> Vision Activities: Within this activity, the practitioner’s responsibility is to collect information on current conditions within the community, and to define and develop indicators to assess those conditions and possible alternatives.
Gather baseline information – Compiling and communicating information on a community is the basis for creating the vision. Information may include data, in the form of statistics and geographic information, or data in the form of interviews with community leaders or public opinion and values surveys. The purpose is to provide a starting point for the issues and values discussions that will occur in later steps.
Example: Baltimore Metropolitan Council’s Vision 2030 developed analyses of regional trends and a SWOT analysis to help frame the effort.
Develop indicators – Providing a basis for judgment is important to help participants fully understand the tradeoffs, alternatives, impacts, and potential futures assessed later in the process. Often indicators are related to key issues and are intended to convey statements of future direction and quality, rather than quantity or output. Indicators also provide valuable benchmarks for comparisons or later progress reporting.
Example: The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s GOTO 2040 process utilized stakeholder input to develop a set of indicators for the vision. The City of Hamilton, Ontario’s Vision 2020 process resulted in lessons learned for indicator proceses.
Refine values and issues – Reflecting agreement on the values and issues to be addressed in the visioning process provides an opportunity to build public input and support for the vision. This activity may take the form of interactive opportunities for the public to help establish community core values and significant considerations.
Example: The sponsor of Central Florida’s How Shall We Grow? process commissioned early research on social values to help understand regional values.
> Reaching Stakeholders: The following tools and techniques may be relevant when sharing information, gathering feedback, and collaborating with stakeholders.
Outreach techniques in this activity focus on feedback and collaborative processes as information gathered feeds into later scenario and indicator development. Assessing available data and stakeholder input will assist in selecting an appropriate scenario planning tool. Informative techniques such as visualizations and maps are effective at conveying baseline information. Public meetings and interactive forums are useful in informing participants and gathering feedback on core values. Collaborative techniques are effective in engaging key stakeholders to make final decisions on information presented or indicators utilized in later visioning activities.
Practitioners may consider these questions when assessing outreach tools:
How can we tell a compelling story of conditions, issues, and challenges to be addressed in the vision?
How can we provide opportunities for the public to help establish community core values?
How can we stakeholder input on key issues and values determine the indicators chosen to assess future scenarios?
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.
> Feedback Tools and Techniques
> Traditional Feedback Techniques
Opinion Surveys – Provide opportunities for broad and/or targeted outreach to stakeholders concerning community values, importance of issues, preferred future direction, or the selection of alternative futures. Often employed within visioning processes, opinion surveys may be made available online and in print media, or administered by a professional research organization or in partnership with a local university. See Portland, Oregon’s VisionPDX or Tampa Bay, Florida’s ONEBAY Public Opinion Campaign.
Community Outreach – Provides an opportunity for targeted communication with community leaders. Involvement of community leaders are important throughout a visioning process as they may provide early direction, ongoing public support, contribute resources, represent diverse stakeholders, or offer connections to traditionally underrepresented stakeholders. See Portland, Oregon’s VisionPDX Outreach Campaign.
Focus Groups – Provide unique research into community values and opportunities for stakeholders to describe ideas in their own words. Focused research, or a listening campaign, is often used early in shaping a process, but also when shaping alternative futures or a vision statement. See Baltimore Metro, Vision 2030 Focus Group Report.
ArcGIS – A data analysis and mapping program developed by ESRI stores, manages, presents data, and allows advanced spatial analysis, model operations, and visualization. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are the basis of many of the planning support tools available and can also be used independently to display and analyze technical information.
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.
Community Canvassing – Involves the distribution of promotional materials, in-person opinion surveying, or requests for participation by project staff in public places. This approach may require substantial staff resources, but may be particularly helpful in reaching under-represented populations.
Community Tours – Or community audits, are commonly utilized activities intended to engage and educate stakeholders, or visioning leaders, directly in shared, real experiences within the community.
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.
Citizen Advisory Committees – Act primarily in an advisory role, studying issues, presenting opinions, or producing guidance, but are not necessarily required to reach consensus, and may simply provide a forum for issues to be voiced. Committees may be formed to address different aspects within a visioning process, such as a public involvement campaign, scenario planning technical support, or issue specific groups, such as bicycle and pedestrian or environmental interests.
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.
The purpose is to provide a starting point for the issues and values that will be the focus of the visioning process. Providing a basis for judgment is important to helping participants fully engage in the tradeoffs, alternatives, impacts, and potential futures assessed further in the process. Indicators should be based on community values and intended to convey statements of direction, value, quality, or progress.
Measuring Urban Design Qualities – This one-page checklist is 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 Active Living Research.
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.
Active Neighborhood Checklist – The checklist is designed to assess street-level features of a neighborhood thought to be related to physical activity. It can be used to produce descriptive statistics about an area, to raise awareness about the environment in supporting or discouraging pedestrian activity, and/or mobilize the community to advocate for enhancements or improvements. Download the checklist here.
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.
Community Context Audit – This audit form guides practitioners when identifying community characteristics that make each transportation project location unique to its residents, its businesses, and the public in general. Findings help define the purpose and need of proposed transportation improvements based upon community goals and local plans for future development. Access the tool here.
Community Core Indicators of Activity Friendliness – Telephone Questionnaire – The questionnaire was designed to find out how a community views its physical surroundings and if the environment is supportive and encouraging of physical activity. Download the tool here.
Making Your Community Walkable and Bikeable: A Guidebook for Change – The guidebook is a step-by-step navigation tool to be used by local groups and citizens to effectively contribute to the planning process and build partnerships with transportation practitioners to enhance the local road network to be more supportive of walking and biking. Download the guide here.
A Community Approach to Address Health Disparities: Toolkit for Health & Resilience in Vulnerable Environments – The toolkit was developed as a community resilience assessment tool to help communities enhance their environment in ways that improve public health and reduce disparities experienced by racial and ethnic minorities. Download the guide here.
Assessing Your Community’s Aging-Readiness: A checklist of key features of an aging-friendly community – The checklist is part of a guidebook to arm local leaders with the knowledge and tools necessary to create livable communities for people of all ages. Download the guide here.
Public Health Workbook to Define, Locate and Reach Special, Vulnerable and At-Risk Populations in an Emergency – The workbook can be used by practitioners and public health agencies to ensure that all populations are reached and informed in the event of an emergency. The sponsor agency can work with transportation agencies to ensure that evacuation routes are well defined and translated into the languages of limited and non-English speaking populations in their community. They can also identify transportation services to evacuate physically and mentally handicapped and elderly populations. Download the workbook here.
Neighborhood Walking /Biking Assessment (Urban, Suburban, and Rural) – Three slightly different forms were designed for residents to assess roadway and land use conditions in their neighborhood to determine if it is safe for students to walk and bicycle to school. A small number of questions vary based on the environmental setting in which the assessment is being conducted. Download the tools here for urban, suburban, and rural communities.
Systematic Pedestrian and Cycling Environmental Scan (SPACES) Audit Instrument – A comprehensive instrument that is designed to measure the physical environmental factors that may influence walking and cycling in local neighborhoods. The instrument was developed to be used in combination with additional measures that are gathered through Geographical Information Systems (GIS). For more information see the Active Living Research web site.
Smart Growth Checklist, A Checklist for Municipal Land Use Planning and Management – This guide may be used by communities when making decisions about future land use and development patterns. It is designed to assess how well planning and land use policies and decisions in a community follow the principles of Smart Growth. Access the checklist here.
Community Tool Box – The Community Tool Box provides practical, step-by-step guidance in community building skills that can be used in a variety of settings to understand community characteristics and create exercises that increase community cohesion. Section 17 is of particular interest to facilitate in the visioning process. Download the Tool Box here.
What's behind Resident Quality of Life Perceptions – This is an online resource that hosts a wealth of information about quality of life considerations, performance measures, and survey instruments. It identifies current initiatives and has a subscription survey service that could be used by a transportation agency or government agencies looking to better understand the environment in which they are working. See more information at the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) web site.
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.