Community visioning tools

Plus, if it is a collective visioning, created by a group or even a whole community, you manage to create engagement and civic participation. Being part of this community visioning, as a nonprofit or an individual Social Entrepreneur, can help you be part of a more holistic project, understanding better what can you do and how to do it, plus it can help you to connect with them, creating synergies.

You can read the original article and others at Umundze: Community Visioning. To make you walk. The amount of community participation can vary depending on local situations.

For example, if growth is not likely for a community or there are few issues of concern, it may be more difficult to get high turnout at visioning events.

However, people will probably show up in droves to hear the steering committee discuss a contentious local planning issue, especially if the visioning event occurs on an evening or weekend. Participants should not enter the community visioning process expecting a specific outcome—though some stakeholder groups may represent singular interests, the visioning process and resulting vision statement will reflect the goals and priorities of the entire community.

The steering committee should encourage all viewpoints even the most extreme , particularly in the scenario-building portion of the process. Though focused on a specific community, the visioning process should reflect an awareness of how that community fits into a larger context of surrounding communities and land uses.

Key points to keep in mind include regional infrastructure, transportation networks, and land-use conflicts in adjacent municipalities. The planning and visioning process can cost money, from potentially hiring a consultant to renting meeting space, advertising meetings, printing documents, and providing refreshments for participants.

Various county, state, and federal agencies offer funding for community planning and visioning activities, including:. In-kind donations of time or materials from local people and businesses can also help offset costs. Millersville is a rural college town in southcentral Pennsylvania. According to borough council president Scott Bailey, Millersville did not have the typical big development issue that spurs many communities towards the visioning process.

Participants instead initiated proactive planning by defining a vision of their community before the threat of development pressures arose. The visioning process consisted of five public meetings, a vision statement, and a five-year action plan. The borough, along with Millersville University, the Penn Manor School District, and the Millersville Area Business Association, funded the process and served on the steering committee.

In late , the borough council unanimously approved the community vision statement, which included priorities such as engaging college students in the community; making neighborhoods more ecologically friendly; enhancing the business district to promote small businesses and gathering places; and encouraging the principles of life-long learning, growing, and neighborly cooperation.

After the borough adopted the vision statement, the steering committee moved towards the action-plan phase of the visioning process, organizing several issue-oriented subcommittees to set goals and timelines e. Community visioning sometimes happens over the course of several years as a part of multiple planning processes. Pike County, located in northeastern Pennsylvania, faced major development pressure due to its close proximity to New York City.

Issues and challenges in Pike County were the subject of the International Countryside Stewardship Exchange, during which an international team of rural-development professionals visited Pike County to explore the local issues and recommend findings and recommendations for future development.

The team found that local citizens were not fully engaged in the decision-making process and recommended a community visioning project.

Three visioning workshops followed, in which participants rated environmental protection, regional planning and zoning, and preservation of historic resources as the most important issues alongside education, healthcare, and economic diversity. Two years later the county commissioners and the Office of Community Planning initiated another planning process to build upon the earlier effort.

More than Pike County residents attended the first meeting, and a steering committee and six task forces took shape the task forces focused on economic development, quality of life, environment, government, infrastructure, and land use.

Over the course of the process each task force created a report detailing issues, goals, and implementation benchmarks, based on information gleaned through public surveys, research into existing development patterns strength, and analysis of opportunities and threats.

Together, these reports formed a final report, which was reviewed and adopted by the county commissioners. The goals, objectives, and implementation strategies identified in these visioning exercises provided the basis for the Pike County Comprehensive Plan , which features a citizens advisory board comprised in part of visioning steering committee members.

Hazlet Township, New Jersey faced several challenges, including heavy summer traffic, vacant commercial land, disjointed pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and the need for multi-municipal cooperation in preservation of wetlands and open space. Responding to these issues, the township applied for and received a grant to conduct a community visioning process. It formed a steering committee called Hazlet that included representatives from both local stakeholders the township, county, and community groups and statewide entities New Jersey Office of Smart Growth, Department of Transportation, Board of Education, and New Jersey Transit.

The township hired a planning consultant to lead the steering committee through the process, which began with a series of four day-long workshops announced by this press release. Public turnout for the first workshop was low; however, after extensive advertising, word-of-mouth, and the creation of a website, more people participated in subsequent events. Showing examples of streetscapes and asking the audience to choose the preferred look for Hazlet Township was particularly effective, sparking a conversation about traffic, alternative transportation methods, and necessary streetscape features like bike lanes.

The process produced eleven major goals for the township, each accompanied by indicators and actions. Community visioning is both a process and a statement. The initial process includes discovering the kind of future your community wants by giving your residents the opportunity to express their goals, objectives, and values honestly.

Through this discovery, residents are given a platform to discuss what they would like their community to look and feel like within the next five to 10 years and come to a mutually agreed upon vision. But talking about a vision only goes so far. The second part of a community vision is solidifying it into a statement. Look at the City of Lakewood in Washington , for example.

We will advance these values by recognizing our past, taking action in the present, and pursuing a dynamic future. The vision statement is then used to guide strategic planning, decision making, and government officials who will direct the future of the city.

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