Conflict Management in Planning

This guide outlines eight steps to rebuild trust and communication in public meetings.

Public forums are crucial opportunities for public officials and citizens to engage in information sharing and reach decisions but increasingly, these interactions derail from a lack of trust or communication. Research suggests that the design of the public meeting process, not the people, may be the problem.

The guide underlines changing the design of the meeting space, altering public comment structure, moving from a performance model to a learning and dialogue model, and closing the feedback loop by summarizing what was heard, explaing how this input may be used, and report back in future meetings with published updates.