Charrettes can:

• Create opportunities: They provide an opportunity to address the needs of many stakeholders at once, through identification of creative solutions to perceived conflicts and problems.
• Create understanding: By allowing different stakeholders understand one another’s’ issues, increasing support for any necessary compromises.
• Bring people together: Connect planners, developers, engineers, designers and community organizations together with a common vision, championing change that might otherwise be fought by each group.
• Integrate strategies: Help integrate large-scale patterns affecting land-use and transportation with strategies being played out on the scale of blocks and buildings.
• Identify synergies: Find synergies between normally isolated systems, such as pocket parks managed by utility companies with lines underneath, or green roofs that save energy, manage rainfall, and provide private open spaces.

An excellent example of the use of charrettes in neighborhood planning is Southeast False Creek in Vancouver, British Columbia. A series of charrettes and other workshops there helped stakeholders explore options and focus planning directions.