Advocating for stronger towns eventually means engaging with your city’s systems of governance.
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As traditional highway expansions are put on pause around the country, professionals and policymakers have an opportunity to move forward with a better approach. This book shows them how.
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City hall is an institution with a diversity of responsibilities serving your community, and in it lies an opportunity to observe how your local city operates and is managed.
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Local government is where you can make the most impact and difference in your city, but how do you go about actually interacting with your local government?
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This video about a recent street redesign project in Selkirk, Manitoba, shows just how cities should be communicating with their residents.
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This would-be simple road diet project faced an unexpected amount of pushback, and ended up taking seven years and a lot of money to complete. Was it worth the hassle?
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So, you want to attend a city council meeting? Good luck getting past all the jargon! Check out these “translations” of a real-life council agenda, and why it’s important to be more transparent with citizens.
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Perceived threats to a home's value often prompt homeowners to shut down any discussion about neighborhood changes. But eliminating opportunities for such reactions isn’t helpful, either.
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If you ever wanted to REALLY make a change in your town, instead of just starting a fight, consider this your manifesto.
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You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to create places that aren’t bad—and that should be the first and foremost goal for a city.
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When engineers say a street must accommodate a high volume of traffic, what they really mean is, "The design of this street must prioritize the convenience of commuters over all else."
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It’s no secret that the conventional process for public engagement in urban planning is broken. So, what should we be doing, instead?
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This Rhode Island community came together to advocate for parking improvements in their neighborhood—and it worked.
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Why bother asking the public what they want if their opinions are going to be dismissed, anyway?
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Trying to please everyone will grind your project to a halt. Use these strategies instead to build consent and get things done.
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“[The] urgency to move fast is in conflict with the speed of trust, and the pace that actually allows for input from everyone who’s affected by these decisions.”
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We can’t simply delay good public engagement until after this prolonged pandemic. Here are four strategies for connecting in a safe, meaningful way.
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A lot of bad public engagement sets the impossible goal of identifying the community’s “vision” for a place by asking people about their preferences—usually with questions they’re ill-equipped to answer. There’s a better way.
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Community consensus sounds nice. But, as a final standard for planners, it ends up supporting the status quo rather than challenging it.
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A lot of bad public engagement sets the impossible goal of identifying the community’s “vision” for a place by asking people about their preferences—usually with questions they’re ill-equipped to answer. There’s a better way.
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