Our staff come from a range of professional disciplines.
Renaissance Academy: A Celebration of our Culture
For a small business, Renaissance brings together professionals from a number of disciplines to create cities that work. We are city planners, communications specialists, transportation planners, urban designers, data scientists, landscape architects, transportation engineers, policy wonks, and graphic designers. We recognize that we each bring our unique perspectives, expertise, and history that offer distinct value to the company – all toward the greater goal of integrated planning and busting the silos that can divide communities. What unities us is a fundamental belief that thoughtful, intentional planning and design of the built environment can improve the common good. To harness our collective mission and cultivate continual learning, we have kicked-off Renaissance Academy, a bi-weekly series of educational sessions that dig deep into best practices and our core philosophy of integrated planning.
The Renaissance Academy Vision
With our staff’s diverse backgrounds, we must speak a shared language – to build positive company culture and blend our multidisciplinary expertise to produce long-lasting, functional, and forward-thinking plans and solutions. Each Renaissance Academy session gives us intentional time to cultivate a shared company vision and language among our staff. So far, the Renaissance Academy curriculum has examined the vital importance of integrated land use and transportation planning while spanning the theory and history of cities, the tenets of transportation planning, and the urban design lens of cities. Each staff member who leads the Renaissance Academy presents the fundamentals of their practice area and domain of expertise, weaving together rich visuals and storytelling narratives.
The Renaissance Academy sessions build and reinforce a foundational understanding of integrated city planning: everything from the relationship between speed and proximity, to the problem-solving principles of place design, to different theoretical models of cities. Even for seasoned planners, there is enormous value in returning to the historical, theoretical, and practical principles of transportation planning, land use planning, and urban design. Taking a break from day-to-day project work to immerse ourselves in big-picture rumination and discourse helps rejuvenate our sense of purpose in solving the complex issues facing communities today.
Sharing our Perspectives
Renaissance Academy sessions inevitably (and thankfully!) prompt lively discussions among our team. Many of us express our ideas and reactions to the sessions, bringing in our diverse backgrounds and project experience (the energy of each meeting’s chat is something to behold). It is the free-flowing exchange of ideas that enriches each presentation, elevating it to a seminar-like setting.
Moreover, the act of sharing our own philosophies and worldviews on planning clarifies the relationships between the different disciplines within our team – and, in turn, helps construct a shared company language. The open-ended dialogue of Renaissance Academy sessions also fosters a workplace that nurtures energy, enthusiasm, connection, and initiative: the key components of innovation, a core guiding principle in all our projects.
In the following weeks, Renaissance Academy topics will explore urban design, data science approaches, GIS and theory-based models, storytelling content and communication platforms, engagement methods, and effective consulting and project management practices. We look forward to gathering our diverse staff to further cultivate our integrated planning practices and define the Renaissance language together.
