On a Friday afternoon in July 1938, Lewis Mumford, the great social thinker and conscience of the urban American landscape, stepped up to the podium to speak before the regular meeting of the City Club of Portland, the premier public forum in the state of Oregon. Mumford, who had been touring the Portland area, was visibly impressed by its awesome natural setting - the bountiful Douglas firs, the grand Columbia River Gorge, the distant peaks of the Cascade Mountains. His message, characteristically probing, had a prophetic quality that would reveal itself only many years later:
"I have seen a lot of scenery in my life," he said, "but I have seen nothing so tempting as a home for man as this Oregon country....You have here a basis for civilization on its highest scale, and I am going to ask you a question which you may not like. Are you good enough to have this country in your possession? Have you got enough intelligence, imagination and cooperation among you to make the best use of these opportunities?"
To his undoubtedly startled audience, Mumford continued. "Rebuilding our cities will be one of the major tasks of the next generation....In providing for new developments you have an opportunity here to do a job of city planning like nowhere else in the world. Oregon is one of the last places in this country where natural resources are still largely intact. Are you intelligent enough to use them wisely?"
Not long after Mumford's visit to Portland, World War II began. After that, came an era of unparalleled urban expansion dominated by automobiles, freeways and parking lots. But Mumford, who once said that freeways could only widen chaos, was spurned by Portland in favor of the prophets of mobility, whose schemes were designed to make the city not so much livable as it was "driveable." In the postwar era, Portland was ringed with freeways and massive bridges as the nation took to cars on inexpensive gas. Many lessons were learned during those times - some of them too late. Ultimately, the people of Portland would come to understand what Mumford had been talking about.
By the 1970s, after decades of allowing automobile-oriented development to eat away at the fabric of the community, Portlanders began rebuilding their city from the ground up. It was a long, arduous, energizing, sometimes frustrating process, but the results were stunning: new freeways were canceled while old ones were torn up and turned into parks; mass transit was revived and the center city completely revitalized; a parking lot in the heart of the downtown core was symbolically transformed into a vital new public square. Although Portland would never truly recover from its postwar freeway binge, brick by brick, it methodically transformed itself into one of the nation's most livable cities.
Today, in the late 1990s, the entire state of Oregon stands on the threshold of a new era of growth and development, larger and more looming than anything it has faced in the past. This time not only is the Portland region implicated, but hundreds of other communities up and down the Willamette Valley, along the Pacific coastline, and even east of the Cascades in Oregon's vast high desert. Without new efforts to anticipate and plan for this growth, Oregon's communities and its vaunted quality of life once again face the prospect of being dragged into someone else's vision of the future. New approaches to anticipate and plan for such change are needed - approaches that actively engage citizens in thinking about the future at the local level. Fortunately, such approaches are starting to take hold.
There is a popular story told in Oregon concerning the first white settlers who migrated west along the old Oregon Trail over a century and a half ago. Eventually, they came to a fork in the road: one route was marked by a sign with an arrow pointing south and a picture of a gold nugget; the other route was marked by an arrow pointing north and the simple word "Oregon." Those lured by the glitter of gold and the promise of wealth beyond their wildest dreams turned south and proceeded to California; those who could read headed north.
The message - tongue-in-cheek, of course - is that while Oregon may not be as glittery as its large and well-known neighbor to the south, it is at its core a good and decent society. There is more than a little truth to this tale. Over the years, Oregon has also gained a reputation as a place where people do things differently - if not better. In their politics, lifestyles and values, Oregonians have cultivated a tradition of independence that has often moved them beyond the national current - sometimes ahead of the political tide, sometimes squarely against it. It's no coincidence that the state's official tourism campaign touts the message: "Oregon. Things look different here." Indeed, they do.
In recent decades, Oregon has captured national attention with a succession of progressive policy initiatives in the areas of environmental protection, waste reduction and recycling, regional governance, energy conservation, mass transit, education and health care. These initiatives have spawned many imitators across the country and not a few critics. None of these initiatives, however, has shaped Oregon's reputation - nor, quite literally, the land itself - as much as the state's involvement in land-use planning. To fully understand why, one must look fifty years into the past.
With the end of World War II, thousands of newly mobile Americans in search of a better life began migrating to the remote and romantic Pacific Northwest. With its scenic beauty, bountiful natural resources and expanding peacetime economy, Oregon offered a kind of modern-day Promised Land. Not surprisingly, in the years immediately following the war, Oregon's population growth rate exceeded that of any other state. Between 1940 and 1970, the state's population nearly doubled, with most of that growth concentrating in the Willamette Valley.
Situated west of the Cascade Mountains and east of the Coast Range in the northwest corner of the state, the Willamette Valley has long been known for its mild climate, productive forests and fertile soils. At 11,405 square miles, the Valley, as it is simply known, encompasses 11.8 percent of the total Oregon land mass. Yet, with 91 percent of the Valley given to forest or farm uses, the remaining portion - 992 square miles or only about 1 percent of the entire state - has long been home to most of Oregon's industrial, commercial and residential development. It was upon this small and increasingly crowded stage that Oregon's land-use drama first played itself out.
By the early 1970s, the cumulative impacts of sustained growth in the Valley had become hard to ignore. Nearly a million and a half people lived there in 1972 and a million more were projected to arrive by the year 2000. From 1950 to 1970, the number of automobiles in the Valley had virtually doubled, while public use of mass transit had dropped precipitously. Air quality was declining measurably. Agricultural lands were gradually giving way to new urban development; and the cost of servicing such development was straining local government coffers. Year by year, the Valley was filling up with the kind of "sprawl" endemic to America's major urban areas. The Oregon Legislature had taken some measures to address this challenge, but they were incomplete and ineffective.
In 1972, Governor Tom McCall, a charismatic, independent-minded Republican with a strong environmental streak, stepped into the limelight. Responding to these alarming trends, he commissioned a study to explore alternatives for future growth and development in the Valley. If Oregonians were to make informed choices for the Valley's future, he reasoned, they required a better understanding of what those choices might be. The result was a large, extensively illustrated report entitled Willamette Valley Choices for the Future. This report marked the first time that state government in Oregon had seriously attempted to incorporate foresight into the development of public policy.
Based on data and forecasts gathered by the government, the Choices report presented two distinct scenarios for the Valley in the year 2002. Both scenarios focused on land-use, but also addressed a number of related topics, including transportation, open spaces and recreation, employment, pollution, energy, and intergovernmental relationships. Scenario I assumed that all the factors currently driving development in the Valley would continue apace with no major changes in direction. Scenario II assumed that new attitudes would evolve as to how people live in the Valley, combining environmental concerns and a high-amenity lifestyle.
In retrospect the Choices report was a watershed document. In graphically depicting these alternatives, it clearly and unequivocally communicated the basic choices facing the future of the Willamette Valley. Scenario I showed how uncontrolled, undirected growth would ultimately overtake the Valley, undermining Oregon's quality of life. Scenario II outlined the extensive new measures that Oregonians would have to put into place in order to create a viable alternative. Neither alternative represented an easy choice, but the difference between them was dramatically clear. In clarifying these choices, the report also served a much more immediate political agenda.
The Oregon Land-Use Act. The use of land occupies an elevated status in the American psyche, one that is inextricably linked to such rights as private ownership, individual initiative, and the pursuit of profit. Americans have always been suspicious of government "interference" in their use of the land - even if it is in the name of the common good. Yet, in 1972, Tom McCall knew that many Oregonians deeply shared his concerns about the future of the Valley. In releasing the Choices report, he launched a broad-based public dialogue on land-use planning, taking the political risk that people would be willing to try something different. His instincts proved correct.
By 1973, the Oregon Legislature had adopted Senate Bill 100, The Oregon Land-Use Act, a landmark piece of legislation establishing Oregon's comprehensive land-use planning system. The new system was intended to direct different types of development to appropriate areas - discouraging urban sprawl, conserving the state's natural resources, providing predictability in land-use regulation, and streamlining the permit process for new development. It was an ingenious solution that struck a carefully architectured balance between statewide planning goals and local responsibility for land-use plans. It also consciously attempted to balance the interests of environmental and business groups. Such balance was clearly evident in the name given to the new agency established to administer the system: the Department of Land Conservation and Development.
The following year, the people of Oregon were engaged in an ambitious public process designed to articulate the state's 14 new planning goals. All Oregon jurisdictions were required to develop comprehensive land-use plans in compliance with these goals, and then periodically to review and update these plans over time. By the end of the decade, every one of Oregon's 278 city and county governments had adopted its plan, creating a strong new set of local controls and, in effect, a composite land-use plan for much of the state.
Over the next 20 years, a series of attempts to weaken or dismantle the state's land-use planning system were mounted by various interest groups, but the system survived largely intact. Indeed, some of Oregon's most prominent business leaders became strong defenders of the system because of the certainty it had brought to the once contentious and unpredictable local development process. Across the nation, Oregon's land-use planning system was recognized as a model approach, although only a few other states ever attempted to replicate it. It was, and remains today, a characteristically Oregonian approach to solving problems - different and, arguably, better.
Among the outdoor wonders of Oregon are its many wild and scenic rivers, including the Deschutes, the Owyhee, the Illinois, and the Rogue. Today, these rivers still have magnificent untamed reaches, providing unparalleled beauty and thrilling recreational opportunities. Over a half century ago, writer Zane Grey composed his classic stories of the old American West from his cabin deep within the Rogue River canyon. Years later, Oregon's current governor takes his solace rafting the churning rapids of the same river. It has been said that Oregon's wild rivers are her soul. They also provide a fitting metaphor for the state's unfolding future.
Robert Theobald, a nationally prominent futurist, has likened living in the late 20th century to riding the rapids of a wild river. "We are being swept downstream by a torrent of change," he states. "This is the overwhelming reality of our times. It challenges us at every level." In recent years, the "rapids of change," as Theobald calls them, have intensified, resulting in increased turbulence and uncertainty in virtually every aspect of modern life.
Today, amid headlines dominated by global economic restructuring, major population migrations, accelerated technological advances, and pressing social and environmental trends, most futurists agree: we are entering a fundamentally new era in human history. Perhaps the greatest challenge of our times will be to maintain a sense of direction in the midst of such turbulence. In riding the rapids of change, those who anticipate the next bend in the river and what lies beyond will have a better chance of meeting this challenge. Those who don't may be in for a rough ride.
Beginning in the 1980s, the state of Oregon began to experience the rapids of change in a very direct way. The first shock came early in the decade in the form of a major national recession and the most severe economic downturn the state had experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Across Oregon, tens of thousands of people were thrown out of work in the lumber and wood products and allied industries, which historically had relied upon an expanding national economy. Hundreds of small communities, local governments and social service providers suffered as local tax bases withered. The state's economy reeled from the impact.
Ironically, just as Oregon's local land-use plans were coming on line, the issue of rapid growth that had given rise to land-use planning ceased to be a concern. Communities formerly obsessed with controlling new development shifted their focus to the issues of retrenching industries, growing unemployment and declining populations. Eventually, the state's land-use planning goals were revised to strengthen the role of economic development. In the future, local jurisdictions would be required to guarantee sufficient industrial sites and urban services in order to accommodate new development. These changes, however, did nothing to address the more immediate problem.
As Oregon's recession persisted, people began to understand that it represented a long-term structural change as opposed to a short-term cyclical downturn. Experts agreed that the state's timber economy would never return to its once dominant status. A much larger economic transition was taking place: Oregon was moving out of the waning industrial era and into a new era driven by computers, information technology, telecommunication and economic globalization. As the decade of the 1980s continued, the state began to carve out a niche in this emerging economy, attracting new investment and, ultimately, new growth. With the beginning of the 1990s, and a new wave of population in-migration, some parts of the state were growing faster than ever.
This time, however, it was more than growth that shook Oregon. A series of new challenges had begun to appear on the social landscape for which the state was simply not prepared: accelerated demographic shifts, growing cultural diversity, a changing job environment, increased drug abuse, crime and homelessness, declining federal and state funding for social programs, changing values and lifestyles, and more. Oregon - once relatively isolated from the geographic and cultural mainstream of American society - was beginning to face the social challenges confronting many other parts of the country. And the place where these issues were most felt was in the state's local communities.
If there was a lesson to be learned in all of this, it was that planning to accommodate new growth and development was not the same as planning to accommodate change. The former was something discrete and definable; the latter was bigger, more complex and far more intangible. In the 1990s, Oregon's communities needed to learn to anticipate, plan for, and respond to an environment of rapid change. This was something that local governments had never attempted. Fortunately, other public agencies and institutions were beginning to do just that.
Long-Range Planning in the Public Sector. During the 1950s and 1960s, planning for the future in the public sector in America typically meant "forecasting" - especially in large public agencies and bureaucracies. Quantitative forecasts, such as population and employment projections, played a dominant role in shaping major decisions. New public policies, programs and capital investments were often based on a forecast view of the future; and most forecasts started with the assumption that the future would be a logical extension of the past. For a while this approach worked well, due, in part, to the relative stability of the times.
In the 1970s, however, with the emergence of a much more turbulent social environment, all that began to change. Recognizing the limitations of linear forecasts, the public sector began to rethink its approach to long-range planning. Government agencies investigated more qualitative planning approaches. Following the lead of the private sector, some used strategic planning techniques to analyze the decision-making environment and to develop strategies for change. Others employed more experimental techniques such as alternative scenarios - exploring the future from a much more dynamic perspective.
During the same period, a number of state governments began to recognize the importance of involving the public in planning for the future. In the 1970s there was a ground swell of state "futures projects" across the country. Futurist Alvin Toffler dubbed this movement "anticipatory" democracy - the fusion of long-range planning and public participation. With names like Goals for Georgia and Texas 2000, these programs varied widely in their design and effectiveness. Most, unfortunately, were one-time efforts that ended with a change in political leadership.
With the 1980s, however, futures projects took a quantum leap in their evolution - shifting from simple goal-setting exercises to more sophisticated long-range planning efforts - with states like Hawaii, Washington and Colorado leading the way. As more local jurisdictions became involved in planning for the future, they began to analyze trend information, develop alternative scenarios, and create long-range visions. By the beginning of the 1990s, "visioning" - literally the joining of "vision" and "planning" - emerged as a significant new planning concept. Oregon's local communities, with their strong land-use planning background and their tradition of independence, were poised to lead the way. One such community was the small university town of Corvallis.
In Latin, the name Corvallis means "heart of the valley." This description fits the city of Corvallis, Oregon quite well. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Marys rivers in the central Willamette Valley and surrounded by rich agricultural and forest lands, Corvallis lies one hour east of the Pacific coast and one hour west of the Cascade Mountains. It is a stable, prosperous community with an active, highly educated citizenry and a high-amenity quality of life. Over the years, local residents have developed a strong appreciation for the community's small town atmosphere and natural surroundings - and a cautious attitude concerning growth.
In the late 1960s, like many other Oregon towns, Corvallis began to experience a significant upsurge in new growth; by the mid-1970s, the city's population had virtually doubled. Stunned by this rapid growth, the community turned to planning for solutions. In 1975, the City of Corvallis embarked on the development of its first state-mandated comprehensive land-use plan. After a lengthy development period, the Corvallis plan was adopted in 1980 and submitted to the state for formal approval. The City was scheduled to prepare the plan for its first "periodic review" in 1989. This update would give the community an opportunity to take stock of the plan and its effectiveness.
Of course, the world had not stood idly by during the years that Corvallis was developing its plan. Corvallis of the late 1980s had changed considerably from a decade earlier. Like the rest of the state, new issues had begun to challenge the community. In examining its plan, the City determined that the community had never truly resolved its conflicting values concerning future growth. Moreover, the plan's implicit vision of the future was unclear and unconvincing. For these reasons, the City decided to sponsor an anticipatory planning process, one that would clarify local values and articulate a long-range vision, before proceeding with its plan update.
At the very heart of the City's proposed process was the concept of a vision. This idea had strong appeal for both planners and elected officials. By identifying core community values and setting forth strategies intended to realize those values over time, the City hoped to consciously create a preferred future rather than simply being pushed into the future by prevailing trends. The vision concept generated a great deal of enthusiasm and a number of creative ideas as to how the City might proceed with its process.
Given its interest in a vision, the Corvallis planners contacted the Oregon Visions Project, a new committee of the Oregon chapter of the American Planning Association formed to promote long-range planning in the state. By coincidence, the Oregon Visions Project had been searching for an appropriate jurisdiction to test the visioning model it had been developing. The outcome of this "real world" demonstration project would be shared with other Oregon communities interested in undertaking similar efforts. Thus, a unique collaboration was born.
The City's planning process, named Charting a Course for Corvallis and scheduled to last one year, was launched in 1988, incorporating three distinct phases of activity: (1) a public input phase during which citizens would articulate community concerns and identify priority areas for further discussion; (2) a visioning phase during which a representative citizen task force would develop a vision for the future; and (3) a policy phase in which a formal "vision statement" would be officially adopted and used in updating the City's land-use plan and evaluating other City policies.
Two overall objectives were established to guide the visioning phase of the process: (1) promote maximum public involvement and (2) be creative. True to these objectives, the City launched this phase with a major public workshop designed to expand citizen awareness of future trends and to stimulate new thinking. Ads for the workshop invited citizens to: "Open Your Mind and Say Aaahh!" To the City's delight, more than 500 citizens showed up to share their ideas and ask questions of a nationally known futurist. It was an impressive start.
Next, the City's task force proceeded to engage in the work of the process: developing a profile of the community; articulating a statement of community values; analyzing major trends affecting the community; preparing alternative scenarios of the city's future; and developing a final vision statement. Local citizens were involved at every juncture: special "focus groups" were formed to discuss specific issues; neighborhood meetings and community-wide forums were held to examine the alternative scenarios; a children's vision event was held where local school children presented their essays and drawings on the future to the Governor of Oregon. All of this activity only served to reinforce Corvallis' reputation among Oregon planners as a "hyper-participatory" community.
In the end, the Corvallis vision compiled hundreds of new ideas addressing six target areas of concern: the economy, environment, central city, housing and neighborhoods, education and human services, and arts and culture. Future Focus 2010,
an inexpensive, colorful, tabloid-style vision statement with a clip-and-mail feedback form inviting citizen comments, was mailed to literally every household in the city. The centerfold included a large, bird's-eye view illustration of the city, highlighting specific areas of the community targeted for new initiatives.
Once the final vision had been adopted, the City began to integrate its specific recommendations into its ongoing planning activities. First came the technical update of the City's land-use plan. Next, three community task forces were formed to develop strategies based on specific concepts featured in the vision, focusing on the city's airport/industrial area, its riverfront, and the downtown district. In sum, the Corvallis process resulted in a vibrant, creative community-based vision that became the foundation of a number of new community planning activities and initiatives. More important, perhaps, it helped launch a new era of planning innovation in the state of Oregon.
"Nothing happens unless first a dream." Those words of the great American poet Carl Sandburg capture something essential about the human spirit. Among the human species' many unique qualities is its propensity to contemplate, speculate about, even plan for the future. Indeed, it could be said that the notion of human progress has always been predicated upon our capacity for foresight. Foresight also lies at the heart of the visioning process. If we wish to create a better world, we must first be able to envision that world.
Community visioning is simply a process through which a community imagines the future it most desires and then plans to achieve it. Through visioning, citizens come together to create a shared image of their preferred future; once this image has been created, they can begin working to achieve their goal. Visioning does not necessarily replace other forms of community planning, but rather provides a broader context from which to approach those activities. While such a process may represent an ambitious, complex or time-consuming undertaking, it is still built on Sandburg's simple truth. Encouraging local communities to dream is the beginning of building a better world.
Not long after the Corvallis community visioning process, a number of other communities across Oregon started to become involved in similar efforts. All of this happened without any formal state mandate or dedicated sources of funding. The visioning process seemed to address local communities' need for a stronger sense of direction in an era of rapid, unsettling change. From the largest city in the state to some of its smallest, local communities used visioning to create a broader context for their land-use plans, build greater consensus for future directions, and develop specific strategies for change.
Based on the experiences of these communities and similar efforts elsewhere, a composite approach to visioning gradually took shape. This approach, called the "Oregon Model," was presented in A Guide to Community Visioning, a handbook published by the Oregon Visions Project in 1993. Originally, the Guide had been conceived as a primer for local elected officials, planners and citizens in Oregon; but with growing interest in visioning nationwide, the handbook ended up being distributed around the country. In 1995, the American Planning Association presented the Oregon Visions Project a national award in recognition of its contribution to planners and communities everywhere seeking new ways to manage change. "Thank you, Oregon!" wrote one award juror. "Now we can all be in accord and understand what visioning is."
Figure1: The Oregon Model
The Oregon Model. The Oregon Model is, at its core, a four-step process driven by four very simple questions. Each question establishes the context for one step of the process, guiding a series of specific activities and resulting in a number of discrete outcomes. The overall thrust of the model is to make planning for the future an easy-to-understand, engaging exercise in which participants intuitively grasp the purpose of the process and their role within it. Ideally, they are also challenged and motivated to learn about their community and the future.
The first step of the model addresses the question "Where are we now?". This step focuses on profiling the community as it exists in the present: describing its background and important features, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, defining current issues and concerns, and articulating shared community values. The result is a compendium of relevant data and information which provides a foundation for the entire process. The statement of values also establishes a set of qualitative criteria for evaluating new ideas or concepts that emerge during the process.
The second step addresses the question "Where are we going?". This step focuses on determining where the community is headed if current directions persist. Relevant demographic, economic, environmental and social trends are identified, and emerging issues that may confront the community are postulated. A "probable" scenario is then developed showing what the community might look like in the future if it continues on its current course with no major changes in direction. This "business-as-usual" picture of the future also provides a baseline for the development of the community's vision.
The third step addresses the question "Where do we want to be?". This step represents the core of the visioning process. The purpose is to articulate a vision of what the community wishes to become in the future. Starting from the probable scenario, a "preferred" scenario is developed showing what the community could look like in the future if it chooses to respond to identified trends and emerging issues in a manner that is consistent with its core values. Ultimately, this "realistically idealistic" picture becomes the basis of a formal vision statement, which is refined, embellished and, ideally, illustrated.
The fourth and final step addresses the question "How do we get there?". In this step the community begins planning to achieve its vision. This phase is, in essence, a self-contained strategic (or "action") planning process. It identifies short-term strategies and actions intended to move the community in the direction of its long-term vision. It also identifies groups responsible for implementing specific actions, timetables for completion of these activities, "benchmarks" for monitoring progress, and other relevant information. The resulting action plan is designed to be revised and updated several times over the lifetime of the vision.
The advantage of the Oregon Model is that it can easily be tailored to fit a variety of settings and circumstances. Virtually every community that has undertaken a visioning process based on this model has adapted the approach in some way to fit its own needs and resources. Some communities have altered the sequence of activities, while others have bypassed certain activities or added entirely new ones. In order to ensure the success of the process, however, two preliminary activities are essential: (1) establishing a "visioning framework" and (2) determining the number of scenarios to be developed as part of the process.
The idea of exploring a concept as vast and uncharted as the future can stagger the imagination. Without conceptual "boundaries" that delimit the scope of inquiry, participants in a visioning process would quickly be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information or ideas that might be considered. The challenge is to focus the process on those aspects of the future that will most directly affect the community and over which it has the greatest measure of influence. A visioning framework accomplishes this by providing a discrete "window" on the future: information "inside" the window may be drawn into the process; information "outside" lies beyond the scope of inquiry.
A visioning framework is comprised of three distinct elements: a timeframe, overall focus, and target areas of concern. Setting a timeframe involves establishing a planning "horizon" for the process. Most communities set relatively long timeframes for their visions (i.e., 20-25 years into the future) in order to emphasize the visionary nature of the process. Determining an overall focus involves identifying the central theme of the process. Such a theme may be broadly or narrowly defined depending on a community's overall concerns and interests. Identifying target areas involves breaking down the central theme into more discrete elements. These categories greatly facilitate gathering and analyzing information, creating scenarios, and developing an action plan.
The second essential activity involves determining the number of scenarios. Scenarios lie at the core of the visioning process; the number of scenarios developed strongly influence its outcomes. Not unlike the Willamette Valley Choices for the Future report, the Oregon Model uses a "single alternative" approach involving the development of two scenarios: a baseline (or probable) scenario and a single alternative (or preferred) scenario. However, a "multiple alternatives" approach can also be incorporated into the model, allowing a community to develop several alternative (or possible) scenarios before converging on a preferred alternative.
The single alternative approach is quicker and more simple, leading directly to the creation of a vision. It works well when the focus of the process is broad and the emphasis is on action. The multiple alternatives approach is more complex. However, it works well when the focus of a process is narrower and the emphasis is on exploring a number of alternatives in greater depth, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each. Like Corvallis, most Oregon communities have chosen to use the single alternative approach. A few, however, have used multiple scenarios to great effect.
Having completed these activities, the basic construct of a community's visioning process is in place. Of course, many more detailed decisions must be made in designing and implementing the process. Design decisions typically revolve around questions of scale: How much time will the process take? Who will participate? What products will result? How much will it cost to conduct? Implementation decisions focus on ensuring that the process succeeds in its mission: building political support, involving the public and, ultimately, promoting community action.
Are there inherent shortcomings in the Oregon Model? Certainly. The most common criticism of any planning effort of this nature is a perceived lack of tangible results. Visioning by nature is conceptual, and therefore, lends itself to such criticism. However, that is precisely the reason why action planning has been built into the process: planning for action makes it less likely that nothing will happen. Other measures can also be taken to ensure successful follow-through, such as forming action teams to implement key strategies, securing the support of important community "stakeholders," or concentrating on immediate, short-term successes. In the end, such details may mean the difference between failure and success.
These are the sorts of challenges that every community must grapple with in undertaking a visioning process; but they also provide the opportunities that can make visioning an engaging and rewarding enterprise. Because most communities have never been involved in anything quite like visioning, it can be a transforming experience that permanently alters their view of the future - and themselves. In Oregon, this process has enabled communities across the state to foster the kind of intelligence, imagination and cooperation that Lewis Mumford once said would be critical to our future.
Among the teachings of the Iroquois Confederacy, a centuries-old confederation of six Native American nations, is the idea of the Seventh Generation. "In our way of life, in our government, with every decision we make, we always keep in mind the Seventh Generation to come," says Chief Oren Lyons, member of the Onondaga Nation and spokesman for the Confederacy. "It's our job to see that the people coming ahead, the generations still unborn, have a world no worse than ours - and hopefully better."
This practice of bringing the abstract and distant future into present-day reality is a powerful lesson. Indeed, the extent to which we are able to give something of value to the world may be measured in how much we have considered the long-term future in our current decisions and actions. Perhaps, someday, governments everywhere will think as instinctively about the Seventh Generation as do the Iroquois peoples. Until then, their teaching offers us a noble standard from which to judge our efforts.
What has been the value of visioning in Oregon's communities? What have citizens learned about the future? What sorts of strategies and actions has this engendered? How have communities changed as a result? Ultimately, these are questions that will best be answered when the future that these communities have so consciously planned for actually arrives. In the meantime, we certainly can speculate about the early impacts that visioning has had at the local level. Four projects featured in A Guide to Community Visioning provide useful case studies on the success of community visioning to date.
Any assessment must begin, of course, with the Corvallis. Historically, local government in America has always had mixed results in the way it has involved citizens in planning. In the past, public involvement programs have all too often bred cynicism and distrust; far too many citizens have felt "planned upon." Fortunately, that is changing. With its community visioning process, Charting a Course for Corvallis (1988-89), the City of Corvallis (pop. 46,200) adopted a "proactive" paradigm of public involvement, embracing the concept that citizens are an integral part of planning for the future. Its remarkably open process invited citizens to focus their collective energy on creating positive future solutions, and, in so doing, demonstrated that Toffler's notion of anticipatory planning can work at the local level. For this achievement alone, the Corvallis effort represented a significant contribution to the planning profession.
With its long history of urban planning initiatives, the City of Portland (pop. 472,000) provided Oregon's largest, most complex and challenging setting for community visioning. Its process, Portland Future Focus (1990-92), set new standards for its sheer scale and ambitiousness. Portland's effort involved a policy committee of 55 citizens, an advisory group of 44 community leaders, a 17-member environmental scanning group, and six 20-member action planning teams. While at times unwieldy, these numbers ensured that the process addressed a broad range of community issues and incorporated opinions from all segments of the population. As a result, the community developed greater consensus on a number of emerging, sometimes controversial issues. For example, this process clearly established the community's commitment to cultural diversity at a time when reactionary elements in Oregon were rising up to threaten the state's racial and sexual minority groups.
The City of Gresham (pop. 80,000), a booming suburb of Portland, became involved in visioning for the same reasons that Oregon created the land-use planning system 20 years earlier: to address the issue of rapid growth. Its visioning process, Envision Gresham (1991-92), had to deal with a local population that was sharply divided over how much and in what ways the community should grow. Some citizens wanted the city to retain its fading rural heritage; others wanted the community to secure its share of new regional growth and development. Wisely, the City employed sophisticated survey research techniques to clarify public values and then carefully tailored its process to address these disparate concerns, developing a range of alternative scenarios before selecting a preferred alternative. Subsequently, the City conducted a second survey to validate the results. With public support clearly in hand, Gresham's final vision positioned it well to participate in the emerging dialogue on regional growth.
The City of Newberg (pop. 14,700), a small, rural community located in the wine country of Oregon's tiny Chehalem Valley provided yet another creative variation on the visioning process. With its limited resources, the city teamed up with a neighboring jurisdiction, other governmental service providers, and the local business community to conduct a visioning process for the entire valley: Chehalem Future Focus (1991-92). Working with a representative task force and a small consulting team, the city's two-person planning staff developed all of its own background information, including a survey of community values and a slide show depicting the probable future. Then, at a single public meeting attended by a large and enthusiastic crowd, the community hammered out its basic vision for the future. This vision has since been continually referenced by the city in its subsequent planning and decision-making activities.
Since these early efforts, dozens of other communities from every region of the state have become involved in community visioning, most often as a part of updating their land-use plans. Each project has resulted in new variations on the process and new innovations in its outcomes. The City of The Dalles in the Columbia River basin has used visioning to help forge greater consensus among that community's powerful and sometimes divergent interest groups. The City of Bend in central Oregon's high desert has endeavored to integrate the "Oregon Benchmarks" - a standardized system of measuring progress toward state-endorsed quality of life goals - into its local visioning efforts. The City of Mt. Angel, a small agricultural community with a unique religious heritage, has used visioning to encourage greater understanding among its various religious and ethnic groups.
As a result of all these pioneering efforts, Oregon's Department of Land Conservation and Development has come to recognize the enormous benefits of the community visioning process. Today, it is exploring new ways to integrate visioning into the state's formal land-use planning system. While the state's current political and budgetary climate makes it unlikely that visioning will become a formal requirement of local communities anytime soon, the Department is working diligently to promote and support voluntary community visioning efforts around the state. For example, it recently secured funding to establish a series of "coastal landscape" visioning demonstration projects in communities along the Oregon coast. These projects will use visioning to address state concerns over the coast's unique and increasingly threatened landforms and natural features.
Visioning has been advancing in other forums and formats, as well. Several state agencies in Oregon have adapted the visioning process to their own planning functions. Metro, the regional government for the Portland metropolitan area, recently accepted the final report of its Future Visions Commission, charged with creating a long-range vision for the entire region. This vision is now being used to support Metro's multi-year Region 2040 planning process, designed to manage and direct future regional growth into the next century. Scores of other communities around the state have incorporated elements of the visioning process into their allied planning efforts, including rural community economic development strategies, local sustainable development programs, downtown revitalization and community livability efforts.
Today, visioning has clearly entered the lexicon of planners, elected officials and citizens across Oregon. At every level of government, creating a vision for the future has become a legitimate, established, encouraged and valued endeavor. It may be too early to tell how significantly our state has been altered by the proliferation of this long-range perspective. Yet, it is quite certain that no matter what the future ultimately holds for Oregon, thanks to visioning, we will have done a better job of anticipating and planning for it than at any time in our past.
In the early 1980s, at the conclusion of the Colorado Front Range Project, a state-sponsored effort to plan for future urban growth on the east slope of the Rocky Mountains, project staff member Louise Singleton reflected on the lessons of that experience: "What we have learned in the Front Range process is that the willingness of people to spend time talking about those issues they sense are changing their lives is incredible," she said, "because they have not had the structures in place that allow them to do that. If you can provide any structure for people to have a meaningful coming-to-grips with the issues - even though you do not know the answers and you have no perfect models - you have given them a gift of unbelievable value."
Today, community visioning might be seen as such a gift - one that continues to grow in its recognition and use across the nation. It could be postulated that two distinct and powerful driving forces in American society have given rise to this phenomenon: one force, as old as this nation itself, is our society's basic democratic impulse; the other force, as new and unfolding as the latest CNN headline, is that of rapid change. In the final years of the 20th century, these two forces have converged on America's local communities.
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of society but the people themselves," Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." The Jeffersonian spirit, a virtual canon of American society, is as compelling today as it was over two centuries ago. The American people know in their bones they are the ultimate source of power. Yet, democracy is a learned system of government - one that must continually be informed in order to function.
Since the 1970s, American society, like the rest of the industrial world, has experienced a flood of change quite unlike anything in the history of civilization. In both appearance and reality, this change has accelerated and intensified. Powerful demographic, technological and economic trends are sweeping the planet, transforming everything in their wake. Paradoxically, as change has become more globalized, it has also become more localized. Once, major social, economic and political institutions all reinforced the centralization of power. Today, a countervailing trend of decentralization is moving in the opposite direction. Responsibility, if not power, is becoming more local.
America has always been a country of self-invention and nowhere is this more visible than in its local communities. However, as our communities are drawn into the 21st century, this unique quality will be put to the test by the forces of change. Reflecting the Jeffersonian notion of "laboratories of democracy," local communities across the country must continually find new ways to re-invent themselves in the face of change. New democratic structures are needed that match the reality of our times - structures that enable communities to inform their discretion as they anticipate and plan for the future. Hopefully, community visioning will provide one such structure.
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Bridging to the New Century: Portland Future Focus Strategic Plan, Portland Future Focus, City of Portland, Portland, Oregon, August, 1991.
Charting a Course for Corvallis: A Case Study in Community Visioning, Oregon Visions Project, Steven C. Ames, American Planning Association (Oregon Chapter), Gresham, Oregon, May 1989.
Choices for Oregon's Future: A Handbook on Alternative Scenarios for Oregon Planners, Steven C. Ames, Oregon Visions Project, American Planning Association (Oregon Chapter), Gresham, Oregon, June 1989.
Critical Choices for Greater Portland, Steven C. Ames, Editor, Columbia Willamette Futures Forum, Portland, Oregon, May 1983.
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Future Focus 2010: A Vision Statement About Corvallis, Corvallis Planning Division, City of Corvallis, Oregon, 1989.
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A Guide to Community Visioning: Hands-On Information for Local Communities, Steven C. Ames, Editor, Oregon Visions Project, American Planning Association (Oregon Chapter), Portland, Oregon, 1993.
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Land-Use Planning in Oregon: A No-Nonsense Handbook in Plain English, Mitch Rohse, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon, 1987.
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The Visioning Handbook: A Hands-On Guide for Planners & Facilitators in State and Federal Natural Resource Agencies, Steven C. Ames, Division of Federal Aid, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Arlington, Virginia, 1993.
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Steven C. Ames is a consulting futurist and principal of Steven Ames Planning, a Portland, Oregon firm providing long-range and strategic planning services to public sector clients in the United States and Canada. Much of his work focuses on the development of long range plans, as well as assisting organizations in understanding the impact of emerging trends. He has worked extensively with local governments, federal and state agencies, state court systems, and institutions of higher education.
Mr. Ames' background in community "visioning" is extensive. In Oregon, Mr. Ames facilitated the visioning element of Portland Future Focus, the City of Portland's first community-wide strategic planning process. He has also consulted with the visioning efforts of numerous other Oregon communities. In Canada, he consulted in the design of a community-based visioning process for the 350 municipalities of Alberta province sponsored by the Alberta Ministry of Municipal Affairs. He is currently the consultant for the Flagstaff 2020 Project in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Mr. Ames is the chairman of the Oregon Visions Project, a standing committee of the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA). He has authored three Oregon Visions Project reports, including A Guide to Community Visioning, (1993) winner of the national APA's 1995 Chapter Achievement Award.
Mr. Ames has long been involved in futures research. He was a founding member of the Columbia Willamette Futures Forum, one of the nation's first citizen-based futures research groups, and author of its 1983 report Critical Choices for Greater Portland. He also advised the Oregon State Commission on Futures Research, contributing to its 1986 report Emerging Trends: New Perspectives for the Year 2010.
Mr. Ames holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Drew University and a Masters Degree in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan. He has also studied with faculty members of the London School of Economics in London, England.