> Vision Activities: Within this activity, the practitioner’s responsibility is to provide information and updates on the status of the vision, the state of the community, and progress toward implementation.
Measure and communicate progress – Continuing to monitor, measure, and report the status of implementation or progress toward the vision is a powerful tool for continuing efforts and adjusting priorities. Communicating progress may mean developing performance measures and indicators or may include anecdotal stories of success that help inspire action.
The Denver Regional Council of Governments’ Measuring Progress: Regional Performance Measures and Indicators, report evaluates progress made toward Metro Vision goals.
> Reaching Stakeholders: The following tools and techniques may be relevant when sharing information, gathering feedback, and collaborating with stakeholders.
Stakeholder outreach is a critical component of communicating progress and assisting in maintaining public support and interest in the project. On line resources, publications, and visualizations are effective techniques to help distribute information and progress reports to wide audiences in a compelling and accessible way.
Practitioners may consider these questions when assessing outreach tools:
How can we best communicate to stakeholders the vision’s progress, performance, and achievements?
How can we best involve those stakeholders in contributing towards the implementation of the vision?
Public Meetings – Provide opportunities to gather members of the public, agencies, and interested parties to learn more about a vision process and to provide input. Meeting formats vary but key elements include informative speakers and presentations, facilitated exchanges or group discussions, and broad outreach through publicized and accessible meeting locations. See FHWA’s Outreach Guide.
Speaker Bureaus – Involve volunteers or project staff actively seeking opportunities to address public and private organizations on behalf of a visioning process. Speakers provide additional advocacy for the vision and are the visible public champions of an effort. Stakeholders should be given the opportunity to request briefings, or staff may actively seek out stakeholders as part of a targeted outreach program.
Project Web site – Enables easy access to critical information, news and events, and key staff. When regularly maintained and updated, web sites can be used as primary means of organizing, publishing, communicating, or soliciting comments. See the web site of Vision North Texas or Yampa Valley, Vision 2030 Report.
Webinars and Videos – Expand opportunities for participation. Hosting webinars or conferences is an option for stakeholders unable to attend public meetings, allowing remote participation. Archived meeting videos or documentary videos may be easily hosted on youtube and other video sharing sites. See a video from Vision North Texas.
Blogs and Networks – Allow for rapid dissemination of information and interactive involvement for stakeholders. When integrated into a project web site blog posts and discussion forums provide for informal, frequent, and widely available information and updates on vision activities. Increasingly, social networking web sites such as twitter, facebook, and linkedin are utilized to develop networks of interested parties and relay information of events and activities. See Chicago, Illinois’s GOTO2040 Blog.
Email Lists and E-Newsletters – Provide broad and easy access to project information, news, events, and updates for stakeholders. Production is relatively inexpensive and can be accomplished with most desktop publishing programs or integrated into a vision web site. See Tennessee’s Cumberland Region Tomorrow.
Printings and Mailings – Inform stakeholders through direct mailings and promotional materials. Many options exist and promotional brochures, event flyers, and opinion surveys may be an appropriate tool when the goal is to reach every resident or business owner in a study area. Vision brochures, announcements, newsletters, opinion comment cards, and other hardcopy materials also provide takeaway materials for meetings. See Portland, Oregon’s VisionPDX Public Brochure.
Visualizations and Maps – Allow a wide variety of information and complex concepts to be conveyed and understood readily. Maps are often used to illustrate existing issues within a community, and visual representations can be used to help inform stakeholders of future choices. This technique may also improve communication for participants with limited English or technical proficiency. See Taylor County, Florida’s Vision Community Types or MetroFuture, Boston’s Future Growth Areas.
Media Strategies – Encourage press coverage and can help achieve maximum public awareness goals, and increase the visibility of visioning process. Press kits, Frequently Asked Questions briefs, and informative materials help ensure consistent messaging while news releases help alert reporters to opportunities for local coverage. Local public broadcasting affiliates are often ready partners in producing and releasing informative video documentaries or public access promotions.
Representation and Branding – Effectively communicating and branding a visioning process is greatly assisted through graphic design of project logos, materials, web site design, and other commissioned art. Branded materials develop a recognizable image of the visioning process within the community and help generate public interest. See Reality Check Central Arizona Representation and Branding.
> Feedback Tools and Techniques
INDEX – An integrated suite of GIS tools used to assess existing community conditions, design future scenarios in real-time, assess scenarios with performance indicators, and monitor implementation of adopted plans. INDEX also supports implementation efforts by evaluating the consistency of development proposals against vision goals. The program is fee-for-service and maintained by Criterion Planners, Inc.
Community Events – Provide forums for informing, receiving feedback, and collaborating with stakeholders. Non-traditional settings include shopping centers, community fairs, sporting events, public school activities, religious and non-profit gatherings, and any event which draws a number of people to public spaces. Traditional options for meetings and events, such as schools, public buildings, and libraries often have the benefit of accessible and inexpensive meeting space, but may not offer the same opportunities to engage groups on their own terms.
Community Leader Outreach – Involves strategically identified key civic, political, environmental, or institutional leaders and providing opportunities to discuss a visioning process and solicit feedback. Input from community leaders, particularly representatives of groups traditionally under-represented in public involvement, may be an effective means for project staff to learn of and address concerns within a visioning process.
Public Workshops – Provide opportunities for interaction among community members, project sponsors, and additional stakeholders and are among the most common techniques used in visioning. Well-organized public workshops are valuable opportunities to vet ideas and obtain meaningful public feedback. Most workshops and meetings include informational presentations, facilitated group discussions, or interactive strategies to encourage stakeholders to collaborate on community values and objectives, desired future outcomes, specific challenges and solutions, and alternative futures. Interactive activities may include scenario planning, visualizations, discussions, role-playing games, and a myriad of other exercises.
Task Forces – Collaborative decision and policy groups that play an active role in a visioning process, lending guidance and credibility, drafting recommendations, and providing solutions or decisions on significant issues. Task forces often operate by consensus and propose recommendations to leadership or agency officials.
Interagency Working Groups – Enhance coordination among public agencies, either as formal memorandum-of-agreement, or informal as interagency councils. These partnerships are often formed during a visioning process as technical advisory groups, or may already be in existence, as standing interagency partnerships. See North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Interagency Leadership Team or the Puget Sound Regional Council’s Interagency Data Group formed as part of Vision 2040.
> Considering Communities: The following tools and resources may be helpful for integrating livability and quality of life concerns into this activity area.
Indicators can be used to identify the progress that has been made toward the goals and objectives established in the adopted vision.
PolicyMap, Geographic Information Systems Mapping Services and Software – This online tool with the capacity to map and report indicators related to demographics, real estate, crime rates, health, schools, housing affordability, employment, energy, public investments, and others. Access The Policy Map.
Active Community Environments (ACEs) Community Assessment – This is an assessment tool designed to help the user identify ways that can help encourage and support bicycle movements. There are five short questionnaires and a rating system that can be used as a benchmark for community progress. See more at Active Community Environments.
Walkability Checklist and A Resident's Guide for Creating Safe and Walkable Communities – These checklists are designed for community members to determine if their neighborhood is a friendly place to walk. The guidebook can be referenced by participants to learn about roadway conditions, traffic problems that adversely affect pedestrian movements, and ways to help address these problems to make the environment more supportive of pedestrian activity. See more at A Resident’s Guide for Creating Safe and Walkable Communities and Walkable America.
West Peterborough Road Audit – This audit tool can be used to evaluate how well streets and adjacent land uses are performing as Places, and identify opportunities for future enhancements. Download the tool here.
Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey – The survey was designed to be used by state or federal government agencies interested in surveying constituents on social capital, smaller communities that may not have the time, budget, or staff to use the long-form survey, and communities and non-profits that may already be conducting surveys and want the short-form to act as supplemental information on social capital. The survey is designed to be used "pre" and "post" project to determine if social capital has changed. Download the short form or the long form.
>Forming Partnerships: The following strategies and structures may be relevant to partnership development within this activity area.
Partnership Models – Recognizing the contributions of partners in progress towards vision outcomes allows for the opportunity to reward partners in success and motivate partners in failure. Partnerships such as Steering Committees or Technical Advisory Groups are often renewed or established to assist in developing community indicators or progress reports, as well as revisiting the vision and determining next steps based on progress to date.
>Tracking Commitments: The following strategies and steps may be relevant when developing commitment tracking processes within this activity area.
Progress on implementing the vision, goals, and actions should be monitored on a regular basis. Given that visions are normally implemented over the long term, the actions may be monitored and reported on an annual or semiannual basis. Commitments at the project level such as environmental commitments may be reported on more often. There should be a periodic review system established that would include a list of commitments with an indication what already is been implemented, what is in progress, what is overdue, what is planned and if there have been any modification to the commitment. This activity area is related to two steps within the Model Commitment Tracking Process.
Monitor Commitment Activities – In this step the lead convener, or implementation lead, responsible for reviewing commitments monitors commitment progress. This activity involves reviewing the list of commitments and specific actions, and analyzing any progress made since the last update.
Report on Commitment Performance – Periodically, the lead responsible for monitoring commitments should generate a report on commitment performance for all stakeholders. The reporting period should be one agreed upon between the vision lead and stakeholders (e.g., biannual or annual reports). Reports on commitment performance should list ongoing commitments, commitment status, actions for the commitment, due dates for the actions, and any overdue actions.