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Community and Economic Development – Blog by UNC School of Government https://ced.sog.unc.edu Student Corner: Measuring Public Service Provision in Chapel Hill’s Comprehensive Planning ProcessBy CED Program Interns & StudentsPublished June 30, 2011Andrew Guinn is a doctoral student in the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning and an intern with the Community-Campus Partnership. With support from the Community-Campus Partnership, the Town of Chapel Hill is currently in the process of updating its comprehensive plan. One of the main goals in this process is to follow a new, participatory approach by engaging with as many community stakeholders as possible. During the planning process, stakeholders will participate in meetings in order to 1) identify issues to be addressed by the plan, 2) serve in a problem-solving capacity to envision long-term strategies around these issues, and 3) help to produce the content of the plan itself. Potential stakeholders include anyone who lives, works, plays or invests in Chapel Hill. The Town would like to engage as many people as possible in the planning process when stakeholder meetings begin this coming fall. Since Chapel Hill has never before followed this participatory approach to comprehensive planning, the Communications and Public Affairs Department and the Planning Department have undertaken an unprecedented outreach campaign. The goals of this campaign are to publicize the planning process, encourage community participation and identify potential barriers that might prevent particular populations from becoming active stakeholders. Especially, the Town wants to involve populations that have not historically participated in similar civic processes. One of the main tasks is to reach out to local community organizations, including service providers, churches, non-profits, civic organizations and advocacy groups. This outreach effort serves two purposes. First, these community organizations have many links to the Chapel Hill community and can help the Town to publicize planning meetings and encourage stakeholder participation. Second, these organizations can provide the Town with the information about their memberships and client bases. This information will help the town identify when meetings should be held and what additional services (for example, childcare or transportation) stakeholders may require in order to participate. It is uncommon and difficult for municipalities to enact such a participatory approach to comprehensive planning. Nevertheless, the overwhelmingly positive response among those organizations that have been contacted indicates that it may prove to be a successful strategy to producing a planning document that represents the many diverse interests within the Chapel Hill community. |
Published June 30, 2011 By CED Program Interns & Students
Andrew Guinn is a doctoral student in the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning and an intern with the Community-Campus Partnership.
With support from the Community-Campus Partnership, the Town of Chapel Hill is currently in the process of updating its comprehensive plan. One of the main goals in this process is to follow a new, participatory approach by engaging with as many community stakeholders as possible. During the planning process, stakeholders will participate in meetings in order to 1) identify issues to be addressed by the plan, 2) serve in a problem-solving capacity to envision long-term strategies around these issues, and 3) help to produce the content of the plan itself. Potential stakeholders include anyone who lives, works, plays or invests in Chapel Hill. The Town would like to engage as many people as possible in the planning process when stakeholder meetings begin this coming fall.
Since Chapel Hill has never before followed this participatory approach to comprehensive planning, the Communications and Public Affairs Department and the Planning Department have undertaken an unprecedented outreach campaign. The goals of this campaign are to publicize the planning process, encourage community participation and identify potential barriers that might prevent particular populations from becoming active stakeholders. Especially, the Town wants to involve populations that have not historically participated in similar civic processes.
One of the main tasks is to reach out to local community organizations, including service providers, churches, non-profits, civic organizations and advocacy groups. This outreach effort serves two purposes. First, these community organizations have many links to the Chapel Hill community and can help the Town to publicize planning meetings and encourage stakeholder participation. Second, these organizations can provide the Town with the information about their memberships and client bases. This information will help the town identify when meetings should be held and what additional services (for example, childcare or transportation) stakeholders may require in order to participate.
It is uncommon and difficult for municipalities to enact such a participatory approach to comprehensive planning. Nevertheless, the overwhelmingly positive response among those organizations that have been contacted indicates that it may prove to be a successful strategy to producing a planning document that represents the many diverse interests within the Chapel Hill community.
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One Response to “Student Corner: Measuring Public Service Provision in Chapel Hill’s Comprehensive Planning Process”
Deepa Sanyal
In the early 2000s, I worked on the 2040 Regional Framework Plan for the Chicago Metropolitan Region at the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC) now the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMA). http://www.cmap.illinois.gov/2040/main
A synopsis of the community driven regional comprehensive plan follows:
Challenge: The six-county region is forecasted to grow by 1.9 million people and 1.2 million jobs during the next 40 years with significant land-use implications for the Chicago metropolitan area’s 1.16 million acres of incorporated land. The 2040 Plan provides a vision for accommodating this anticipated growth in a more efficient, coordinated and sustainable manner.
Approach: Engaged a cross-section of the population in the region – residents, business owners, civic leaders, public officials, under-represented groups and planning professionals at all levels. More than 4,000 people participated in 200 local and regional workshops and meetings. Combined with specialized work by a range of planning experts and elected officials, these meetings identified local and regional assets, needs and challenges.
Results: In response to these challenges and opportunities, NIPC/CMA collaboratively developed the 2040 Plan to guide the region’s future land use by coordinating development, preservation, housing and transportation decisions in response to the region’s projected population and employment growth. The plan also provides well-defined strategies for implementation.
Key steps in the process included:
Strategic Planning: Design, content, analysis and reporting on civic engagement programs that resulted in the framework, consisting of 52 regional goals for the Regional Comprehensive Plan for Northeastern Illinois.
Public Participatory Planning: Focus groups, town hall meetings and working groups with community leaders and residents that successfully identified specific challenges facing the region. Utilized decision support planning technology tools including networked laptops and keypad voting.
Project Management: Outreach, staffing, logistics, materials, facilitation, event planning and evaluation for 32 public participatory events attended by 2000 residents