Involving Citizens in Delray Beach
from Getting Power by Giving it Away, by Otis White (Planning Commissioners Journal #18, Spring 1995)

Delray Beach is a small city on Florida's Atlantic coast, not far from West Palm Beach. There are 50,000 residents -- and 65 neighborhood associations. There are also 17 community advisory boards and another dozen or so business groups and task forces. If your neighborhood or interest group doesn't have an association, the city of Delray Beach will send over a community development specialist to help organize one.

No, city leaders aren't crazy. They've merely discovered that the more organized their citizens are -- and the more intimately they're involved in community problem-solving -- the more progress the city makes. Delray Beach uses these associations to work on community problems. And Delray has made a lot of progress in the past decade, from restoring its downtown, to bolstering its schools, to turning around its racial problems. In 1993, it was named an All-America City by the National Civic League.

Delray Beach isn't the only place where a link has been found between government effectiveness, economic development, quality of life, and citizen participation. Robert D. Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, recently completed a study of local governments in Italy. His conclusion: The more citizens interact with one another and the government as citizens and equals, not clients, the healthier the community and stronger the government.

There's an important lesson here for planning commissioners. By itself, a planning commission has limited powers. But allied with an involved and supportive community, its powers can be enormous.

Otis White is president of Civic Strategies, Inc., a collaborative and strategic planning firm specializing in community leadership issues. He is based in Atlanta. White has authored several articles for the Planning Commissioners Journal, most recently, Should You Run? in Issue #33, Winter 1999.

Mapping Engages Citizens
from Sharing the Map: Public Involvement in Concept Planning, by Robert Potter & Evelyn Swimmer (Planning Commissioners Journal #29, Winter 1998)

"The concept plan is an old and reliable tool of landscape architects and planners. It is basically a site map with key areas identified showing spatial relationships of proposed land uses and circulation patterns. Its chief purpose is to graphically communicate concepts to people who are involved in one way or another in the planning process.

The concept plan is normally prepared by a professional and then presented to the community for discussion. Our experience has indicated that there is another way to do this. By asking local citizens to share their ideas during the creation of these plans, a more productive two-way communication is established between professionals and participants. Instead of reacting to the plan, the community pro-actively creates the plan. The results are more meaningful to the community. Most importantly, people will support their own ideas.

[the balance of the article discusses how citizens of Bristol, Pennsylvania, helped to literally map out their vision for the community's future]

Although the mapping exercise was only one part of the overall Bristol project ... it was a time when communication flowed easily and productively among citizens and community leaders. As the remainder of the project unfolded and culminated in a final town meeting, the task force, the planning commission, and the borough council had confidence in the existence of a consensus. This consensus would support them as they implemented the plan."

Both Evelyn Swimmer and Robert Potter work for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of the National Park Service, Evelyn as a landscape architect and Robert as a planner. Evelyn and Robert have co-authored (along with several others) the "Riverwork Book" a manual on how local communities can develop effective strategies for protecting their river-related resources.

People Will Help If Asked
from Growing Volunteers, by M. Eileen Hennessy (Planning Commissioners Journal #6, September/October 1992)

"Although most planning commissions are appointed by the elected body, there should be other committees engaged in research work, surveys, and so on -- work that needs to be done. Planning boards cannot do it all. Your planning commission should keep a list of projects on which you could use additional help, and make it available to others, including elected officials and community leaders.

It has been my experience that people will help if asked. Volunteers do not need to be interested in becoming future planning commissioners. In fact, some might not have the qualifications to serve in the position you do. But that doesn't mean they can't provide useful assistance. When asking for help, however, limit your expectations to what can realistically be expected. Perhaps one day of giving a field walk around their neighborhood to those working on developing a plan for that part of the community. Or perhaps someone loves genealogical research; their skills might be transferable to historical research or data collection.

Ad hoc committees are valuable as training grounds for strong community volunteers. Make a habit of asking new or different people to help on something short-term before they are asked to sit on a commission or board for a multi-year term. Some of today's most valued community leaders were once those "new faces" who were just waiting to be asked.

Eileen Hennessy is director of public relations for Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. Eileen previously served as planning and community development director for the Town of Pelham, New Hampshire and Stokes County, North Carolina, and as a planner working with towns and regional planning commissions across Vermont.

Teaching Citizens About Planning
from Citizen Planning Academies, by Michael Chandler (Planning Commissioners Journal #29, Winter 1998)

"Each October, Virginia Tech co-sponsors a three-day training institute for planning commissioners. During the 1995 program, we featured a session entitled "Does Virginia Need a Citizen's Planning Academy?" Our goal was to describe a way of allowing citizens to learn about planning in a non-threatening environment (i.e., outside the context of a heated public hearing). Two county planning commissions took up the challenge and, in the fall of 1996, sponsored citizen planning academies (CPAs).

Hanover County is located immediately north of Henrico County and Richmond. It includes a range of urban, suburban, and rural areas. Over the past twenty years it has experienced tremendous growth pressure from the Richmond metropolitan area.

The Hanover County Planning Commission and Planning Department sponsored the Citizen's Planning Academy, with assistance from Virginia Tech. Hanover County's reason for sponsoring the CPA centered on a desire to enable county residents to learn more about the planning process and planning issues. The Planning Commission also felt that by building interest in planning, more citizens might choose to get actively involved in future county planning activities and studies.

The Hanover academy was offered in the evening during the workweek. Each session lasted three hours, and each was held in a different part of the county. Planning staff suggested this approach to help emphasize to participants both the need for a countywide perspective and the range of planning issues facing the county.

As a prelude to the first session, each participant received a copy of the county land use plan. ... the first session focused on the basics of planning, and included a review of the planning process, background on the history of planning in the county, and a discussion of present day planning challenges.

During the second session the Hanover County attorney reviewed planning's legal foundations, after which a private consultant and faculty from Virginia Tech discussed basic planning tools, such as zoning and subdivision regulation.

Session #3 introduced the class to some of the participants in the planning process. County planning staff, members of the planning commission and governing body, and others described their role in the planning process. ...

The last two sessions of the Hanover County CPA shifted from a lecture to group participation format. During these sessions each group was asked to develop a list of planning issues likely to face the county over the next ten years, and then to work on a future land use. ... participants then compared their maps (and found many similarities). Session #5 also focused on the role visioning and thinking creatively plays in the planning process.

A fundamental goal of the citizens planning academy concept is to help educate, inform, and involve citizens in the community planning process. While King George County and Hanover County took somewhat different approaches to implementing their first citizens planning academies, both found the experience to be quite productive."

Planning Outside of City Hall
from Challenges and Opportunities, by Bruce W. McClendon (Planning Commissioners Journal #15, Summer 1994)

"The largest employer in this county is the non-profit sector. It is estimated that one out of every two adult Americans works as a volunteer -- most in addition to holding paying jobs. As much as 15 percent of the gross national product is accounted for by unpaid work for non-profit organizations. Such organizations are able to get more results out of the same resources than either the public or the private sector.

Interest in volunteerism continues to grow and it is one of the positive trends we need to capitalize on. Increasingly, it is being recognized that the most effective planning is taking place outside city hall or the county offices and is being done by non-professionals. Planners need to focus on participatory planning that fosters pride and ownership, self-responsibility and empowerment. As recently suggested by Henry Cisneros, "Planners must plan more 'for and with people' and less for projects."

Bruce McClendon is the Director of the Planning and Development Division of Orange County, Florida, and author of Mastering Change and Customer Service in Local Government, both published by the American Planning Association.