Planning in the Public Domain
It seems that communities and organizations everywhere are continually buffeted by a host of trends, pressures and occasional crises that demand immediate, focused attention - and a timely response. If you’re a local elected leader or a nonprofit manager in upstate New York, it probably won’t take you too long to think of a half-dozen examples.
- Fifty neighbors get together and present a petition to the town board, asking for - no, demanding - public water supply.
- Or a new law like Sarbanes-Oxley comes down the pike, and your community-based nonprofit has to figure out all the ramifications of compliance - and quickly.
- Or that congested highway ribbon in the next town over is pushing your way, and developers are already beginning to buy up productive farmland in your town. What do they plan to do? Who knows? When will something happen? Sooner than you think.
Local leaders and administrators do their best to meet these varied challenges, and on the whole I think they do a commendable job. It is frequently noted that crisis can be the mother (or is it the father?) of opportunity. While it is true we often see salutary outcomes - even from time to time some truly innovative solutions - in response to crisis, nevertheless there is a disturbing tendency to plan more and more in response to today’s crises rather than in pursuit of a shared vision for tomorrow.
I am talking about the difference between reactive and proactive planning - a difference which has all the world to do with making communities truly sustainable in the long run. Reactive planning can fix an immediate problem, but only proactive planning can forge a shared vision for a sustainable future.
Why is sustainable development rarely achievable through reactive planning approaches which respond only to the exigencies of the moment? At the risk of sounding flippant, it’s because they respond only to the exigencies of the moment! Sustainable development requires a comprehensive approach, and reactive planning tends to focus narrowly on the crisis at hand. Sustainable development requires a community vision generated from broad-based community input, and that requires a healthy level of productive civic engagement. Civic engagement may take many forms, from attendance at public workshops to filling out a community visioning survey.
Reactive planning rarely relies on anything like systematic community visioning, because by definition it occurs only in response to a specific need or threat. That need or threat is already palpably clear to one and all (so the reasoning goes), so why waste time analyzing it? And indeed, many a community project is successfully brought to the point of ribbon-cutting this way. And yes, almost all of them certainly satisfy a real need or mitigate a real threat.
But here at Sustainable-NY.org we aim to cultivate communities with vision. Communities that know where they want to go, and have a plan to get there. Indeed, not just a plan, but a community consensus.
These remarks are aimed at community leaders of all stripes - those who hold elective office as well as those who volunteer their time on their community’s behalf - and also the leaders who run community-based human service organizations throughout the state. While I’ve employed here some of the most popular “buzz words” in planning and community development, I hope that in doing so I’ve been able to place them in a more meaningful context for you; one which community leaders in upstate New York hopefully can relate to.
Take the time to find out more about community visioning at these great websites:
- Mapping the Future: From the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs, this program was awarded the 2005 Outstanding Program award by the Community Development Society (CDS), in recognition of “superior programming that exemplifies and positively influences community development practice.” And though we are here in upstate New York, the basic principles transfer very nicely.
- The Community Tool Box: From the University of Kansas, The Community Tool Box is designed to “promote community health and development by connecting people, ideas and resources.” Many useful tools and tips here, including a model for community change and improvement that can be replicated in your community.
- Community and Economic Development Tool Box: From the Community and Rural Development Institute at Cornell University, here’s a tool box that contains a wealth of great resources, including a Community Visioning Notebook which will guide you through the whole visioning process, with important observations on the nuances you should be aware of.
Postscript: The title of this blog entry actually comes from a book I read in grad school; you can browse it here, and you can buy it at your favorite bookseller. It’s a pretty academic treatise which most professional planners are probably already familiar with. Today’s blog entry is simply my riff on the topic, not necessarilly trying to summarize the book, but hopefully reaching a wider audience with some valuable observations on planning.
Tools for Communities | Chris Nill | 24 July 2008 |
