Bennington 2.0: Learning From Community, Planning for the Future

One of the most exciting things happening in our Community and Regional Planning
program this semester is taking place just a short drive from Lincoln, in the community
of Bennington.

Led by CRP instructor Jesse Poore, our students are working directly with the
Bennington community on a collaborative planning studio focused on the community’s
future. The project is particularly meaningful because Jesse’s connection to Bennington
goes back more than two decades. In 2003, while he was a CRP student at the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Jesse helped develop Bennington Pathways, the
community’s first modern strategic plan with other CRP students.

Now, he has returned to Bennington as an instructor, bringing a new generation of CRP
students with him.

We like to think of it as Bennington 2.0.

While the community has changed significantly since 2003, the studio is grounded in the
same fundamental principle that guides good planning: start by listening. Our students
are getting to know Bennington by exploring the community, observing its
neighborhoods and development areas and talking with the people who live, work and
invest there.

Their recent site visit gave students the opportunity to see Bennington firsthand before
sitting down with community committee members to begin a deeper conversation about
its future.

The students asked community members to consider three important questions:

What makes Bennington, Bennington? What qualities of the community and
its identity should be preserved over the next 25 years?

What are Bennington’s assets? What characteristics and resources make the
community distinctive and could bring new people, businesses and investment to
the area?

What challenges are on the horizon? What current and emerging barriers
might Bennington face as it works toward its vision for 2050?

These are important questions for the community, but they are also exactly the kinds of
questions we want our students to learn how to ask.

Community and Regional Planning is inherently collaborative. Our students need to
understand that planning is not simply about maps, policies or development strategies.

It is about people and places. It is about understanding the history and identity of a
community while also creating space for new ideas and possibilities.

Working with Bennington allows our students to experience that process in real time.
They are learning how to gather information, engage stakeholders, recognize
community assets, understand competing perspectives and begin turning what they
hear and observe into meaningful planning strategies.

That hands-on experience is one of the strengths of our CRP program. Our students are
not simply studying how communities are planned — they are learning by working
alongside communities and contributing to conversations about their futures.

There is also something wonderful about the full-circle nature of this particular project.
Jesse once approached Bennington as a student trying to understand and help shape
its future. Today, he is returning with students who are beginning that same journey.
The community has a new generation of questions, and our students have a new
opportunity to help explore them.

Then. Now. Next.

That is what this project represents to me — the continued relationship between a
community and our program, the evolution of planning ideas over time and the
opportunity to give our students an authentic role in imagining what comes next.

Yunwoo Nam
Professor and Program Lead, CRP Program

Republished from the UNL College of Architecture newsletter.

This article was first published on October 7, 2026, through UNL College of Architecture. Read the full article here.