For Release Sunday, August 22, 2010
Citiwire.net
SALT LAKE CITY — In the current economic climate it is not unusual to find local governments “tightening the belt” by curtailing activities not considered essential services. All too often this can mean the slashing of planning projects and departmental staff.
There is a certain amount of logic to cuts: After all if a community isn’t growing, if there are no new developments to be reviewed, what is the point?
But — what we are seeing is that smart communities, like smart businesses, are using the laggard pace of the present economic downturn to lay the foundation for a high functioning and successful future. By engaging in highly participatory and increasingly regional-scale planning initiatives, these communities are developing the civic infrastructure necessary to succeed in the 21st century.
A prime example is the Greater Wasatch Area of Utah. It includes 10 counties and over 90 cities and towns, sandwiched between the Wasatch Mountain Range and the Great Salt Lake — a 100-plus mile linear oasis bordered by rugged mountain terrain and desert, home to over 80 percent of Utah’s residents. It was settled in the 1840′s by Mormons who conceived a plan for the area composed of one-mile square blocks with wide streets and interconnected villages limited to no more than 20,000 residents. These ideas were later implemented by Brigham Young, creating the pattern of development that today dominates Salt Lake City and its environs.
In the late 1980s, a group of concerned civic leaders coalesced around the issues of environmental protection, economic development, and maintenance of quality of life. This group, the Coalition for Utah’s Future, would later forge the foundation for the organization known today as Envision Utah. Created in 1997, it brought together key public and private stakeholders to help to overcome the jurisdictional fragmentation and “bunker mentality” held among units of local government. A key element: giving local residents, by the power of scenarios and choice, the ability to shape planning and growth management issues within the region.
Envision Utah’s first chairman was Robert Grow, a local business leader with strong collaborative leader skills. He explains:
“The Envision Utah Approach has become a way of life in Utah with its special blend of discovering and seeking to satisfy community values in all our planning and visioning, using scenarios of the future to show the public and officials the consequences of our collective choices, and leading change with diverse and trusted stakeholders and champions. This approach to problem solving and focusing precious civic and financial resources on highly leveraged strategies to preserve and enhance Utah’s quality of life is finding great acceptance as the best way to meet the challenges of tomorrow.”
Indeed, with regional population projected to grow from 1.7 million to roughly 2.7 million by 2020 and to 5 million by 2050, there will be plenty of challenges in the years ahead.
Today, Envision Utah continues its work to forge regional agreement over projects such as Blueprint Jordan River, a corridor plan spanning three counties and 15 cities. It has been instrumental in working with the Utah Transit Authority, the region’s two metropolitan planning organizations, and numerous cities to plan and develop an extensive system of light rail and bus rapid transit including incentives for transit oriented development efforts along the routes.
Most critically, the now tried and true Envision Utah “model” of fostering stakeholder involvement around scenario development and evaluation has helped to build a capacity for civic engagement that enables further community planning initiatives. “Envision Utah struck a chord when they recognized that many people cared about what they were leaving behind for their children”, says Brenda Scheer, Dean of the College of Architecture & Planning at the University of Utah. “The magic of Envision Utah is that everybody collaborates for common good, even though we may disagree on methods.”
But having a 13-year history with a unique organization such as Envision Utah is just part of the story. Today in the region, there is a palpable buzz in the air when it comes to planning.
For example, the University of Utah has recently attracted two of the planning profession’s “rock stars”, Reid Ewing and Arthur “Chris” Nelson, helping to build the reputation and influence of the university’s Department of City & Metropolitan Planning. As noted authors, researchers, and advisors to numerous governmental agencies, Ewing and Nelson present formidable intellectual and academic horsepower. “The university has a strong capacity for interdisciplinary work — energy, environmental, water — and we are building this in an environment of holistic thinking,” says Michael K. Young, President of the University. “We’re really knee deep into it now,” he adds.
Planning has also become part of Salt Lake City’s way of life. Ralph Becker, elected mayor in 2007, is a trained city planner. He and his staff have taken an aggressive approach to aligning public policy with sustainability. As evidence Becker cites a multi-modal transportation system, mixed and denser land-use policies, and a recognition that shifting times require strong government-business-neighborhood partnerships. The city has taken on such issues as zoning codes that accommodate solar and wind energy devices, and creating incentives for compact and mixed-use development.
The net result: a vibrancy that is lacking in so many other regions of our nation today. As a practicing professional planner, I’ve found it refreshing to visit a region that is so intently focused on moving forward with high value placed on the quality of civic engagement, and with leaders so committed to to the value of place — and collaborative decision making. In the words of Alan Matheson, executive director of Envision Utah: “There is a growing willingness to collaborate — among agencies, jurisdictions, organizations. Broad participation and collaboration are now the default mode for making significant regional decisions.”
David Boyd is a professional planner with a strong interest in regional economic development.
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2 Comments
Great article! I’m from the Salt Lake area and was trained as an interdisciplinary planner at the U. I also interned at Envision Utah and, I can tell you from experience, they are very good at what they do and are just as effective as this article conveys. One of the reasons they are so effective is because they have the region’s most powerful businessmen and politicians (from both sides of the isle) behind them 110%. The other reason is because when they work with the public, they appeal to their values and not some pie-in-the-sky ideal that a group of academics came up with. And perhaps another reason they are effective is because they have to be: the Salt Lake region is very sprawly and, consequently, the air quality in the deep valley is terrible. Necessity breeds action and efficiency, and it is very true in EU’s case
As a consulting long-range planner, I’ve followed Envision Utah from afar over the years, and am pleased to see how it has helped transform both the concept and reality of planning in the Greater Wasatch Area.
Mr. Boyd’s point that now is exactly the time our cities and communities should be anticipating change and planning ahead could not be better stated. We have entered a period of enormous flux in our economy, our urban life and our society as a whole. Those communities that can reframe the conversation and think more strategically about the future, will be better positioned to weather the change – and thrive – in years to come.
In my own practice, I have worked with all sizes and shapes of communities to do that very thing. The City of Bend, Oregon and its Bend 2030 visioning process (learn more at http://www.bend2030.org) is a good case in point.
Bend 2030 represented the most participatory dialogue in the 100-year history of the city, actively engaging 1 in 7 local residents in a two-year planning process (2005-07). The result was a 25-year community-based vision and 5-year action plan. Bend’s 2030 Action Plan was launched in 2007 – just as the city’s hyper-inflated real estate market was collapsing. This was an auspicious time to be thinking about the future, no doubt, and not without its critics who questioned the utility or value of such an initiative.
The good news is that, being a plan focused on the long-term and ‘whole of community’ (i.e., not just land-use and transportation, but economy, environment, community, health, arts and culture), the Bend 2030 vision was already out of in front of the bad economic news – spawning hundreds of strategic actions embraced by more than 60 community partner organizations.
While the economic news in Bend is still often discouraging, a host of new initiatives framing a healthier, more sustainable city are already underway. A recent scientific poll showed that 9 out of 10 citizens of Bend not only support the notion of a long-term vision, but also the increased collaboration by community institutions it will take to make that vision a reality. Those are approval numbers any savvy politician would drool over…and they are the result of an open, nonpartisan dialogue.
There are a number of stories like Bend’s that deserve to be told. I think of the Bold Future for the Coastal Bend project in Corpus Christi, Texas (learn more at http://www.boldfuturecoastalbend.org). Characterized by a history of adversarial politics and challenged by daunting socioeconomic issues, Corpus Christi’s new mayor, a “graduate” and advocate of the Bold Future process, is using the region’s new visionary goals and strategies to frame and guide City plans and policies. The change is as refreshing as a Gulf breeze.
Even if the majority of American cities and towns appear to be drifting downstream in the “rapids of change,” a small, but robust minority are taking charge. The key is deliberative dialogue and collaborative action. If done well, a robust long-range planning process can provide that platform for these things, as Envision Utah more than seems to demonstrate.
For those who are interested in hearing more of these stories, you might want to look into the Community Matters 2010 conference in Denver this October 5-8 (learn more at http://www.communitymatters.org), a four-day conference of novel tools and solutions, instructive discussion, and hands-on experiences for citizens and community builders. I hope to see you there!