How do Urban Planners Engage with Communities During the Planning Process?

A vital part of any project is community engagement. It’s necessary for the whole project. Community engagement offers a space for the desires and objectives of a community to be heard so the project becomes a space residents appreciate and enjoy visiting. Enthusiastically participating in community engagement development benefits the neighborhood you live in by giving your insights.

In addition to land surveying, civil engineering, and landscape architecture, Baseline serves as a community planning company in Denver. We believe that the residents’ engagement in a community plan is significant to constructing beautiful designs that fit within an area. That’s why we support community engagement, guaranteeing that those projects equal the vision and needs the community has for their city. The challenge is finding a way to engage with citizens to ensure their voices are heard and all concerned parties, including clients, residents, and planners are satisfied.

In this article, learn why community engagement is critical and how Baseline can help you navigate the essential tools of effective community engagement.

What Is Community Engagement?

Community engagement is an assortment of participatory procedures where the public is involved in urban planning. Community engagement aspires to attain fair and impactful participation of residents in the development of their surroundings.

In a community engagement process, residents share their feedback and ideas on planning projects, play a part in the redevelopment at the beginning of the planning cycle, or even have a say on how to spend the budget. Likewise, planners get the opportunity to collect residents’ local knowledge and use this information to build spirited and habitable environments.

To effectively use community engagement in urban planning, any planner must know the likely forms of engagement, the anticipated results of public participation, and what tools will aid them in executing and leading community engagement events with residents.

Getting Residents Engaged

Regrettably, just sharing your findings and asking the community for feedback isn’t adequate to inspire real engagement. Even the most engaged and stimulated community members won’t be interested in reading a huge, multiple-paged city plan. To get important feedback, you’ll have to make individuals care. Luckily, there are a couple of ways to accomplish this.

Provide context – This plan is being devised to help community members realize the significance of the decisions at hand and will arouse their interest in becoming involved.

Go visual – When sharing information, experiment with visual aids such as:

Interactive maps
Infographics
Mind maps
Other visual aids

Making sure the information is simple to retain and process is critical in encouraging engagement.

Break your plan down into smaller, more specific pieces – If one of the parts of your city plan centers on building greener spaces, this part could additionally be separated based on certain neighborhoods, current green spaces, or pertinent local topics. This lets community members focus their engagement endeavors on the areas or topics that matter to them most.

Select your engagement procedures smartly – Some individuals may be so eager to give their opinions that they won’t be content with filling in a quick poll. Others may want to take part but don’t have the time to attend a workshop or distribute a budget. Dividing a project into various methods can aid in persuading a wider audience to participate in the way they deem fit.

Take a hybrid approach – Online participation could be accessible and fast while in-person participation encourages collaboration and real-life connection. Merging both will help you get in contact with a larger audience.

Have a well-defined timeline – If you have a platform, you can use a timeline to structure your project into significant phases. This heightens transparency and governs participants’ expectations. It really isn’t only about asking your community for their opinion. It’s also about getting them truly enthusiastic about getting involved and co-developing the public field.

Forms Of Community Engagement in Planning

Community engagement usually comes in three key forms based on the level of residents’ involvement and the phase of the planning process. The three key forms of community engagement in planning are:

Preparatory planning participation
Informative participation
Decision making participation

You don’t need to pick only one form of engagement and keep to it. An equal combination of all three forms will give you the best results. The selection of the form also is contingent on your goals, certain features of your project, legislative requirements, and the tools you have readily available.

Informative Participation

Basically, informative participation is about conveying imminent changes, processes, and decisions to the residents about their community. Residents usually learn too late about detailed planning or master planning procedures that affect their close surroundings. It upsets them and creates planning disagreements.

Informative participation frequently fails because of wrong timing and the use of expert language and wording that deters residents from knowing what the true changes are. When performed effectively, informative participation leads to transparency, bigger buy-in, and can diminish planning issues.

Preparatory Planning Participation

In preparatory planning participation, the community residents communicate their feedback and ideas about continuing development projects. While some groups of individuals are difficult to reach, online tools (particularly in combination with offline options available for people who have a difficult time using digital solutions) help include a broader demographic and close the gap between residents and cities. For instance, online community engagement can be a convenient and secure way for residents to offer their opinions.

Decision Making Participation

The decision-making participation model is when residents have the information, tools, and power to tender proposals and make informed decisions about urban planning, budget spending, transportation development, and environmental initiatives.

This sort of public engagement is, however, really a rare case. When it comes to urban planning, council members are usually making the final decision via representative democracy.

What Community Engagement Looks Like

Community engagement can take many forms and will vary based on who is leading the initiative and what the project is centered on. For instance, a project for a school most likely will have targeted residents that include teachers, parents, students, and legal guardians who are zoned to attend that specific school. Or a project that affects the entire community might have a community engagement initiative that is intended for anyone within the local community.

Eventually, the objective of any community engagement endeavor is to find out what the affected population wants for a specific space or area. Questions to ask residents could be “What feelings do you want living here to evoke?” “What do you want your community to be about?”

There are numerous approaches to replying to these questions. It could be as simple as a town hall meeting or a school assembly.

Perhaps it’s a workshop presented by the urban planner for a new community development. Social media campaigns or online surveys are more contemporary ways to boost community engagement and awareness about a future project.

The Importance of Community Engagement

Why is community engagement so important? We’ve already discussed that it lets a project satisfy the wants and needs of a community and its residents. But what makes it so important that urban planners actively spend time encouraging it?

The reason community engagement is so important is that it encourages the making of a vision statement that communicates the community’s concerns, and requests, and establishes the community’s priorities.

In other words, it designates the community’s vision as the first step in prioritization and evaluation during the planning phase and not just a late addition. While the community could be involved in both the private and public sectors, community engagement is an excellent way to guarantee the people’s needs and desires are communicated straight into the policies and procedures made about their local community.

By attending a community planning session about a new school or new public park, you are getting your voice heard by your local government, and compelling what matters to you affects your community’s legal methods of development.

Join Baseline in Our Community Planning Initiatives

At Baseline, we have a diverse portfolio of completed projects including an RV park, a Montessori school, a demonstration garden, and more. In each of them, we aimed to create something that would help the local community and build a space the residents needed or desired.

We know the significance of community input in an urban planning project. Our objective is to help our clients find balanced solutions for creating and developing the places in Denver where they work, live, and play.

Balance environmental performance with economic growth. Balancing the increasing need for high-quality local communities with accountable stewardship of the natural landscapes we have received. We are collaborators with our clients, with the residents in the communities in which we have the honor of working, and with our multidisciplinary professionals.