Appalachian Vision

By Julie Herron Carson

In the fall of 2014, the seven southwestern counties of North Carolina and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians concluded the largest and most ambitious visioning process ever undertaken in this rural region. Government leaders, business executives, and citizens came together as never before to plan the region's future and to address unresolved issues that had divided the community for decades.

The rugged mountains and fertile river valleys of western North Carolina are breathtaking and include highly valued portions of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachian Trail. This extreme topography also can hamper transportation options and isolate communities. Recognizing that connectivity is the key to economic development, Congress in 1965 authorized the construction of the Appalachian Development Highway System to link the mountainous regions of 13 states to the national interstate system. Federal dollars were allocated, and the work began.

Nearly 50 years later, one of the unfinished final segments is a portion of "Corridor K" — a 20-mile segment located in Graham and Cherokee counties in North Carolina. The cost to finish the road has escalated far beyond the original allocated funds — while debate has arisen over the potential environmental impact of the highway, and whether or not the road can deliver the promised benefits.

Because the various governmental agencies responsible for completing the project disagreed about the proposed road's design, location, benefits, or environmental impact, in 2011 the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution conducted an "Assessment of the Potential for Interagency Collaboration."

Among the study's recommendations was that the Federal Highway Administration and the North Carolina Department of Transportation convene open, facilitated meetings to "explore how to integrate economic development and environmental protection goals on a regional basis and address how the various transportation options can support these goals."

"The final recommendations from the study gave us a new perspective on how to move forward," says Ryan Sherby, executive director of the Southwestern North Carolina Planning and Economic Development Commission (commonly known as the Southwestern Commission), the regional rural planning organization. "Rather than continue to discuss how the road's completion might benefit the region, the study directed us to first develop a vision for what the citizens want the region to become, and then determine whether or not the road supports that vision. It was a new and innovative, community-influenced way for us to consider the issue."

Getting started

With funding from the FHWA, NCDOT, and the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Southwestern Commission, which agreed to administer the visioning effort, in May 2012 issued an RFP on behalf of Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Macon, Swain, Jackson, and Haywood counties and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Atlanta-based TSW, a planning, architecture, and landscape architecture firm, was selected to spearhead the $1.3 million, 13-month, seven-county planning effort to create a regional vision for the future of southwestern North Carolina, along with comprehensive plans for Cherokee and Graham counties and a comprehensive transportation plan for Graham County.

The planning process was named the "Opportunity Initiative," or "Opt-In" for short. The formal name reflects the region's desire to envision and implement steps to improve local economics and quality of life, while the shorter version reinforces the idea of voluntary participation. A leadership council comprised of elected officials from each of the seven counties and the Cherokee tribe, as well as representatives from the business and nonprofit communities, served as a steering committee.

The effort was "both exciting and challenging from a planning point of view," says Bill Tunnell, founding partner of TSW. "First, the geographic scope was vast. ... While there are 16 incorporated towns within the region, there's no major metropolitan area with the financial assets and political clout to advocate at a statewide or national level. Because of the lack of access in some areas — the very issue that sparked the regional visioning process — we knew we had to devise a new strategy to involve all the constituents who wanted to be heard. This process required a grassroots effort, with our team going to the people, rather than expecting the people to come to us."

According to Tunnell, the process was aided enormously by two local team members: Ben Brown, principal of PlaceMakers, and Stacy Guffey, a former Macon County planning director and native of the region. Their deep connections fueled the public involvement portion of the planning process, as they crisscrossed the seven counties, informing people about the process to come, and soliciting their input.

"We took a high-touch approach to engaging the public, as opposed to high tech," says Brown. "Our one-to-one and small group interactions were essential for building trust and credibility in a rural region where people are suspicious of government and used to relying mostly on their own tight networks for trustworthy information." Altogether, he says, the team conducted more than 300 meetings in offices, coffee shops, living rooms, and other gathering places.

"Another important strategy, learned from previous experience in the region, was to make sure political leaders were plugged in every step of the way," Brown adds. "The last thing the team wanted was for county commissioners and town officials to be confronted with a regional vision they had had no part in shaping. So we made sure an elected official from each of the seven counties and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was on the project's leadership council."

Vice Chief Larry Blythe of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians was one of the leadership council members. The tribe has a lot in common with its neighbors, he says: "We know the region's economy, infrastructure, and culture begin and end with the mountains and river valleys. They are the source of our advantages and the source of our challenges, particularly the challenges we see in terms of connectivity."

To keep the communities connected, the team used a website platform created by PlaceMakers to build a comprehensive website, www.optinswnc.org, where anyone could review meeting summaries, survey results, news coverage, and maps. Website visitors were invited to comment on the issues under discussion.

"The Opt-In website functioned largely as an archival source — a place where people could catch up on the project's background and progress. In addition to documents, we also posted downloads of posters, flyers, and info sheets. And, throughout the process, we produced videos that featured familiar faces talking directly to their neighbors," says Brown.

What's there

Early on, the consulting team conducted a comprehensive analysis of the region, examining development patterns, commuting habits, the economy, population growth, and natural resources. Gianni Longo, principal of Gianni Longo and Associates, of New York, says the team was aided by detailed data provided by the University of North Carolina at Asheville's National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center.

"It was invaluable to us to have the participation of a local educational institution," says Longo. The team reviewed maps and graphics provided by the university as well as earlier plans. "From there, we drafted a baseline vision, which gave everyone a factual snapshot of the region," he adds.

"The data helped us define a starting place for the regional vision, but the final result was always meant to be a values-driven vision, rather than a data-driven plan," says Tunnell. "Typically, planners look at expected population growth and then extrapolate future trends. We knew from the start that model wouldn't work here."

First, he noted, the population is expected to grow very slowly, and land use in the region is dictated by geography. Because the steep mountain peaks are unsuitable for development, river valleys seemed the more likely choice. "We knew there would be strong opinions about the best planning options for these tracts including agriculture, commercial, and residential development and even land preservation," Tunnell says. "They're all good ideas, but they are more or less mutually exclusive."

He adds: "We also needed to work within the pervading culture of independence and self-reliance, plus factor in the unique culture and history of the Cherokee Indians." Some newer residents voiced suspicion of government involvement and the idea of regional planning. "We were hopeful that the participants could be open to new ideas and set local concerns aside to focus on regional matters, but we really didn't know what to expect before we got started," Tunnell notes.

"Happily, common themes began to emerge rather quickly from the one-on-one interviews. They coalesced around creating jobs, improving transportation, and protecting the natural environment," says Longo. "We took those themes and developed what we called the six pillars of the Opportunity Initiative, the starting point for what came next."

Community feedback

During September and October 2013, the team conducted eight community workshops — one in each county and on the Cherokee reservation — to expand the regional conversation and evaluate how well the six pillars resonated with leaders and residents. More than 1,000 comments were generated and posted on the Opt-In website, sorted according to the pillars and by major themes. These themes were used to create the next major document, Draft Regional Vision: What the Community Wants.

A second round of eight community workshops took place in February and March 2014. Here, participants were asked to prioritize the goals identified in the earlier workshops and work through three different future scenarios.

"These 'what if' scenarios were extremely helpful in allowing people to think through the various trade-offs and compromises that might have to be made in order to move in one direction or another," says Longo. The three scenarios were:

• Staying the course — assuming the region continues the trends of the past two decades
• Targeted management and investment — imagining what would happen if the region implements the goals of the vision with moderate amounts of growth management, investments, and incentives
• Robust management and investment — envisioning the effects if the region implements the goals of the vision with robust amounts of growth management, investments, and incentives.

Each scenario included an examination of potential land use, employment, demographics, transportation, and infrastructure. Public comments were solicited via surveys and comment cards to probe likes and dislikes for each scenario and the various trade-offs involved.

The comments showed moderate to strong support for scenarios two and three, which participants felt were most likely to realize the goals of creating vital town centers while protecting the environment, attracting young talent, reducing the amount of time residents will spend commuting, and enabling more people to be served by infrastructure. In the end, this led to the creation of a regional investment guide map, a tool to help local jurisdictions when linking land-use, investment, and infrastructure decisions to the goals, policies, and actions of the regional vision.

Longo says that support for certain specific issues within the region shifted throughout the year-long process as the trade-offs inherent in various policy decisions became clear. "At the same time, support for planning and acting regionally was very strong," he says. "This suggests that the dialogue begun by Opt-In should be a key part of implementing any portion of the regional vision in the future."

The final public forum for Opt-In was a regional summit held in May 2014. It was the largest gathering of its kind ever held in the area, and was structured around three topics: the economy of the future, connectivity through transportation, and the natural and cultural environments.

Members of the Opt-In leadership council introduced each topic, and the public answered follow-up questions via electronic keypads, with results displayed on large screens. The group also discussed how to best implement the vision in the future.

Vision emerges

The regional vision document, along with the comprehensive plans for Cherokee and Graham counties and comprehensive transportation plan for Graham County, was approved in May 2014 and presented to local and regional leaders that fall. In addition to the policies and actions identified by the public, the extensive regional vision includes an implementation matrix, with recommendations on how the region can move forward. The planning team recommends that the region set the vision in motion now to maintain the momentum the process created, and lead to early successes that can inspire additional action.

"Nothing will protect our region's traditions of independence and self-reliance more than understanding where future opportunities and challenges are likely to come from and what strategies are necessary to steer us, as a region and as individual counties and towns, toward lasting success for our families and our businesses," says Sherby.

After months of work involving thousands of people, the regional vision's adoption by the Southwestern Commission last May was unanimous. And, while there is still no consensus about how to move forward on Corridor K, leaders and citizens now have a precedent in place for discussing opposing viewpoints and working toward agreement.

"Moving forward," says Sherby, "future opportunities for economic development, infrastructure, environmental protection, quality of life, and transportation, including Corridor K, can be evaluated within the framework of the regional vision . . . to determine whether or not the opportunities support or detract from the vision."

Vice Chief Blythe spoke eloquently at the regional summit. "For thousands of years, the Cherokee lived and learned from this landscape and the living things that shared this space," he said. "For hundreds of years, the descendants of the Cherokees and their neighbors have been experimenting with ways in which their cultures combined and informed one another. There have been times of intense conflict and times of intense collaboration. We should all be wiser from that experience and ready to move into a new era, stronger together because of it."

Julie Herron Carson is a publicist and consultant to TSW.

Resources

Images: Top — Southwestern North Carolina's geography is both beautiful and challenging. Middle — A vision for a town center development in Robbinsville, a town of 620 people in Graham County, emerged from the Opt-In process. Opt-In videos: www.optinswnc.org. Bottom — The Opt-In region: The vast and mountainous seven-county area includes a large amount of protected land (in green) and diffuse towns and villages (yellow). Building footprints are shown in red. Images courtesy TSW.