Northampton County Visual Preference Survey

How do great places come to be? How can land use policies help support concepts like placemaking? How can future growth be directed to maximize opportunity while preserving natural resources and community character? Some of these questions and more were explored in a two-part Northampton County public workshop held on the evening of November 29th at the Eastville Fire Company in Northampton County, Virginia.

Part one of the workshop involved an interactive visual preference survey and facilitated discussions to help participants identify through pictures and sketches their preferences for different types of development patterns. The survey illustrates traditional residential patterns, infill development, clustering, and other planning concepts. Workshop participants were shown seven sets of images and asked to select one image in each series that best represented how they would like to see their community grow and develop in the future. The series of images covered the following development types: Town Edges, Commercial Centers, Rural Subdivision, Town Infill, Planned Residential Community, Rural Hamlets and Rural Villages.

If you missed the November 29th county workshop, you may take a few minutes to fill out the online version of the visual preference survey. Just scroll through the photographs and sketches below and select your preferred image in each series. Responses to the online survey will be collected through the end of January 2006. The visual preference survey is just one of several public outreach efforts completed or underway to define a vision for future growth and development for Northampton County.

To view the official survey results from the November 29th public workshop, double click on the link below. For more information on the public workshops and Northampton County’s other comprehensive planning efforts, contact Sandra Benson, Director of Planning, at sbenson@co.northampton.va.us or 757-678-0443.


Results from the 11/29 workshop [pdf]