Creative Strategies to Engage Communities in Planning

Despite its importance, it is often hard to get people excited about long-range planning. This is true for community members and (sometimes) elected officials, staff, and community organizations. Bringing new people into the conversation can be difficult, especially among groups that traditionally do not participate in community planning.

The cities of Greensboro, North Carolina, and Rancho Cucamonga, California, were able to engage communities in comprehensive planning. In fact, one effort was conducted almost completely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dedicated city teams worked passionately and tirelessly to ensure meaningful community involvement – coming up with new ways to excite the public about participating and trying unique methods to capture their voices. Both communities experienced high levels of interest, understanding, and engagement in comprehensive planning processes. Planners have continued to build on this engagement by finding creative ways to keep the PlanitGSO and PlanRC processes alive within the communities. They release regular updates and celebrate implementation of the comprehensive plans.

NPC Peer Reviewers assigned this presentation a learning level of Foundational. For more on learning-level descriptions, visit our General Information Page.