fields and Mike Kotyk will
be providing information on how to plan greenway corrdiors during the next two lectures.
