[3] The general idea of a charrette is to create an innovative atmosphere in which a diverse group of stakeholders can collaborate to "generate visions for the future".
[7] Émile Zola depicted such a scene of feverish activity, a nuit de charrette 'charrette night', in L'Œuvre (serialized 1885, published 1886), his fictionalized account of his friendship with Paul Cézanne.
[citation needed] A successful charrette promotes joint ownership of solutions and attempts to defuse typical confrontational attitudes between residents and developers.
For developers and municipal officials charrettes achieve community involvement, may satisfy consultation criteria, with the objective of avoiding costly legal battles.
[citation needed] An example of a charrette occurred in Florida in 1973 when the future residents of the Miccosukee Land Co-op in Tallahassee traveled by auto caravan to Orlando and spent the weekend at the offices of the King Helie Planning Group of Orlando (sleeping on the floor) working with its staff to develop the community's land use plans; features desired by individual members and acceptable to the group included a perfectly circular lot, a huge treehouse lot, and streets named after Beatles songs (such as "The Long and Winding Road".
[citation needed] The charrette begins with a field visit, followed by all-day work sessions accompanied by project stakeholders and volunteer landscape architects and other professionals, and overseen by senior and graduate level students.
Notable successes on the west coast of Canada include the city of Vancouver, British Columbia [citation needed], as well as the District of Tofino.
[12] As dramatised for the film The Best of Enemies (2019), in 1971 a charette was used to address inter-racial tensions in order to facilitate school desegregation in the city of Durham, North Carolina.