Downtown Charlottesville, Virginia Strategic Plan

The downtown mall in Charlottesville, Virginia, is a beloved civic space and an icon of landscape architecture. It is also associated with a civic trauma — a divisive protest that turned deadly. Public Sphere Projects worked with Friends of Cville Downtown to reimagine the mall ahead of its 50th anniversary. Our work was guided by twin stars — to preserve the lovely, off-kilter character of place, while grappling publicly with the legacies of political and racial divisions that still haunt it.