Vision Planning
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During 2003 and 2004, the University of Florida conducted a planning process that invited the broad campus community to develop a shared vision for the physical aspects of the campus environment. The University Vision 2040 (UV40) planning effort began to shape a unified, comprehensive vision for the future of the University of Florida campus. This vision considered land use, transportation, environment, human interaction, and academic programming to recommend an optimum use of existing land and human resources. This vision has been used to guide decisions regarding development, infrastructure and environmental stewardship at the University of Florida. It was an important foundation of the Comprehensive Master Plan update for 2005-2015. |
The UV40 planning process began with a series of workshops in March 2003. It continued through the summer and fall with focus groups, additional public forums, and technical analysis. The spring workshops were presented in two sessions. Each session consisted of three workshops. These three workshops followed the same agenda and were presented on different days at different locations on campus. In this way, there were multiple opportunities to attend a workshop. A written Proceedings Report provides documentation of the input received during the Spring 2003 workshops.
UV40 Campus Vision - Session One Workshops
The first session of workshops was held on March 5, 6 and 7, 2003 at Emerson Alumni Hall, Harn Museum and Reitz Union. Sixty people attended the workshops to provide input into the vision for the future of UF’s campus. Attendees discussed strengths and weaknesses of the campus environment as well as their ideas for improving and preserving certain features. They discussed a variety of creative approaches for directing the university’s future growth, and participated in a mapping exercise to explore a variety of ways that future growth might fit into the existing campus.
The audience heard an Introduction to Campus Planning presentation to become familiar with the current 2000-2010 Comprehensive Master Plan. They also heard and discussed a Campus Development Scenarios presentation thast explored different approaches to campus design. These approaches included historic trends, current plans, future possibilities, and classroom studio explorations developed by student groups. Preliminary results from Session One workshops were presented during the Session Two workshops for further discussion.
UV40 Campus Vision - Session Two Workshops
The second session of workshops was held on March 19, 20, and 21, 2003 at Emerson Alumni Hall, Medical Science Building and Reitz Union. Fifty people attended the Session Two workshops to provide input into the vision for the future of UF’s campus. Overall, 97 people participated in the spring workshop series. These participants represented faculty, staff, administrators, students and community stakeholders. Participants at the two workshops were asked to identify on a map their “base” location on campus (represented by red dots) and where/how they arrive on campus (represented by blue dots). As demonstrated by this attendance map, workshop participants came from different parts of the campus community, and brought with them a diverse range of experiences.
The preliminary results of the Session One workshops were displayed in a presentation that highlighted questionnaire responses, issues/themes, and draft goals. The presentation highlighted draft goals for those topics that seemed to draw consensus among the attendees. It also included topics that generated diverse opinions, and were presented for further discussion. Workshop attendees completed a questionnaire that reflected the broad range of key principals and policy statement alternatives that were suggested by the Session One workshops.
The presentation also included a discussion of the hands-on map exercise conducted during the Session One workshops. At the Session Two workshops, the land use map recommendations from six different working groups were displayed. These six maps were consolidated into three alternative scenario maps included in the presentation and voted on by the Session Two attendees. Participants were asked to place their votes on the alternative map recommendation that they preferred overall (represented by blue dots), and to cast votes for individual map elements that they liked best (represented by green dots) and least (represented by red dots).
Following this series of workshops, additional forums were held with smaller focus groups to further discuss goals and policy directions. An online student survey was conducted in January 2004 with assistance from teh Office of Vice President for Student Affairs. Input gaines from all these efforts was used in development of the Campus Master Plan 2005-2015.
