The Power of Ten

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

Getting citizens excited and involved in planning for the future of their community: that's the fondest wish of many planners. During the Upper Midwest APA Conference I heard about a great approach to this -- Envision Dubuque.

Nancy Van Milligen, President of the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque described the project. At its heart is a simple, but powerful, bottom line: come up with ten big ideas that could be accomplished by 2010. Notice that small number, just ten -- not the dozens (or hundreds) of ideas that many planning efforts come up with. Also notice the word "big" -- that's another key to the project.

Working with the Dubuque Area Chamber of Commerce, the Community Foundation stressed broad community involvement. Four hundred and twenty Dubuquers showed up for the kick-off breakfast on July 8, 2005 -- the start of the nine month project.

The aim was to generate lots of ideas, and then whittle them down to those with the most support and biggest potential impact.

And that's what happened. Some 2332 ideas made the first listing, generated at a series of community meetings. After the number was reduced to 100, a large community meeting took place where Dubuquers -- using hand-held voting devices -- narrowed the list to 30.

Then a 21-member Selection Committee (11 men and 10 women) representing a cross-section of the community took over, meeting weekly for nine months to get the list of big ideas down to ten. (For more on the Steering Committee). It must have been an exciting time, as Van Milligen called it "the greatest Committee I ever served on." Central to the Committee meetings was "coming up with specific ideas that could be accomplished."

To help ensure follow-up, "the day we announced the 10 big ideas," Van Milligen said, "we had big tables set up, one for each big idea, where committees formed and people committed to working on them."

One of the ten final ideas: move to Phase II of the riverfront development -- including expansion of the Mississippi River Museum; a river research center; a children's museum; a large-screen theater; and additional amenities.

One of the benefits of project, Van Milligen noted, has been "to give legs to the ideas" and build a constituency for them. In fact, the ten big ideas cover a fascinating range of issues. They're listed on the Envision Dubuque web site.

Van Milligen pointed to one of the ten ideas: build a community health center.

This idea had been talked about for years, but nothing much had happened. But as a result of it being named one of the ten Envision Dubuque ideas -- with the support of the full community now behind it -- a major private donor stepped forward to help make the health center a reality, and several grants have been obtained.

Also critically important to the success of the project was extensive media coverage, Van Milligen stressed. Both the daily newspaper and local TV regularly reported on Envision events and the paper included a special insert with information on the ten final ideas.

Getting strong media coverage wasn't taken for granted, Van Milligen noted, and the project sponsors put considerable effort into getting coverage (providing "theater" in the form of exciting events related to the project.) The media coverage, in turn, helped build community involvement and excitement about Envision Dubuque.

The power of ten!