Final Submission

Over these last few weeks I have been reviewing the small community of Winnsboro, Texas and have been providing observations and inputs through this blog. My first impressions of this community were that is was a small quaint town that was very close knit. 

They seemed to be proud of their history and heritage.  One can see all this in more detail through this link, http://cddrherr.blogspot.com/2012/03/from-looking-over-several-websites-that.html which, is my first blog posting. Also this link can be found on the Blog Topics and is titled First Impressions. Since then I have tried to provide some constructive criticisms about the Winnsboro community and its presence on the Internet. Some of the topics that I have covered are marketing, website organization, downtown revitalization and etc. All of the topics can be viewed on the blog or under the Blog Topics tab, which has specific links to each topic.  Of the topics that I have covered I don’t feel that one is anymore important than the other. If I had to choose though I would have to say that creation of events is the most crucial ingredient in improving and enhancing a place of community. These events are what define a place and give it an identity, which in turn, create its own form of advertisement through the sense of aura that is created by the community members and visitors that were involved. For the Winnsboro community I have to say it has been an enjoyable experience to investigate you unfortunately it was only through what I could find on the Internet. This I feel limited my ability to develop a full understanding of the community but thanks to an informative city website I feel I got the grasp of most things. Which is important due to how much people rely on the internet to research and investigate things. I think the Internet is a good place to begin research on a small town. My final conclusion about the community is that Winnsboro is a great small town, which has many positive aspects working for it such as the recreational opportunities readily available, geographical location, and local events. There is a great deal of room for improvement though just like in any community and that is what I hope to have provided insight on through my blog postings. I hope my critiques serve the community well and provide some plausible solutions to improve the quality of life in the community.

Creation of Flexible Place

The creation of a flexible place for the community would be a great addition for Winnsboro. A flexible place is an area that can adapt and conform to the needs of the community. This type of place is growing in power and appeal to city governments, who are realizing that markets, festivals, mobile vending and pedestrian pathways are “lighter, quicker, cheaper” ways to generate investment and excitement in their cities. This can be read further into through this link, http://www.thepolisblog.org/2011/11/imagining-elastic-city.html. This type of place in a small town could help bring the community together and reinvigorate the downtown environment making it much more inviting and usable. For a town that is part of programs such as Preserve America City, a Main Street Program city, a Certified Retirement Community, a State of Texas Cultural Arts District, and a Texas Downtown Association Member City this is really something that needs to be looked at for consideration. An example of a place like this is the Waterway Square located in The Woodlands, Texas north of Houston. This is a great flexible place and is really a great example to look at. Here are photographs below.

At the waterway square there are many features that make it successful the first being its separation from the street level. They decided to lower the level down to the river but other successful flexible places raise above the street level. This level change doesn’t have to be drastic but needs to be defined clearly. The next is interactive fountains and seating. The there are two fountains in the square one is a two story water wall and the other shoots streams of water out of the ground and is often synchronized to music played in the plaza. The large fountains retaining wall serves also as urban furniture and provides the people with a place to sit and relax. There is also green grass for people to layout or sit on, underneath trees that are planted there providing a nice place to relax and maybe watch live music or a movie being put on at night. The community has events running all year around that always draw a crowd because of the inviting feeling of the flexible place. A place like this positioned near downtown around shops and restaurants would give the community a spot get together and enjoy some socialization and other activities making the downtown area much more exciting and lively! You can look at the Waterway Square in more detail at, http://www.thewoodlandscvb.com/pages/TWCVBEvents/WaterwaySquare/tabid/203/Default.aspx.