Haines City officials recently provided students in the urban and regional planning master’s program with an invaluable opportunity for collaboration — one that will also have a lasting impact on the rapidly growing Central Florida city for years to come.
With the area currently undergoing a population boom with more residential and commercial developments on the horizon, Haines City’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) was seeking assistance with creating a new master plan. After reaching out to UCF’s urban and regional planning faculty for help, a partnership opportunity was born.
From there, the project became a part of the program’s two-semester capstone class that intertwines class work with real community improvement projects. Their task for this past academic year was assisting Haines City in developing a new CRA master plan.
Professor Christopher Hawkins, lecturer Scott Noh and Associate Professor Chia-Yuan Yu were the driving forces of the project on UCF’s end, with Noh teaching the capstone classes, Hawkins facilitating the collaboration and Yu’s transportation class contributing research.
The master plan the students worked on covers transportation and circulation elements, recreation, open space, housing, economic development and more for a specific target area, Hawkins says. The students focused on two-and-a-half census tracts in the heart of Haines City’s community redevelopment area.
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