Implementing Sustainability in Smaller Communities: Sustainability Frames the Debate Bonnie Johnson, AICP
	Session:: Implementing Sustainability in Smaller Communities (March 14, 8:45am)

ABSTRACT: Founded in 1821, Liberty, Missouri is a community of 26,500 residents northeast of Kansas City. Liberty enjoys a small town atmosphere with the convenience of big city services. As Liberty grew, two camps formed in town - those who favored growth and those who said no more. Through the Blueprint for Liberty project, the city set out to bring citizens together to chart Liberty's course for the future. The Blueprint for Liberty project involved updating the city's Comprehensive Plan beginning with the Future Land Use Plan. Over the years, a variety of growth issues were raised by citizens and local leaders including: protecting the City's tax base, preserving open space, managing stormwater, attracting businesses, controlling traffic, and preserving a "sense of place." How to engage the public on such a variety of issues seemed overwhelming until the topics were brought together under the umbrella of "sustainable development." Using sustainable development to frame the discussion allowed a wide range of subjects to be covered in a short time period. INTRODUCTION In August of 1999, the Liberty City Council unanimously adopted a new Future Land Use Plan. There are many things that are unique about this new plan - one of which is that when it was approved by Council there was applause from the crowd of citizens there that night. I don't know about the public hearings you have but applause and smiles from citizens is not normal. If this were not enough, Liberty's Land Use Plan was selected from among plans from around the country to receive the year 2000 Outstanding Planning Award for a plan from the American Planning Association. So - How did we do it? I'm going to tell you how the major tenants of sustainable development streamlined the citizen participation process allowing for a comprehensive yet timely discussion of community issues. I'm also going to go over the tools of citizen participation we used and the results. In this manner you can see what worked and get ideas for your own projects. Many of these tools will be familiar to you, but using them under the framework of sustainable development enhanced their effectiveness. I also think what was unique about Liberty's process was the variety and amount of tools used with a small budget. Liberty has experienced a great deal of growth from a population of 13,000 in the 1970's to around 26,500 today. People who grew up in Liberty think Liberty is no longer a small town while newer residents are moving to Liberty because it is a small town. For many years, Kansas City shared a border with Liberty across Interstate-35 but it's only been recently that houses and businesses have developed "across" the highway. The growth debate seemed to be dividing the town into those who wanted to halt any growth to those who wanted to make sure Liberty got its share of the growth. Liberty looks like any other town with fast food chains and now even a Walgreen's but then you arrive downtown onto the Historic Square. Liberty was built around a central square with the County courthouse in the middle. Downtown has buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, store fronts are full and there are even people living in apartments above the ground floor. City leaders and staff felt it was time to have a dialogue about Liberty's future. We felt it was time to revisit and update the community's Comprehensive Plan. The last major overhaul was in 1987 so we were due. We started with the Future Land Use Plan. We had two goals for the update process - 1. to meaningfully involve citizens and 2. to educate the public so they could make informed choices. This process was called - "The Blueprint for Liberty." The City Council and Planning and Zoning Commission let staff know they wanted to cover the following topics in the Blueprint process: opportunities for diversity, community identity, mix of housing costs & styles, quality commercial and industrial development, and transportation alternatives. Along with educating and engaging the public, there was a sense that we needed to move quickly. So we needed to cover a lot of subjects in a short period of time. It seemed overwhelming until we turned to Smart Growth or Sustainable Development principles. You'll sometimes hear Smart Growth and sometimes Sustainable Development. They cover similar concepts. Sustainable development is the deliberate effort to ensure that community growth not only enhances the local economy, but also the local environment and quality of life. It challenges us to think and act with a much greater awareness of how our decisions have long term and interdependent impacts on not only our economy but also our social well-being. It interconnects economy, ecology, and culture. The following is a list from the Brookings Institute of the most common objectives of sustainability or smart growth: To help minimize the impacts of new development (congestion, pollution, loss of agriculture land); To provide greater accessibility and choices in how we move about from home, work, shopping and leisure activities; To stabilize and improve the long-term financial performance for commercial businesses and home owners; To maximize public investments in existing and new roads, schools, utilities, transit systems, bridges, and waterways; To protect natural habitat and watersheds for the future, and To foster a greater sense of connection, responsibility and continuity for citizens with their communities. We simply took these major topics and asked people what they thought. We began "testing the perimeter" finding out what people in Liberty bought into and what they did not. The principles were a starting point. We then fine tuned questions until we learned what was most important. Citizen participation was structured to reach the already highly involved citizen and those who might not normally participate. Several hundred Liberty citizens participated in the Blueprint for Liberty through surveys, the Land Use Plan Steering Committee, the Citizen Planning Forum, and other events and workshops. Layers of opportunities to participate were created using different types of surveys, innovative, hands-on workshops, and visioning techniques. WORKSHOPS Sustainability allowed us to cover a variety of topics because we were able to show the interrelationships between them. It reduced the number of workshops and the number of surveys because we were able to cover so much territory. We simply took the major tenants of sustainability and created a workshop for each one. Our first workshop with called "Planning 101" and "Smart Growth". David Warm, Executive Director of the Mid America Regional Council and former Liberty City Administrator was one of our panelists talking about what planning can and can't do. He set the tone for our discussion. He said, "good plans distinguish between growth and progress. Growth is inevitable and necessary for progress, but they aren't the same thing." The other workshops were called "Community Character" covering the ABC's of land development and Traditional Neighborhood Design, "Home Sweet Home and the Rights of Cars" covering affordable housing and walking and biking, "What's so Great about Portland?" covering growth control measures, and "Growing Green" about natural methods of stormwater management and development using natural areas as assets. The workshops were a combined effort of City staff and the consultants for the land use plan (Land Planning Services from St. Charles, Illinois and Applied Ecological Services of Brodhead, Wisconsin.) When we asked people what they liked about Liberty they would commonly say the small town feel. At the Community Character workshop we were able to ask, "What do you mean by small town feel?" Asking open ended questions like this are often nightmares when it comes to compiling the information. However, when you group them by sustainable development principles, it is easy to make sense of this type of input. In their answers to the question about being a small town, people described the economy, ecology, and culture of Liberty. They said: You can feel the history here. Small town means not having to walk everywhere. Our open space makes us feel separate from Kansas City. Small town means the cross relationships between schools, churches, and community groups. People described the quality of life they value which is based on the town's history, open spaces, schools, and community groups. These are the major components of a sustainable community. In the workshop called "Home Sweet Home", we were able to discuss affordable housing within the context of being a community where people can live and work. We heard time and again that people did not want Liberty to be a bedroom community. The people who work in Liberty's industries live in the smaller towns around Liberty and the people who live in Liberty work in Kansas City. Using sustainable development, we were able to have a constructive conversation about multi-family housing and how it fits into the long term health of a community. Through our other workshops we covered traditional neighborhood design (designing neighborhoods like we used to around downtown Liberty and the historic Liberty Square), commercial design, the ABC's of land development, growing green and natural stormwater management, walkability, and biking. CITIZEN PLANNING FORUM The most significant partner in the Blueprint for Liberty and the people who consistently attended workshops was the Citizen Planning Forum. The Citizen Planning Forum consisted of over 100 citizens. This group was recruited through newspaper articles, service group presentations, the City's newsletter, and invitations mailed to more then 800 people who had volunteered for different community activities in the past. Included in the mailer was a self-addressed stamped post card asking people to sign up and send in the name of someone else they thought would be interested. City Council members also took these post cards with them and gave them to people who wanted to be involved. After the plan was approved, these people attended a special reception where they were given certificates by the Mayor thanking them for their help. They are now organizing on their own to form a group to make sure the plan is followed. These people have taken ownership of the plan and understand it inside and out. Those who specialize in how to get volunteers and get people involved are saying that today people need something in return for their participation. In return for their participation, Citizen Planning Forum members got name recognition (City staff and elected officials know them), the ear of the Mayor (the Mayor and City Administrator attended almost every event), an education, and to see their words used in the text of the plan. SURVEYS In addition to workshops we conducted different kinds of surveys. We did an Image Preference Survey where people viewed over 350 slides and rated each one on a scale from negative 5 to positive 5. Land Planning Services tailored the image survey to Liberty using local and regional photos. The image survey showed that people liked images of mixed use, neighborhoods in the TND style, and multi-family housing that looked like houses. They didn't like the new subdivisions, apartment complexes, and strip malls. They liked the sustainable images. If you'd like to see the results of the survey they can be viewed on our website (www.ci.liberty.mo.us). We conducted 2 mail-in surveys which were a joint project with the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. Again, we covered a great deal of territory in these surveys by asking questions relating to Liberty's economy, ecology, and culture. The first survey was included in the Liberty newsletter which goes to every address in town. The survey's most popular responses involved preserving open space and natural areas along with being able to walk and bike places. Here are some of the results: 60% of respondents felt that neighborhoods could be redesigned to increase walking and biking. 60% would like to be able to walk or bicycle to a grocery store near their home. 91% believed the natural terrain, creeks and native vegetation of Liberty should be maintained. 82% would like Liberty to have a well-defined edge permanently protected from development. 32% would like to live in areas like the new subdivisions, 39% would prefer areas like Liberty's downtown, and 28% say neither. 82% agreed that design and zoning controls are necessary to create quality neighborhoods. Again, the survey questions were easier to write because we started with those sustainable development themes. The complete survey and it's results are available on the City's website. In the same survey, people were asked to respond to the open-ended question, "When I picture a great neighborhood, I see . .". Many people provided thoughtful responses such as: A walking and bicycle-safe place where my kids and I can walk or ride to school and chores through tree-lined streets. Air quality is great and stress is low from lessened traffic congestion. We meet our neighbors along our routes and walk or ride with them awhile. A neighborhood where people can socialize with one another outside their homes and feel safe. It's a place with natural woodlands, walking and cycling trails, and outdoor natural settings for recreation with the family. Young and old people living side by side in an affordable community. . . . Where one generation can learn the wisdom of the previous generation and pass that wisdom on to the next generation. In a great neighborhood, neighbors know neighbors and meet one another as they walk to the grocery, bookstore, church or work. They care about one another. Well kept houses, trees along the street, sidewalks, good bicycling conditions, shopping nearby - preferably not in strip malls. Parks nearby, churches Another survey given to the Citizen Planning Forum was in the form of a map of the city. It was called the "Places in the Heart" survey. They were instructed to put dots on the places, streets, houses, parks, trees or anything that they thought meant "Liberty" to them. The top ten list reads like a formula for a healthy community The Historic Square/Downtown (3 way tie) William Jewell College Martha Lafite Thompson Nature Sanctuary Parks System Community Center/Middle School Complex Liberty Public Schools Liberty Hospital Own house/Neighborhood (3 way tie) Open space/ Countryside Greenways Historic homes/Older neighborhoods/Historic Districts Hallmark Cards property Heartland Meadows Business Park (3 way tie) Churches Highway access Earnest Shepherd Youth Center VISIONING EXERCISES We conducted several general visioning exercises to find "Liberty". The first was a display of historic postcards at the annual Fall Festival held downtown where we asked people to write a postcard to the Liberty of the future. This was the kick-off event for the Blueprint for Liberty and where we first started to hear Liberty described in sustainability terms. People wrote things like, "you can feel the history here," "keep the volunteer spirit alive," "unique," and "great place to raise children." At a January, 1999 workshop, residents complete worksheets called "Taking Your Temperature". The purpose of the exercise was to determine what people liked about Liberty, what they disliked, and how they would make changes. Each person read from their worksheet contributing to a master list of Liberty's assets and opportunities for change. The questions on the worksheet were as follows: What do you like or appreciate about Liberty? What worries you about Liberty? What is a need you see in Liberty and what solution do you have for fixing it? New Information - Is there anything about Liberty you think people should know? What are your hopes and wishes for Liberty? In answer to the question about a need in Liberty and a solution, people said: a tree planting program, improve highways for bicyclists and pedestrians, create a hub with neighborhoods spoking out, business satellites near homes, mixed use areas, and create a beautification committee. We wanted to do a charrette and have people layout land uses on maps of the city. We quickly discovered that calling it a charrette was not a good idea so we had a "Community Design Workshop" instead. At the workshop we went over the results and the Image Preference Survey and then had people divide up into teams and draw on aerial maps. Before turning people loose on their maps, the consultant had people take a look at the Natural Resources Survey done by Applied Ecological Services which showed floodplains, riparian corridors, patches of prairie, and historic Oak savannah. He then asked people to color the most sensitive areas green. As a result, people were very reluctant to draw development on top of the green areas and ended up working around and with the natural resources. One of the most beneficial and popular workshops was called, "The Right Tools for the Job". This workshop allowed citizens to choose how to make the plan a reality. Participants perused a variety of implementation strategies laid out in displays covering the walls of the Lewis & Clark Elementary School gym. The "tools" like Conservation Subdivision Design or Transfer of Development Rights were put under different headings around the room. The headings were based on the sustainable development themes we had most commonly heard expressed by Liberty citizens. They were: Sense of Community; Green Space & Rural Areas; Ensuring a Variety of Housing Options; Stormwater Management in Harmony with Nature; Getting from here to there not only by car, but on foot & by bike; Trees, Trees, Trees; and Connections Beyond Liberty to the metro area via public transportation. As they entered the gym, people were given envelopes to use as "tool boxes" and then next to every "tool" was a slip of paper with the name of the tool that they could pick up and put in their tool boxes if they wanted. At the end of the evening, staff opened the tool boxes and counted up the most commonly chosen tools which were: Wetland/Watershed Protection; Natural Landscape Creation (from lawns to entire prairies); Conservation Subdivision Design; Commercial Design Guidelines; Land Saver Design Patterns; Pedestrian Design in Commercial Areas; Traditional Neighborhood Design; Traffic Calming Strategies; Grass Lined Stormwater Channels; and Allow for Third Places. From the citizen input, we knew the Future Land Use Plan needed to cover - sense of community, greenspace and rural areas, stormwater management in harmony with nature, transportation options, trees, and connections beyond Liberty (not just transportation but relationships). The new Future Land Use Plan includes the following Land Uses: Conservation Land Use, Stormwater Management, Rural Development, Mixed Use, Commercial Use, Business Use and includes a description of what neighborhoods should be like or Neighborhood Principles. Conservation Land Use sets aside sensitive areas (flood plains, drainage ways, and even a little area of tall-grass prairie that's still left). Stormwater Management as a Land Use sets aside areas where it is most logical to have ponds, wetlands, or prairies to deal with stormwater. Rural Development - Through citizen input, it was clear that people thought Liberty's rural areas were an important part of our community identity and small town feel. Balancing the desires of citizens with property owners' desires to sell their land or develop their land was a challenge. On the Future Land Use Map, we show the entire eastern portion of the city as a Rural Residential area. It allows those areas to develop but instead of developing houses on 1 or 3 acre lots, we ask for houses to be clustered on part of the acreage leaving the rest in open space or a farm. This helps preserve the open space people are wanting to live near without destroying the open space. Traditional Residential - The high scores in the survey were always for neighborhoods built the way they did when Liberty was first founded. People like the narrower streets, trees between the sidewalk and the curb, houses closer to the street, and front porches. We were very interested in what people thought of the multifamily images in the Preference Survey. It is very difficult to build apartments because of the stigma attached to them. However, apartments did get high scores when they were built to resemble single-family homes and when garages were hidden. Mixed Use - Some of the highest scores were for images of mixed use areas like Liberty's Historic Square. Commercial Use - Sustainability is all about balance. Not every commercial area is going to be mixed use so regular commercial areas are shown on the land use map as well. Business Use - We created this land use called Business Use so that industrial could be mixed with commercial. In this way employees don't have to drive everywhere for services. It is also interwoven with the Conservation Land Use so that those business parks will use natural landscaping for their campuses instead of mowed lawns. Neighborhood Principles - The Neighborhood Principles describe up front what we're looking for: walkability, gathering spots, being able to bike, pocket parks, and trees. We asked our City Council, "If this plan only accomplishes one thing what would that be?" One Council member hoped the city would promote innovative approaches to development. Another wanted to have a vision people could see and hold elected officials to. And a third hoped the new plan would help manage growth. Using sustainability principles helped us with the citizen participation portion of the process by framing the debate, keeping us on the big picture, and allowing us to interconnect a variety of topics. Liberty's new Future Land Use Plan truly reflects citizen input and puts Liberty's stamp on sustainability concepts. Before this process, Liberty had no idea the importance it's citizens placed on natural areas, sidewalks, bicycling, and trees. Today, the community has goals which seek to capitalize on the good things in Liberty. The things which have sustained them for 180 years. In Liberty, the consensus on growth seems to be that growth is okay as long as it gets us "Liberty." And that means attending to our economy, ecology, and culture. Author and Copyright Information Copyright 2001 by Author Bonnie Johnson, AICP was a planner for the City of Liberty, Missouri from 1995 to 2001 where she was project manager of the award winning Blueprint for Liberty Future Land Use Plan process. While at Liberty, she also authored the City's award winning Wireless Communication Facilities Plan and Ordinance. Prior to Liberty, she was a planner for the City of Amarillo, Texas. She is a graduate of the University of Kansas with a Masters of Urban Planning and Masters in Political Science. For information on the Blueprint for Liberty, visit the City of Liberty's website at (www.ci.liberty.mo.us). Bonnie Johnson can be reached via email at (bojojohnson@hotmail.com).