American Planning Association Louisiana (APALA) Planning Excellence Award for a Student Project, 1st Place

“Rising on the Red: Urban Design Possibilities for Campti’s Revitalization”
My contributions were part of a larger group project that I was involved with in graduate school at Louisiana State University in 2019 as the focus of my Community Design Class, as well as part of my design research focus as a Graduate Research Assistant at LSU’s Coastal Sustainability Studio. This was a joint venture between LSU’s Architecture and Landscape Architecture Departments, and the University of New Orleans’ Planning Department.
This was an interdisciplinary project that focused on the small rural town of Campti, located in Northeastern Louisiana. The name of the project was “Rising on the Red: Urban Design Possibilities for Campti’s Revitalization”. The town had been faced with years of economic decline and financial hardship, disinvestment, and widespread poverty – as well as suffering from heavy flooding in the Spring of 2016. The mayor and staff of Campti had approached the director of our Coastal Sustainability Studio, Dr. Traci Birch. asking if we could study the town and propose some solutions on how to revitalize the main street, and create connections to the adjacent Red River, with resiliency against future flood events in mind.
Our goals were to encourage entrepreneurship, propose several infill projects, re-vitalize their ‘Field Of Dreams’ (Recreational Fields), restore their history museum, re-imagine an abandoned elementary school, and to create connections from the town to the Red River - which was wholly inaccessible due to a lack of any trails or paths to the River; which in turn prevented opportunities for recreation and exploration. One of the biggest hurdles was that the town had an annual operating budget of less than $20k - so you can imagine that it had been an uphill battle from the get go.
As part of our involvement, we organized and facilitated a number of community charrettes which engaged members throughout the town - including leadership - and provided them with a platform with which their voices could be heard. We in turn synthesized their input and provided design proposals that were sensitive to their concerns, and we focused our design and policy interventions on a scale that we felt could be realized on their limited operating budget.
This not only serves as inspiration, but as a reminder to continue to seek design work that betters the lives of all people, of all incomes, with a focus on resilience and equity in mind. I am proud to be an architect that has a chance to make a positive impact in the communities in which I live and operate.