Instructor: Barbara Faga
We are eight graduate students from Rutgers Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy working with Woodbridge Township, NJ to create a post-pandemic plan for their downtown. Led by Dr. Barbara Faga, our studio took place in the Spring of 2021, focused on creating a more connected, accessible, and walkable community for people to safely live, work, play, and learn during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our goal is to create a more connected and resilient community in Downtown Woodbridge.
Collectively, we bring a wide range of experiences and expertise to this project, including environmental and land-use planning, transportation planning and policy, urban informatics, and redevelopment. We are fortunate to work with Esri ArcGIS Urban on our data and planning solutions.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our studio was completed remotely online. We collaborated with our clients, stakeholders, and each other via Zoom and other video conferencing. Members of our team were based in various locations across the East Coast of the United States. The virtual format presented several challenges, including limited ability to tour Downtown Woodbridge in person and have studio classes as an entire group due to scheduling conflicts with some group members. We toured Woodbridge virtually through our collaboration with Dr. Wolfram Hoefer’s Landscape Architecture Praxis Studio. Some of our colleagues living near Woodbridge also conducted socially distanced tours of Woodbridge and assisted in taking many of the photos found in this StoryMap. We met weekly as a group on Thursday studio and again on Friday evenings to process our findings, discuss the next steps for future work, and delegate tasks. As a group, we became more proficient in scheduling and conducting virtual interviews.