Planning Commissioners Journal

The Next Generation of Your Planning Commission

From: Wayne Senville, Editor, PCJ, editor@plannersweb.com

I asked Kit Hodge, who is CEO of the Neighbors Project, if she'd be willing to write an article for the Planning Commissioners Journal, sharing her thoughts on ways in which local planning commissions can seek out younger members -- in particular, younger "Generation Xers" (born 1965-1980) and older "Millenials" (1981-1999). The Neighbors Project focuses on creative ways of involving people in their 20s and 30s in the civic life of their neighborhoods and cities.

We're reprinting below Kit's article, from our just-published Spring '08 issue. Consider posting your thoughts or feedback after you read her short article. What works best for involving younger generations in local planning? And do younger commissioners bring different "generational" perspectives?

The Changing Climate of Smart Growth

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

It wasn't all that long ago that when you heard talk of smart growth, it focused on reducing sprawl in order to preserve farmland and open space, reduce infrastructure investment costs, and develop more walkable, livable neighborhoods with a mix of uses. Certainly, that's still integral to smart growth. But one new element seems to have come to the fore of the smart growth agenda: climate change.

Yes, minimizing energy consumption has always been part of smart growth's aims, but if this February's national Smart Growth Conference in Washington, D.C., is any indicator, climate change and global warming are now an important way of "framing" the benefits of smart growth.

The Conference's opening plenary session, titled "Let's Change the Climate," was specifically oriented to how smart growth can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This was immediately followed by a session headed up by Conference honoree Dr. Richard Jackson on "Climate Change, Public Health and Smart Growth." And many other conference sessions also paid attention to the link between climate change and smart growth.

During the Let's Change the Climate panel discussion, Steve Winkelman, the Transportation Program Director for the Center for Clean Air Policy (and co-author of Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change) directly made the point that framing climate change as the major issue we're facing as a nation can help promote smart growth principles. Or as panelist Jemae Hoffman (head of Sustainable Transportation and Climate Change in the Seattle Dept. of Transportation) put it, "climate change is another good [reason] to do what we all want to do," adding that it is also "putting pressure on us to move faster on transportation issues."

Indeed, putting climate change on the front burner elevates the focus on transportation policy, especially efforts to reduce vehicle miles traveled. After all, it is the transportation sector (through motor vehicle fuel use) that is in most places the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, during the Conference sesssion Winkelman noted we'll soon "need to get to vehicle miles traveled taxes."

Here's to Your Health (part II)

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

In Monday's post I wrote about the new health element in Richmond, California's general plan. But this focus on the relationship between public health and planning isn't just some California thing. At this month's national Smart Growth Conference, dozens of health professionals from across the country were in attendance, making connections with planners and local officials.

Take Columbus, Ohio. Planner Christina Godward (on left) was hired last year by Dr. Teresa Long, the city's health commissioner, to serve as the Public Health Department's "Healthy Places Coordinator." Godward's job is to bridge the gap between public health professionals and planners -- and also to work with neighborhoods to promote healthier living. As Long put it, "we needed a boundary spanner, someone with one foot in public health and the other in planning."

During the Conference, Godward described the "language" barriers between health and planning professionals, each with its own jargon and areas of emphasis. But a focus on increasing walkability and bikeability seems to be working. As she observed, "physical activity is something everyone 'gets,' adding that "it's hard to argue with health!"

One project has involved developing basic neighborhood walking maps.

The focus is on providing a simple map that indicates common daily destinations and possible walking routes within neighborhoods. (You can visit the site and download a map to see what they're like).

Here's to Your Health

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

One of the fascinating themes at this February's national Smart Growth Conference in Washington, D.C., was the connection between public health and planning. Health professionals, as well as planners, are increasingly recognizing the benefits of collaboration.

Richard Mitchell, Planning Director of Richmond, California (on right), Tracy Rattray of the Contra Costa County Health Service Department (left below), and planning consultant Daniel Iacofano spoke about work recently completed on adding a "health element" to the City's general plan.

Richmond is a city of 102,000 on the East Bay, north of Oakland. It faces some pressing public health issues, from the impacts of crime, to injuries to bicyclists and pedstrians caused by motorists, to concerns about industrial contaminants, to concerns about sedentary lifestyles leading to poor health.

In fact, in hearing what's in their plan's new health element, I was amazed by its breadth. Beyond issues such as access to medical services and to healthy foods, the plan also covers concerns as diverse as promoting "green and sustainable" development, providing improved access to public transit, and ensuring quality affordable housing.

The health element also contains a wealth of data, some of which was displayed during the Conference session. One example: maps showing "hot spots" where there have been a number of accidents involving bicyclists or pedestrians. As Rattray explained, this kind of mapped data will be valuable for the city in prioritizing where to make streetscape safety improvements.

Rattray made another quite interesting observation -- one I heard echoed by others at the Conference -- public health professionals add credibility to discussions about development, placing, as she put it, "environmental justice front and center."

One of the issues facing Richmond is alcohol use and its impact on neighborhoods. Background reserach for the health element indicated that: "The density of alcohol outlets correlates with density of ...

Revised & Expanded "Planning Law"

From PCJ General Manager Betsey Krumholz:

We're pleased to announce the publication of our newly revised Taking a Closer Look: Planning Law reprint collection.

You'll find a number of the top articles we've published on basic legal issues facing planners and planning commissions, as well as a section containing five articles dealing with various aspects of property rights & takings. 

I invite you to take a look at the detailed contents of this publication. You can order online or by calling our office at: 802-864-9083 (best between 9am and 3pm Eastern time). Local government orders can request to be invoiced when phoning in their order.

Real Time, Real Value

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

Residents of Richmond, Virginia, have immediate access -- via their personal computers -- to two remarkable sources of information:

• RichmondCrime: a crime information resource that allows anyone to see the location of crime reports and learn the nature of the crime.
• Vacant Richmond, which allows anyone to see the location of vacant properties and find out who owns them.

What's perhaps most amazing is that this resource was developed by concerned citizens, not by city government or a large organization.

Above map is posted on the Oregon Hill web site -- Oregon Hill is one of Richmond's neighborhoods; when you go to their site and click on one of the "flags," the nature of the crime is indicated; you can also choose whatever time frame you want for viewing crime reports. And, you can zoom in or out.

Ross Catrow, who helped put together RichmondCrime and Vacant Richmond, is co-owner of PharrOut, a Richmond-based web design and development company. Why put together this information, I asked? Catrow's reply: "We love Richmond, so projects like RichmondCrime are exciting for us." Catrow's interest grew out of his seeing what he believes was the first web site of this kind: ChicagoCrime.org.

How's it done? One key is that Richmond City has freely available crime incident reporting data. This

Making Introductions

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

Planning commissions are an integral part of local participatory democracy in communities across the country. One of their most important functions is to provide an outlet for residents -- and business owners -- to voice their concerns and provide feedback on land use and development issues.

As we all know, this is not always pretty. People sometimes vent their anger during planning commission meetings. Planning commissioners can be the target for verbal abuse and hostility. And this is despite the fact that the vast majority of local planning commissioners receive no pay (or just a negligible per diem) and are serving on the commission to "contribute" their time and energy to their community. As we've noted before, planning commissioners are too often under-appreciated given the amount of time and dedicated effort they put in.

Those of us who have served on planning commissions know the importance of "keeping our cool" during a heated public meeting. Of course, that advice can be hard to keep in mind in the midst of a meeting. And it can be equally hard to show respect to members of the public who fail to show respect to those on the commission. But during my travels across the U.S. this Summer, I had the opportunity to see several planning commissions in action -- and I was gratified by what I saw.

One of the most important steps a commission can take is to set the right tone for the meeting at its outset.

In O'Fallon, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis, planning commission chair Gene McCoskey did just that during the commission meeting I attended this past June. Taking just a few minutes, McCoskey (on the right in the inset photo below) provided those attending the planning commission meeting with an orientation to the meeting -- including brief introductions, a review of how the meeting would be run, and what the planning commission's role is. These opening remarks set the tone for a civil and productive meeting.

McCoskey and his fellow commissioners also listened intently during lengthy, often angry, public comments about a development proposal on the evening's agenda. They asked a few questions to clarify points, but basically sat and listened, and then offered the developer and his team the chance to respond. By showing an open mind and being respectful to all, the commission left those attending -- whatever side they were on -- knowing that they were heard.

Just as providing introductory remarks and listening respectfully is important, so is having plenty of copies of the agenda and any staff recommendations on hand. It also makes sense, if at all possible, to have these available online in advance of the meeting.

Yes, it takes a time commitment to do all this. But it can pay dividends not just in facilitating meetings, but in sending a message to residents that local goverment cares about their input, and is not trying to hide anything from view.

Note: In the Fall issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal, Elaine Cogan also wrote about the importance of the first few minutes of a commission meeting. I'm setting out excerpts from her article below. The full article is available to order and download.

Where We Sit

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

Planning commissioners, as well as elected officials, probably don't think much about their meeting room and the impact it can have on citizens. But meeting rooms -- especially the raised dais that commissioners and elected officials are typically seated on -- can have an intimidating effect on citizens, especially those who rarely (if ever) attend government meetings.

Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu touched on this recently: "The defining moment for Josh Daines came while standing before the Des Moines City Council last summer, beseeching members to remove one of their own who had ties to the CIETEC scandal. The diminutive Daines recalls looking up at the members and feeling intimidated, even with two master's degrees and his own marketing business. ... 'There is a reason why those City Council seats are so high,' quips the 37-year-old Daines. 'You look up at them while they're speaking and they're looking down at you. There is a perception that they are very powerful and you are just a citizen.' " (Nov. 2, 2007).

Quip or not, I know from my own experience speaking before our City Council here in Burlington, Vermont, I still feel pretty tense going up to the podium and seeing the fourteen City Councilors arrayed on an elevated platform -- and that's despite the fact I know most of the Councilors!

In Mesa County, Colorado, I sat in on a meeting of the Planning Commission held in an ornate, but quite large and formal room. Besides being well elevated, the Commissioners were set far back from the public and at a sharp angle. See the photos below.

This made for a challenging setting. And you could see some of those citizens going up to the lectern look more than a little nervous.

Long-time Planning Commissioners Journal columnist Elaine Cogan has also commented on this. "Most planning commissions hold their meetings in rooms that are designed -- purposefully or not -- to intimidate the public. Commissioners sit on a raised dais, often built of fine, imported wood, high above and yards away from anyone who might want to approach them."

If at all possible -- especially when designing a new meeting space -- try to hold your meetings in a more relaxed setting. This will make those attending feel more comfortable in what for them may already be a tense situation.

Of course, many planning commissions are stuck using existing meeting rooms that are far from ideal. But there are other things you can do to create a more welcoming environment. Take Mesa County. While the setting, as I noted, was imposing, Chairman Mark Bonella did a great job in creating a less formal atmosphere by welcoming citizens when they came to the lectern, and reassuring those who seemed nervous. The effective use of video monitors in the Mesa County chamber also made it easy for everyone attending to see the same documents the commissioners were viewing on their laptops.

I'll lay out some more ideas for creating a welcoming atmosphere in my next post.

On Dialogue

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

While I was attending the Upper Midwest APA Conference in Dubuque, Iowa, to speak about "Planning Conversations from Coast to Coast" (reporting on my Route 50 travels this Summer), I also sat in on some fascinating sessions.

Several focused on ways in which planners can promote dialogue. A wide array of techniques were discussed, with names like: study circles; world cafe; appreciative inquiry (something I just reported on); future search; and open space technology (and this "open space" has nothing to do with open space and farmland preservation!).

One of the key goals of all these techniques, as David Boyd (a Senior Planner for MSA Professional Services) put it, is to "create trust."

Linda Stoll of the Center for Land Use Education in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, picked up on this, and noted that it's important to be clear on your goals and on the public's role in the process. The worst thing planners can do is sell the importance of public participation and then ignore what people had to say.

Anna Haines, Director of the Center for Land Use Education (photo on left) described the use of study circles in several Wisconsin communities. Community members met informally in small groups of eight to twelve, plus a facilitator, once a week focusing on a specific topic -- in this case, how their communities might become more ecologically oriented. This allowed time for learning -- both from shared resource materials and from each other.

As Haines noted, you can get creative results from bringing a diverse group of people together in this way -- while building a stronger sense of community.

Another technique many of you probably haven't heard of (I certainly hadn't until recently) is called "open space technology."

As Stoll explained, it's a process "wholly owned and run by the participants." Those attending set the agenda for the day, lead the discussions, and come up with the results. In other words, the public runs the show. It can be a dynamic process, Stoll noted, suitable to gatherings of even hundreds of people. The technique works best, she added, "when people feel impassioned about the topic." [for a bit more on open space technology, see a post on the eParticipation blog].

But those in government often have cold feet about sponsoring this kind of "participant-driven" process, Stoll acknowledged, since they "must be willing to live with what the participants create."

Frank DiNovo, of the Champaign County (Illinois) Regional Planning Commission spoke about his county's experience with "deliberative democracy" in a major visioning project called big.small.all. DiNovo stressed the importance of it being a public-private collaboration. He also noted that "what gets people to attend meetings is phone calls, not publicity" -- a good reminder about the value of those time-consuming, but essential, personal contacts.

I came out of both the CommunityMatters and Upper Midwest APA conferences excited to hear that planners and others are thinking creatively about ways to promote community dialogue. I'd welcome feedback from any of you with experience in one of these participatory techniques, either as an organizer or participant. What works ... and what doesn't.

p.s. David Boyd suggested the following Web sites as good resources on dialogue and participatory techniques:

• www.thataway.org (the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation)
• www.studycircles.org (Study Circles Resource Center)
• www.nifi.org (National Issues Forums)
• www.americaspeaks.org (America Speaks)
• www.publicagenda.org (Public Agenda)

Also see my previous post The Power of Ten about another excellent Conference session

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!

Accentuate the Positive

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

Remember the Johnny Mercer tune ...
"You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative"

That might well have been one of the themes of the CommunityMatters07 Conference last week in Burlington, Vermont.

Ever hear about "appreciative inquiry"? Laverne Webb, one of its practitioners, described its value for planners as "an approach that helps people and communities change at the speed of imagination."

As Webb explained, appreciative inquiry asks communities to focus on what's working -- not what's wrong. "How can we do more of what's working?" is the key question.

Webb finds that focusing on factors of success instead of on problems is less threatening, and more productive. She put it to planners this way: "We're trained as problem solvers to fix things ... what we don't do as well in planning is understand what creates strengths and assets. But understanding this gives us greater resilience in dealing with problems." In other words, appreciative inquiry gets at problem solving "through the back door."

Webb outlined how this process was used a few years ago in Dubuque, Iowa, to deal with challenging customer service problems facing the city's Housing Services Department (coincidentally, I was soon to visit Dubuque).

Some 220 individuals were interviewed, including tenants, landlords, local officials, lenders, social service professionals, neighborhood leaders, and others.

[downtown Dubuque in photo to the left]

Instead of asking citizens to identify problems and focus on the negative, they were asked:
-- "what do you most value about living in Dubuque?"
-- "what was the best customer service experience you've had in dealing with housing services?"
-- "tell us what three wishes you have to best improve customer service in the housing department?"

These questions provided a wealth of information ("stories," as Webb puts it) on what's working and can be built on -- and (indirectly) on what's not working.

By accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, Webb believes the resulting Dubuque Housing Summit was much more productive -- and greater consensus was reached on needed changes.

For more details on the Dubuque process (2 page pdf article).

Other sessions I attended also echoed the "accentuate the positive" theme. Two examples:

-- Randy Hester spoke of his experience in working with residents of a small North Carolina town on preserving the "sacred structure" of the community -- those places that residents "would most miss if they lost them." To Hester, identifying what is of most value yields energy and imagination in finding ways to preserve these places.

-- Planning consultant Jim Segedy, FAICP (photo on right) observed that one of the best ways of fighting sprawl is by strengthening our downtowns. "We can deal with sprawl if there's a better destination ... downtown."

"You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between"

A Businessman Calls for Heart & Soul

From PCJ Editor Wayne Senville:

Lyman Orton is a highly successful entrepreneur, one of the owners of the Vermont Country Store. While Orton's business -- founded by his parents Vrest and Ellen Orton in 1946 -- does operate two country stores in the small towns of Weston and Rockingham, Vermont, its primary source of revenue is through its national mail order and online business.

There are not many from the business community who, like Lyman Orton, have invested their time (and money) in promoting local planning. At this past week's CommunityMatters07 Conference he described what first got him interested in planning.

It involved a proposal to build "Wildlife Wonderland" -- a tourist-oriented attraction to be filled with African wildlife -- in his home town of Weston, Vermont (population about 600). Orton, who was a member of the Weston planning commission at the time, recounts that the project split the community, with some looking forward to the local revenue benefits, and others aghast at what was being proposed and how it could totally change the character of the town.

While a variation of the project was approved (substituting Vermont wildlife for African), Wildlife Wonderland went bankrupt within a year.

But the whole episode left Orton wondering why the town wasn't better prepared to deal with a proposal like this, and why the town plan hadn't provided more guidance on the town's core values.

Orton's Wildlife Wonderland experience certainly helped shape his (and his friend Noel Fritzinger's) 1995 decision to form the Orton Family Foundation, a non-profit with a mission of helping citizens and local goverments in small towns and rural areas "better define and shape the futures of their towns."

As Orton observed at the Conference, a town plan needs to focus on the "heart and soul" of the community. But most town plans, he noted, include "no statement of the things that really matter to us."

The focus on the CommunityMatters Conference was on ways of getting at the heart and soul of the community -- and I'll touch on several of the quite interesting presentations in my next posting. For now, let me at least steer you to the recently released Orton Family Foundation publication, Planning for Community Heart and Soul: A Review of Tools, Processes and Practitioners (available to download). As the report notes:

"A major block to planning with heart and soul is the difficulty of even defining many of the concepts involved. Communities vary immensely in their landscapes, citizens, histories, and resources, all of which contribute to sense of character. Communities and organizations also have very different ways of describing that character; heart and soul is alternatively described as community character, values, community identity, and sense of place, to name a few, and those terms are not even used in consistent ways.

However heart and soul is defined, it is impossible to identify and protect universal character without also defining community, agreement, protect, citizen, implement, and other words that we rarely pause to contemplate. ... Most planning focuses on discrete, quantifiable, and physical elements of a community; it is much more difficult to plan for something as abstruse as friendliness, healthiness, or rural feeling."

I found the above especially interesting given that much of what I heard about during my six weeks of conversations with planners and planning commissioners this Summer involved discussions about community identity, sense of place, and quality of life. I also reported on the challenges facing one small town (Middleburg, Virginia) and one small city (Gunnison, Colorado) facing major development proposals.

In his remarks, Lyman Orton noted that "we need to challenge the single-minded notion that if it's good for the economy, we must approve it." Coming from a  citizen planner who is also a highly successful businessman, those are words to especially take note of.