Month: February 2019

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The Carl Small Town Center (CSTC) will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a Small Town Summit on October 7, 2019 in Starkville, Mississippi.

The CSTC, which was founded at Mississippi State University in 1979 as the Center for Small Town Research and Design, will highlight projects from the past four decades through panel discussions, keynote addresses, and an exhibition.

The Small Town Summit will be open to community leaders, architects, planners, and others interested in learning more about community design. More details will follow, but for now, please save the date of October 7, 2019.

As part of the celebration, the Small Town Center is asking current and former clients, employees, collaborators, and students to share their CSTC story. Did you work on a successful CSTC project? Did you play a role in the early days of the Center? Were you a student worker for the CSTC?

Please share your story by sending an email to CSTC director Leah Kemp at lkemp@caad.msstate.edu.

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The CSTC’s Leah Kemp and Thomas Gregory have been invited to speak at the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in San Francisco this April. Their presentation, “Cultural Planning in the Mississippi Delta,” will highlight the CSTC’s “Marking the Mule” project in Marks, Mississippi.

The Marking the Mule project consisted of a 12-month integrated planning process that engaged local Marks residents, along with historians, architects, planners, and state tourism and historic preservation officials to create a vision for a cultural trail and interpretive center focused on the events surrounding the Mule Train.

The planning process included historical research and documentation, community engagement and participation, a multi-day design charrette, design development and community feedback, and execution of a welcome sign and plans for an interpretive center and cultural trail.

The Marking the Mule project was selected for the Mississippi Chapter of the American Planning Association’s 2017 Public Outreach Award. The project also received an AIA Design Award from the Mississippi Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.