An example of an interactive planning map that can provide access to archives of planning documents, current and past. This particular map shows examples of links to Midtown and Festival Park. Photo by Courtesy Pleas McNeel IV, PE, and Mukesh Kumar, Ph.D.
Jackson is a unique city with great potential. What makes this city great are her people, their passions and their visions. They create opportunities to make Jackson great. There is, however, a defeatist undertone that comes from a sense of the many promising projects that never quite made it. Too often, it seems, these "failed" projects are relegated to a dusty archive, where all the vision and the hard work that went into them is essentially lost.
A great vision might never be realized for uncountable reasons—an idea whose time may not have yet come, supporting systems may not be in place, it may be incompatible with current physical context. But whatever the cause for a proposed project to be shelved, the work that went into illustrating the vision and attempting its implementation continues to be valuable. A vision "seed" could take root at a different location or in a future political environment. The project or its implementation may have contained fatal flaws that should be identified as constraints to future proposals. Or it could be a simple clerical error that brought a project's funding to a premature halt.
One idea is to create a "Planning Map" that links to plans and studies currently being considered, or that have been proposed in the past.
Ideally, this would serve as the interface for an annotated bibliography of planning and development-related documents. Such a tool has the potential to help inspire future vision for Jackson, facilitate the identification of synergies between proposed plans, reconsider good ideas from the past and protect against repeating failed strategies.
See also:
Vision 2022: A Regional Vision
Big Ideas: Getting Jacksonians into City Parks
Bright Idea: Conserve Energy, Create Jobs
Best Practice: Mid-South Minority Business Council Continuum
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