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Trails to the Future: |
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| Kent Anderson, AICP and Wm. J. Kelley | |||
| Session: April 17th at 2:30PM. | Author Info | ||
Community Context
Humboldt County Nevada is located in the northeast portion of the state bordering Oregon and Idaho. Even by western state standards, it is a large county with over 6,000,000 acres. Eighty percent of those lands are federal and managed by BLM or USFS. Ninety percent of the county's 18,000 population is concentrated in Winnemucca, the county seat and only incorporated city. Located along Interstate 80,160 miles east of Reno, the community is about half way between San Francisco and Salt Lake City. The landscape is high desert with "basin and range" topography. Given the wide open spaces and surrounding range land that has more cows than people, getting attention focused on growth management issues presents a challenge.
Growth and Governance: In the recent past there has been growth but impacts are only now being recognized. Fueled by a boom in mining, population increased 5% per annum over the past decade. Projected population for the year 2020 ranges upward toward 40,000. Current growth is concentrated in the Winnemucca urbanized area with about half in the city and half in the county. Planning and growth management activities are shared by a regional staff and commission that reports to both the city and the county. Impacts are recognized in the city and there's a more aggressive posture toward corrective action. The county, with its traditionally conservative political culture and fiscal policy, is more comfortable with the "status quo". Planning initiatives and decisions are bounded by the search for compromise between the two governing bodies.
Community Strengths: The town's promotional slogan, "there's more than meets the eye" rings true. The friendly small town character and strong sense of place is quickly felt. Main street appears viable with a linear retail focus of motels, casinos, and restaurants. At the center is a compact downtown with many historic buildings. The Humboldt River provides a natural green border for one side of the community. The foreground has ample open space and scenic vistas. And everyone says, "It is a great place to raise kids."
Community Challenges: Continued low density suburban growth outside the town limits possibilities for urban services and presents potential threats to water quality. Development standards have not kept pace with the transition from small town to small city. The community has a large airport(former military) with commercial size runways. Lacking urban services, the airport remains under developed. In a similar pattern, most industrial lands are outside urban service areas. The County takes pride in its low debt structure but that fiscal policy constrains needed infrastructure extension. The economy is heavily reliant on a single industry that has a history of "boom-bust" cycles. A recent downturn in mining created economic impacts. But it also gave impetus to a community transition that sought alternatives including the needed update for a 30 year old plan.
Specific Project Scope
The "Trails to the Future" project focused exclusively on community consensus building for the plan. It was one of several ongoing planning services provided by EWU's Urban and Regional Planning Department. Some of those services continue; the " Trails" segment concluded this fall. The project budget was $4,000 and didn't quite cover substantial travel and supply expenses. The shortfall was offset with the generous support of the community in opening their homes to students and hosting pot lucks. Major project activities focused around conducting a large scale workshop and a planning open house. Before, during, and after those 2 major events, a variety of interactive tools were used to solicit and shape convincing and compelling stories about planning the community's future. Those included both traditional tools such as interviews, attitudinal and preference surveys, along with less traditional tools such as planning murals, value "story" boards, listening posts, and a "color the map" exercise (see attachment on interactive tools). Over 800 citizens (an estimated 20% of households) actively participated in one or more of these activities. Based on the consensus generated, many previously stalled initiatives were started a new.
The project was initiated by Kent Anderson, the Regional Planning Director. The invitation extended to EWU to undertake the services was based partly on Mr. Anderson's familiarity with the program and faculty (he's an alum) and his own former student experience in a similar applied small town studio project. He remembered how beneficial it was to his own education and how productive it was for that town's planning efforts. Given the initial strong resistance, however, to contracting with an out of state university, its a little surprising that the two parties, the Director and faculty member, persisted in bringing off this collaboration. In hindsight, all parties are glad they did.
Responsibilities for the project were shared between planning staff, planning commission members, selected city council members, and the EWU's faculty/student team. Planning Commission members provided project oversight, and with selected Council members, served as hosts for the community workshops. Staff, commission and Council members also served as host families for students during onsite visits. Both principles were directly responsible for the project direction and activities. Mr. Anderson coordinated outreach from a local perspective undertaking both advance preparations as well as post event follow up. Wm. J. Kelley, EWU faculty member and project coordinator, was responsible for the overall process design and activities management.
The community status that drove the need and influenced the "futuring" design included:
Phase One Design
EWU 's work schedule began in late March with the start of the Spring Quarter.
Based on earlier work, the faculty director and many, but not all, of the graduate student team members were familiar with the community context and existing conditions. The faculty member, in collaboration with the planning director and other faculty, drafted a tentative work program outlining the schedule and process design components. After review and refinement by planning team members, both at the University and in the community, everyone was comfortable with the outline of basic concepts and schedule.
Following brief satisfaction with the work program and schedule progress, a degree of dissatisfaction arose over content. Should content be heavily objective and factual, letting participants draw their own subjective conclusions? Or should it be more interpretive and suggestive within a balance of alternative viewpoints that the participant selects? After much discussion and debate, the project principles directed content design toward the latter with a more visual and interpretive viewpoint.
A second doubt arose from political concerns by planning commissioners. In drafting the community value statement options, there was an attempt to be exhaustive as well as balanced across the political spectrum. Some statements took a restrictive planning viewpoint, others took a strong private property protection viewpoint. Some planning commissioners, while supportive of the intent, worried that if too many participants favored these views, it might serve to undercut planning. The project principles provided reassurances that this was unlikely and argued that to secure a credible perspective, these viewpoints had to part of the optional values.
A final wrinkle occurred when the faculty coordinator began to have momentary doubts about the effectiveness of the proposed "color the map" exercise (see attachment). He had not used that technique in previous participation design. Was it too simplistic? Would the results provide meaningful interpretation? After multiple reassurance sessions with faculty who had used the technique, comfort and confidence levels were restored. With the techniques and content issues settled, the university team proceeded to produce the story boards, planning murals, stick maps, and other related visuals; about 5,000 square feet of graphic material.
In the mean time the planning director and local team were hard at work arranging logistics for the week long site visit by EWU , the workshop itself, and concurrently undertaking promotional efforts to get the word out. By April, the planning director was making weekly rounds at lunch to the various service clubs and also nurturing a good relation with the local newspaper that provided supportive coverage.
Show time rolled around and the university team arrived a few days prior to the workshop. During this time, surveys/discussions were conducted with community interest groups such as the Chamber and Lions and with High School Government classes and the Senior Citizen Center . Concurrently, different sites (post office, food stores, downtown, and shopping centers) were set up as community "listening posts" where teams used the value story boards as a vehicle for interacting with citizens on planning issues. As the big event day arrived, the combined teams set up the ample convention center hall with 3 walls of visual narratives, did last minute checking on food service, and went over a council member's scripted moderator role, and then wait. Will they come?
They did; 170 of them. That's a big turnout for a small town. Given the crowd, it would have been hard not to have suitable representation. There were "old pols" and first time voters, there were middle age school teachers and young family ranchers. Even with "good old boys" in attendance, there was gender balance. So now that they are here, what will they do? Not knowing what to expect, the "big production" was initially a little overwhelming. Eventually groups warmed up, relaxed, and began crowding around the murals and story boards placing their sticky dots and scribbling their comments. As dinner arrived and people sat at assigned tables, the talk was buzzing.
It was the after dinner entertainment break when planners learned the real attraction for the event: the high school choral group's performance; even non parents were beaming and humming along. And the courthouse crowd came just to hear the Prosecutor sing old Woody Guthrie songs. After the entertainment, the moderator reported highlights from the planning murals and value story board activities. There were nods of agreement for the strong support given planning, and for infrastructure extensions to the airport, and for downtown revitalization, and stronger use of public-private partnerships. The white hat planning buckaroos had won that round.
After a pause for raffling off a prize or two, the table groups were put back to work "coloring the maps". The focus question was: "Imagine you are in a hot air balloon floating over Winnemucca in 2020, what do you see, what do you want to see?" The buzz factor grew. As the allotted time closed and each of 15 table groups began to post their "futures" map and report their group's preferences, planners saw some things they expected and also had some surprises.
An expected outcome was the conforming central patterns based on existing use. A surprising thing was the high degree of consensus on future patterns at the edges where there are no existing uses. There were a lot of gray splotches representing the need for new industrial lands. There were also a lot of green splotches representing the need for green space conservation and park lands. There were differences, but you had to look close. Some of the elected officials being observed were not looking close, they were noting all that general agreement from a large group about what is normally a contentious matter and thinking we had better start moving on some of this. And they did.
The community participants were observing those 15 maps too and liked what they saw.
They were satisfied with the evening's discourse and the visual telling of it. What everyone saw on that wall, and perhaps only the planners could articulate, was the beginning of a new planning story and it was compelling.
Was the process and outcome good? Absolutely! Was it perfect? Not exactly! For one, the planners violated the rule of 3's (see attachment) for a community workshop: Thou shall not exceed 3 hours! A few activities ran too long. There were a few too many raffle items. At 3 hours, only a handful had left. At 3 hrs and 40 minutes when it closed, a third had left. The planners were also not prepared for the high degree of success. There was not a strong interpretive closure statement prepared. An opportunity to push the envelope just a little more had passed. In spite of those failings, the audience and the planners ended the evening's work with a great deal of satisfaction and enthusiasm. The realist among them knew that it was tentative and partial and temporary. But that evening, and for a while, planning had the "Big Mo"the momentum.
Wanting to act on that momentum, the next morning, the two project principles went to call on one of the major developers whose proposed industrial park had been stalled for months. They were confident the new consensus could break the impasse. It could and did. Thirty minutes earlier a council member had visited for the same reason. The impasse was broken and the project restarted. Here was the first practical outcome.
The university team packed up vans full of data (maps, surveys, murals) and went home to spend the remainder of the quarter compiling, searching for other themes, and preparing a project report. A few more supportable steps were uncovered. But it was a little anticlimactic. The big stories were known. One was the wall full of agreement about future land use. Another was seen in participant and decision maker recognition that agreement on future is possible. That was by far the most important story.
Phase Two Design
The second phase of community involvement centered around a " planning open house" scheduled for October. The objectives were to narrow and prioritize alternatives in order to construct an integrated scenario for future development.
The first phase had provided needed consensus on general directions but a little more understanding about community priorities was needed. For example, the need for new industrial parks had been identified but would the community financially support infrastructure improvements? A number of potential industrial sites had been identified in the "color the map" exercise but which should be developed first? Other community needs such as downtown revitalization and the creation of "green spaces" had been expressed. Which of these were more important?
The open house was envisioned as more low key but hopefully just as effective in terms of attracting a large cross section of the community to attend and express their priorities. It was to be a "drop by after work" affair. The earlier citizen work from the May workshop(maps, murals, etc.) would be on display and include summary interpretation. The central piece for evaluation was another wall size display featuring 4 alternative concept scenarios, each containing component parts. The parts were brief descriptions of specific strategies; "infrastructure to the airport", "sidewalks and landscaping for downtown", etc. These parts, while linked to a single thematic scenario description, were to be viewed as interchangeable.
The banner slogan leading up to these scenarios read, "Trails to the Future lead to...." (eg, one of the scenarios). The four scenarios were: "Red Rock" featuring commercial area development or redevelopment, "Green Valley" featuring park and greenbelt improvements, "Gray Hills" featuring industrial improvements, and finally the "Old Campsite" that represented the status quo. Additionally, each of the component pieces were provided with an estimated cost to attach a financial implication for making a given choice. Community choices were made by "deciding with dollars" (see attachment). While signing in, participants were given $24,000 in play money labeled "Trail Dollars". Along the wall on tables beneath the various component strategies were "deposit" boxes for collecting "dollar" preferences. It was fun but challenging as participants went up and down the wall making tradeoffs in their minds before selecting final choices.
The outcomes were as follows:
There were clear preferences for the top priorities: infrastructure improvements to the airport and adjacent industrial lands. Preference for other items were less distinct but still indicative of strong support. Within weeks, a leveraged package of local and state funds had been assembled to initiate airport area development.Feedback on the process was again, highly favorable. But there were a few flaws or downsides to this phase. For one, the participation, while showing respectable numbers and having a cross section of the community participate, was less than the May workshop. There were a number of possible explanations. We waited too long, the follow up event should have occurred within a month or two of the workshop. ( That aspect is a problem encountered when working with Universities that break during the summer). While the social "draws"; food, refreshments, raffles, were much the same as earlier, the publicity, announcements, and street level "buzz" was not as actively pursued. And finally, we committed a fatal flaw for a western small town/rural area: we scheduled a community event at the start of hunting season. A number of decision makers we wanted to attend were hundreds of miles away in the mountains.There were near equal selections from across the 3 concept scenarios indicating the felt importance of improvements in each major land use category. A new "Cross Trails" integrated scenario is being constructed.
The "Old Campsite" or status quo scenario, even though it featured no additional costs, received almost no support.
There was a serendipitous outcome to the lower than desired participant level at the evening open house. For the next two days, the "deciding with dollars" exercise went up along the walls of the planning office and all courthouse employees and citizens coming to the courthouse to do business, were invited. This had the double advantage of getting more participants and also introducing employees and citizens to a different view of the planning office. For example, one crusty rancher's only prior experience with planning had been to deal with what he considered a "bureaucratic hassle" in securing a permit. That day, standing with his "Trail Dollars" in hand and peering out over important community choices he was being asked to make, he developed a much more favorable perspective on planning.
Overall, both the community and planning staff were very satisfied with the participation and the clarifying choices that had been provided. We ended with about 200 participants. But the best outcome and biggest payoff was yet to come.
Having clarity on choices is a desirable end for participatory planning. But really its a means. Doing the deal, getting choices implemented is the desirable outcome for community and economic development. That opportunity came along a couple of weeks after the open house. Word had spread around the state about the successful outreach and agreed upon sense of priorities in Winnemucca. The Governor, several state agency heads, and a U. S. Senator came to town to see for themselves. After being provided overviews of the process and outcomes, the talk turned to action. Immediate dollars were put on the table. Strategies for future dollars were outlined. If there were any local decision makers who were still skeptic of the outreach process, they changed their minds that day. That's the Winnemucca story at this point in time. Much was accomplished and much remains. Hopefully, it demonstrates the intended purpose of showing connections between meaningful talk and meaningful action.
Academic Reflections
The above process was representative of a form of social learning between community, decision makers, and planners. As the design for dialogue evolved over several months, the underlying intent was to construct the possibility for translating information into meaningful knowledge and knowledge into action. This type of social learning process is referred to in the critical literature as communicative action or rationality (Habermas,1984). People engaged in planning, talk; that talk has the power to change people, situations, and futures. That's a simple view of communicative action. It is considered a complex and important emerging paradigm in planning theory (Innes, Foster, Friedmann, and others).
Where values and knowledge are in contention, planners construct innovative consensus building processes. Innes (1995), making a translation of Habermas, identifies three principles for guiding these processes:
The events were designed for social fun as well as social learning. The special features of food, refreshments, music, raffles, corny jokes, and ample breaks for informal and unstructured conversation were very important. So was the provision of childcare and interpreters for non English speaking community members. These convivial customs, comforts, and pleasures are not just nice to have, they are essential for consensus building (Peattie, 1998, Innes,1999).
The practitioner and academic did not interact daily but did seek out each others knowledge and opinion to confirm inclinations and suppress passing doubts. The practitioner also sought confirmation on judgment calls from staff and commission members. Likewise, the academic sought guidance and reassurance from fellow faculty members. When in doubt, we ask our planning friends. As Foster (1996: 519) notes, we do so because they tell us little appropriate situational stories "that can help us to understand practically and politically what it is and is not in our power to do."
Planning attempts to tell a story about the future. To be successful, it must also link to stories about the past and present . How plausible and coherent those linkages are determine the narrative truth that can motivate action and shape the future (Baum,1999).
Practitioner Reflections
The project produced several practical outcomes and reflected important planning and AICP principles. A few of those include:
Advocacy: The participatory design for Winnemucca's "Trails to the Future" visioning process sought and achieved a high degree of public awareness and involvement. Over 600 community members actively participated during a 3 day period of the initial phase of the visioning process. A second phase, focused on refining and determining priorities, conducted 3 months later engaged over 200 community members. Special efforts to involve youth, senior citizens, and minorities in the process were successful. The process demonstrated new possibilities for participatory planning.
Benefits: Numerous benefits were realized including increased community awareness of planning issues, stronger support for managed growth, consensus on the need for improved public-private partnerships, and enhanced collaboration in the decision making process. As one participant noted; " I felt I was part of the changes in my hometown. To see the town come together and share ideas to create its future was very gratifying."
Comprehensives: Selected planning principles were promoted throughout the exercise. A major objective of the process was the sensitive identification of community values to guide planning. The "sustainable choices" survey, for example, promoted a greater balance and integration of economic, social, and environmental resources.
Contribution: Objective outcomes of the process included consensus on values and directions that are being translated into community goals and objectives; mapped preferences regarding future land use, general agreement on planning priorities, and immediate and ongoing plan implementation before the plan is even drafted.
Implementation: Planning implementation is always improved by clearer vision and community consensus. The "Trails to the Future" process provided a high degree of those essential elements. The morning after the workshop, with renewed community spirit and commitment, representatives from the public and private sectors were collaborating on infrastructure finance for industrial parks.
Quality and Originality: The process design was thoughtful and detailed. The graphics and text used in the story boards and murals were purposefully provocative but accessible. For example, the "hand drawn stick art" encouraged a user friendly response from the viewer. The "Deciding with Dollars" technique provided important financial realism. While the community involvement concepts employed were not new to the planning profession, their adaptive use and refinement for the Winnemucca visioning process were considered innovative and effective by the community.
Transferability: The process and activities have been used in numerous small city planning exercises throughout the northwest and are both adaptable and transferable. Documentation is available. Similar processes are currently being used by the planning team, with encouragement of local officials, in the other small towns in the area.
Personal / Professional Satisfaction and Enjoyment: The EWU faculty director and student members brought a high level of enthusiasm to the project. That imported enthusiasm spilled over and raised spirits and expectations in the local community during a critical time period. Local community members who opened their homes to lodge students and host pot lucks benefited from the interaction. The pot lucks, attended by students, local staff, commissioners, and occasional elected officials, provided an informal forum for questions and answers on planning issues/ roles and shared knowledge was expanded for all. These were another type of important planning stories.
Conclusion
An effective community involvement process should; help clarify values and attitudes, allow opportunity for participants to express opinions and priorities, create alternative proposals and approaches, and give direction and confidence to decision makers to move forward with implementation. Winnemucca's "Trails to the Future" project achieved those desired results.
Critical and objective analysis will always play a role in plan development, but as demonstrated in this case, planner's construction of a more subjective and inviting process for discovering and interpreting compelling stories that produce communicative action is equally essential.
Attachment 1: Selective Interactive Tools
A variety of " interactive tools" are available to help identify and shape community values and future preferences for planning. Innumerable techniques and exercises are described in the literature on participation. The ones discussed below were selected for a small town context such as Winnemucca. Some are highly structured, others only partially so. While responses were collected, compiled and reported, the analytic outcome was considered secondary. The primary purpose was to have the tool serve as a stimulus for respondent recognition and consideration about relevant planning issues; and hopefully have that recognition lead to participation in a broader community dialogue about planning roles and possible community choices for a desired future. Following is a brief description of each.
Story Boards: Story boards can be constructed and used in many ways. They are compact displays of text, photographs, or sketches that convey meaning in a particular community context. They are typically displayed in some presentational format such as on a poster board or wall display. In this case, the "stories" were brief statements representing a range of alternative, and sometimes conflicting, values judged to be part of the politic in Winnemucca. The value sets covered alternative choices for economic and community development, alternative roles and scope for planning, and preferred choices for leadership and decision making. The subject content and orientation of the statements were derived from earlier interviews and discussions with community members. They were styled to provoke attention and interest. The statements were edited, refined, and repeatedly checked for biases by the EWU study team and prior to use, by the local planning commissioners. They were displayed on poster boards and viewers were asked to indicate their choices by placing a sticky colored "dot" next to the statements they preferred. The ratio of dots to choices is typically 1 to 3 or 4 so tradeoffs have to be made. The story boards were used in two different settings. A reduced set of statements (10) were used as a single exercise in on the street "listening posts" (see below). An expanded set of statements(19) were used in the community workshop. Their utility lies not only in the individual responses but also in generating community dialogue about the nature of the issues and values represented in the choices.
Listening Posts: Imagine going to the post office and outside in the parking lot is a display with a couple of friendly college students inviting you to comment on a set of focus questions or statements. Its a little unique, looks somewhat interesting, doesn't seem to take too much time, so you do participate. That's a community listening post. They are mobile. They don't take a lot to create and manage. And they are very effective in communicating focused planning ideas and receiving community feedback. The "dot exercise"(above) can be done in less than a minute. At the same time staff can distribute a one page fold explaining planning interests/issues and inviting an open ended response. Its low key but with a few balloons or stickers for the kids it can be very visible. Instead of inviting people to meetings to explore ideas, you take exploratory ideas or design concept to "people places" like the post office, or the downtown sidewalk, or the shopping center parking lot. Another advantage of bringing planning ideas to people places is that you are far more likely to encounter a representative cross section of the community. With just a few teams posted in a few places for a few hours, hundreds of community members in Winnemucca participated in the visioning process. Its not a substitution for the effective group dynamics at a well designed workshop but it can be a compliment.
Attitudinal/Preferential Surveys: The study team used only two of the more traditional survey instruments. Most can be effective in collecting measurable responses and or, as in this case, used as quick ice breakers for planning discussions with particular audiences. One preferential survey identified a list of 20 "favorite places" (a local park, the downtown, one's neighborhood, etc.) and asked respondents to choose three. This was used as a warm up for talking with 3-4 government classes at the local high school. It served the student planning team members well as a jumping off point to a discussion of how planning, among other things, works to identify and protect "favorite places". The HS student's favorable response to downtown and assorted "green spaces" provided added rationale for including those in the community choices for preservation and conservation of important places. The other survey addressed "sustainable choices" regarding resource use and other sustainable development activities. It was borrowed from an example developed by the University of Washington's Renewable Resource Center and adapted to the community context of Winnemucca. The primary setting and target groups in this case were "luncheon talks" with the Chamber, Lions, and other community associations. It was quickly administered and provided an intro. to sustainable development, an opportunity to extend invitations to the upcoming planning workshop, a time to briefly describe the plan visioning agenda, and to faintly signal the challenge to the "status quo". All this, time for lunch, and back at the office at one.
Planning Murals: Planning murals are wall size composites of photos, sketches, maps, tables, figures, design concepts, with limited text that tell a visual story of an interpretation of the community's past, present, and possible futures. Viewers are invited to scribble comments regarding those interpretations on blank butcher paper spaces between the graphics. They are effective as a casual warm up at a planning workshop. After signing in, attendees enter a spacious room where wall murals begin at the entry and allow the viewer to stroll through the "story" providing comments along the way. Support staff are stationed along the mural to provide pens, encourage participation, and answer questions. At the Winnemucca workshop, planning commission members and elected officials were encouraged to come a little early and initiate the "comments". The type of visuals used ranged from historic building photographs (both of ones removed and ones preserved and restored), to old and current aerial photos that depicted changes in land use, to stick figure sketches of school children walking to elementary school 20 years ago vs. sketches of queued autos dropping off children today, to graphs illustrating current per capita land consumption rates projected out over a 30 year trend. The old adage of a picture is worth a thousand words is an understatement. Used effectively, planning murals can economically communicate important planning messages and receive important evaluative feedback from viewers.
Color-the-Map: This exercise is designed to be a fun and informative group planning activity. Workshop attendees are divided into small groups of 6-8 seated at tables equipped with a table size "stick" map (a printed base map of the community where only major streets and a few landmarks are identified) and packets of colored construction paper, scissors, colored markers, and clear tape. The process begins with the moderator describing a scenario "where audience members are in a hot air balloon floating over the community twenty or thirty years in the future. What do you see below? What land use types and patterns do you want to see? Discuss the possibilities among your group and "color the map" to represent preferred patterns, adding amplifying comments in the margin." After discussion on future land use alternatives, members at the table get to work cutting and taping the colored paper representing different land uses to their designated areas on the " futures map". After about 45 minutes, a group spokesperson from each table is asked to post their map and briefly discuss their work. This somewhat child like activity produces a great deal of adult attentiveness toward the results. As the color fragment maps are posted and begin to take up an entire wall and as the points discussed begin to coalesce around common needs and patterns, even reluctant participants are captured for a brief moment by an illusion that a desired and collective future vision is discernible and achievable. That illusion evaporates but the sense of aspiration and ownership in planning for that future does not and can serve as a powerful impetus for taking needed first steps toward a desirable community.
Deciding with Dollars: This activity is a way of attaching financial considerations to preferred choices for community improvements. It was used in Winnemucca as a central exercise in the open house where the objective was to narrow the field of preferred planning "futures". The displayed choices were given an estimated cost and participants were given a set amount of "paper money" to "buy" their preferred improvements. The choices selected grew out of the earlier work at the community workshop. Options were refined and each component choice was assigned a realistic dollar value and grouped within a non exclusive thematic development scenario. At the openhouse, the alternative scenarios were characterized and spaced along a lengthy wall with multiple "deposit" boxes under each set of choices. Participants could "buy" (deposit a portion of their script) park improvements under the "Green Valley" scenario and "purchase" selected industrial development under the "Gray Hills" scenario and perhaps have a few thousand left over to "fund" some elements of downtown revitalization under the "Red Rock" scenario. With "thousands" to spend but "millions" to purchase; participants had to make trade offs.
Main Events: In community participation design
there are typically a minimum of two major events in which the entire community
is invited and encouraged to attend. Both can be designed around a series
of activities or exercises like those above where "the people speak" and
talk with each other and the planners and decision makers listen. The first
might be a workshop format where several concurrent individual and group
activities are used to flush out guiding values and potential ideas for
a plan. It could be followed up a few weeks or months later by an open
house in which those earlier ideas have been translated into alternative
concepts for evaluating and narrowing down to a set of preferred and implementable
options. For designing workshops, the rule of 3's is recommended: 3 interactive
exercises, 3 social and fun activities (food, entertainment, etc.), and
the show shouldn't exceed 3 hours. For open houses the 2 plus 1 rule is
recommended: no more than 2 major exercises with an equal number of social
activities, and no one has to stay more than an hour to fully participate.
Selected References:
Baum, Howell S. 1999. Forgetting to Plan, Journal of Planning Education & Research, 19:1.
Forester, John 1996. Learning from Practice Stories: The Priority of Practical Judgment, Readings in Planning Theory, Scott Campbell & Susan Fainstein (eds.), Blackwell.
Friedmann, John1987. Planning in the Public Domain: From Knowledge to Action. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Habermas, J. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Translation by T. McCarthy. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.
Innes, Judith. 1995. Planning Theory's Emerging Paradigm: Communicative Action and Interactive Practice, Journal of Planning Education and Research, V14.3.
Innes, Judith.1996. Planning Through Consensus Building, JAPA, V62.4.
Innes, Judith. 1998. Information in Communicative Planning, JAPA, V64.1
Innes, Judith and David Booher 1999., Consensus Building as Role Playing and Bricolage,JAPA,V 65.1.
Mandelbaum, Seymour J. 1990. Reading Plans. Journal of the American Planning Association 56: 350-356.
Mandelbaum, Seymour. 1991. Telling Stories. Journal of Planning Education and Research 10: 209-214.
Peattie, Lisa.1998. Convivial Cities. In Cities for
Citizens, edited by M. Douglass and J. Friedmann, New York: John Wiley
and Sons.
Copyright 2000 By Author
Wm. J. Kelley, Professor
Department of Urban & Regional Planning
Eastern Washington University
668 N. Riverpoint
Spokane, WA. 99202
509-358-2226
wkelley@ewu.edu
Kent Anderson, AICP, Director
Humboldt County Regional Planning
Courthouse
Winnemucca, NV 89445
775-623-6392
Prepared for the AICP - ACSP Collaborative Projects Symposium, APA National Planning Conference, New York , April 17th at 2:30PM.