You never know what's going to happen when you get a couple hundred people together and ask their advice. So for me, the surprising thing about the Evergreen Eastridge Charrette was how consistent people were in their suggestions, hopes and dreams for their neighborhood.

Details varied, of course. Some wanted a trail here, others there. But as three days of morning-to-night meetings on various issues unfolded, the same points kept coming up over and over.

Safe and inviting sidewalks and trails. Affordable housing. Playing fields. A neighborhood center for senior programs, day care, meetings and celebrations.

The design team for the Knight Program in Community Building, which conducted the charrette, was not surprised by all this. Many of the Knight Fellows are professionals who conduct charrettes all the time, and they hear the same themes over and over in areas that grew up as suburban sprawl, as the Eastridge area did. In these communities, people often love their homes but wish the surroundings were different.

``We heard that people needed improved traffic and pedestrian mobility,'' says charrette leader Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture that hosts the Knight Program.

``At first those seemed like contradictory goals because if you move traffic faster, you make it more difficult for pedestrians. But in fact if you can increase pedestrian mobility, and people feel they can walk and bike safely, then they'll feel they can use the automobile less.''

So traffic engineer Peter Swift went to work designing one of his trademark roundabouts, a kind of traffic circle, to increase both traffic flow and pedestrian safety at Tully Road and Capitol Expressway. (Look for an explanation in the final charrette report).

Other designers focused on how to create a new neighborhood on the vacant 86-acre Arcadia site, using it to knit together the now isolated Meadowfair neighborhood and the Eastridge Mall into a coherent community. Still others looked at Lion Plaza and other places on Tully to find ways to connect that street to the neighborhoods.

In the Arcadia plan, typical of the New Urbanist approach to community design, the public spaces got attention before the placement of individual buildings. Great civic spaces like a plaza, small greens, a community building -- even details as simple as sidewalks lined with trees, or wide enough for cafe tables -- make the difference between a neighborhood that's unfriendly to walkers and one that's welcoming.

Next came the connections. The Eastridge Mall owners already have a design for a ``Main Street'' open-air entryway, so the plan would link that to an Arcadia thoroughfare, inviting strollers and cars alike. Future light rail and the current bus hub on Capitol would move closer to the mall, where exterior stores would face the station. (Lots of folks suggested this. They hate those big parking lots.)

From there, light rail would roll through the Arcadia neighborhood on a transit mall like the one in downtown San Jose. The stop at the heart of the neighborhood would be an easy walk for thousands of people from new apartments, condominiums and townhouses, and from the existing Meadowfair homes. Workers in the stores and offices in the new neighborhood could walk from the stop.

There are special challenges on the site, and the design team stretched some limits. It suggested denser development on Eastridge property, but Reid-Hillview Airport does not welcome more development near its flight path. It's a dilemma for the community to resolve.

The plan also advocated a long-term vision of someday dismantling the mall to create an open-air shopping center like Stanford or, if you add housing, Santana Row.

So many ideas were exchanged during the charrette that I'm just brushing the surface here. I'll write more in the coming months. The team's written report will be finished by January.

San Jose's Strong Neighborhoods Initiative has shown that residents of the Eastridge area want life to be better. The charrette report will provide an exciting blueprint for change.