| Community Activities An almost unlimited range of events can be held during National Community Planning Month to highlight the contributions of planning in your community, region, or state. You can find many potential sponsors for events and activities, from chapters, divisions, and student chapters of APA, to public agencies, planning firms and other businesses, nonprofit groups, and educational institutions ranging from K-12 schools to planning schools. The following are just a few possibilities to consider. Check back regularly for additional ideas. As you finalize your plans for National Community Planning Month in October 2007, please share so this information may be posted on the website.
Photographs, maps, and models can be used to highlight past accomplishments and current planning projects. Planning staff or students can demonstrate how planners use GIS, scenario modeling, and other visual simulation techniques to show what the community might look like 10 or 20 years from now. Use a short video, slide show, or PowerPoint presentation to give an overview of the community's history, pointing out how planning provided a good framework for aspects of the community people still enjoy. The presentation might introduce viewers to current planning issues, pose questions about future growth decisions, and emphasize ways to participate in the planning process. Consider providing light refreshments and giving visitors a take-home gift, such as a planning-related T-shirt, mouse pad, or button.
Such forums can invite representatives from different "stakeholder" groups in a community to share their insights into current planning issues and their vision of possible solutions. Young people, the elderly, developers, realtors, environmentalists, public health professionals, major employers, union leaders, and many others have legitimate concerns as well as good ideas that the community as a whole needs to consider — and can consider through the planning process. Forums can also be used to help community members place their immediate concerns within a larger context. They might look at how other places in their region are grappling with issues that know no jurisdictional boundaries, such as air and water pollution, population and investment flows, transportation demands, and the like. Similarly, forums can be used to illuminate how communities elsewhere in the country are creating effective solutions to commonly held problems through innovative planning: increasing affordable housing, creating mixed-use, mixed-income districts, revitalizing waterfronts and warehouse districts, taming the commercial strip, creating a networks of trails and greenways, and so forth. APA members who work in state or regional planning agencies, those in private practice, and those who teach in planning schools, might be able to address such issues with relevant examples.
Organize walking, bike, bus, boat, driving or jogging tours tours. Link the tours to the theme for each week of National Community Planning Month. Some suggestions include:
Recruit planners from local agencies and firms as guides; team up with other interest groups to sponsor tours; promote tours to visitors staying at local hotels. Offer in-depth mobile workshops or short, one- to two-hour walking tours. Provide knowledgeable guides or produce self-guided brochures.
Put together a display of maps, photographs, and drawings that shows how the community (or particular neighborhoods or districts within it) has evolved over time. Highlight ways that good planning has guided its growth, creating assets enjoyed today, while always evaluating future options based on growth projections and community values. Use the display to reveal recurring phases in the planning process, from citizen participation to policy decisions to plan implementation. Point out the roles played by elected officials, professional planners, volunteers serving on planning commissions, and interest groups in the community. Celebrate planning as a fundamental part of the democratic process, enabling communities to embrace new residents and creatively respond to changing conditions. Such an exhibit might be displayed at the state capitol or city hall for the entire month. Or it could be a traveling exhibit, moving to different locations around the community, such as public libraries, schools, and other venues. Consider capturing the text and visuals assembled for an on-site exhibit and using them to create a more lasting, digital exhibit placed on the city or county's website. Such a virtual exhibit could provide newcomers to the community with a quick history of its evolution, as well as a quick lesson in the important role played by planning. The same site could be augmented over time with virtual tours of various neighborhoods and districts in the community, serving to orient residents and visitors alike, while also pointing out the planning decisions that resulted in certain patterns of development or conservation. Local teachers might find this digital display an excellent resource for their students. For additional suggestions on ways to engage the public through a website devoted to community planning issues and processes, see Section 9 of the Planners' Communication Guide (E-Communications).
National Community Planning Month also offers an ideal occasion to develop and screen a short video about planning's role in shaping the community and region. The very process of producing such a program can engage many different members of the community as well as attract the attention of local media. Media programs at local colleges, technical schools, and high schools may have faculty and students who could help. Local television stations, cable systems, and the audio-visual departments of major companies might also lend a hand. The final product can be screened at an open house, shown by a local television or cable company, or posted to a community website for viewing and downloading. APA's Planning Advisory Service Report 500/501, Lights, Camera, Community Video, is an excellent how-to manual that offers numerous examples of places where this has been done and a DVD with some of the resulting videos. It shows how to use both the process of interviewing residents and the screening of the final program to raise the visibility of planning issues — and the importance of citizen participation — within the community. Footage of planning projects featured in APA's National Planning Awards videos is also available by contacting APA at publicinfo@planning.org.
Each year on November 8, World Town Planning Day is celebrated in more than 30 countries by planning professionals, civic leaders, and young people. This year, APA will focus its energy and efforts on celebrating National Community Planning Month to highlight the impact and benefits of planning in this country. World Town Planning Day presents an excellent opportunity to look at planning from a global perspective, and APA encourages its members to consider planning challenges and solutions around the globe on that day. Click here for more about World Town Planning Day.
Check back in the coming weeks for specific ideas on how to promote National Community Planning Month to your local community.
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Local and regional planning agencies, planning firms, and planning schools can invite citizens to get an insider's view of planning topics, tools, and techniques by holding an open house.
National Community Planning Month provides a great opportunity to draw attention to planning issues in the community or surrounding region and to place those issues within the context of current innovations in planning across the country. Whether designed as a series of lectures, a symposium, or a hands-on design charrette, such public forums can demonstrate that planning in America is a robust process that welcomes many perspectives to the table and touches upon all aspects of community life, now and well into the future.
Use National Community Planning Month as an occasion to get planning out of the public hearing room and into the community. Show up at unexpected places by having a display at a local music festival, arts celebration, or county fair. Reach out to other groups in the community to co-sponsor an event in recognition National Community Planning Month, like a fund-raising 10K run or walk, with the proceeds going to a good cause like affordable housing, conservation, or K-12 education. Get pledges from businesses, organizations, and special interest groups as a sign that they recognize, support, and celebrate good planning. Have fun!