Category: Public Engagement

We all have a better chance of conducting effective public engagement when we have more tools in our toolbox. One tool that I am seeing in growing use is a community ambassador (CA) program. These programs take different forms, but the core commonality is that they empower community members, rather than professional planners,... Continue Reading

Surveys are everywhere these days. Every time you turn around, someone wants you to rate your meal, or your doctor visit, or your hotel stay. And public participation is no different. Widespread internet access and digital survey tools have made conducting surveys for public participation much easier and cheaper than they... Continue Reading

PlaceMakers is delighted to announce that, effective June 15, widely respected community engagement innovator Jennifer Hurley will make official our long-standing history of collaboration, becoming our newest Principal and expanding our commitment to community-responsive planning, coding, and policy development. Since... Continue Reading

In this week's post, PlaceMaker Hazel Borys walks us through a pop-up park that she and her friends built. And how it helps implement three of the 22 actions of the Pandemic Toolkit. Click below to launch. Continue Reading

This is Part II of a two-parter on community engagement strategies in a new era. Part I is here. This conversation is the third in our series addressing planning challenges for local governments in a post-pandemic future. The two previous topics can be found here and here. Jennifer Hurley is President & CEO of Hurley-Franks... Continue Reading

This is Part I of a two-parter on this topic. The conversation is the third in our series addressing planning challenges in an era likely to be reshaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. The two previous topics can be found here and here. Jennifer Hurley is President & CEO of Hurley-Franks & Associates, a planning consultancy... Continue Reading

Between now and April 17, AARP, the largest advocacy organization for seniors, is inviting government entities and non-profits to apply for a Community Challenge grant. This program, now in its third year, is a good one. Not just for retirement-aged crowd, and not just for the support it provides for individual projects. ... Continue Reading

Originally published almost four years ago and every bit as relevant today. I have spent most of the last twenty years working on an agenda grounded in, for lack of a better phrase, “smart growth.”  That agenda basically holds that our regions must replace suburban sprawl with more compact forms of growth and... Continue Reading

Okay, so we’re shaking off the shock therapy of 2017 and ready to move on, right? Let’s start with admitting some of the stuff a lot of us got wrong about challenges and solutions in municipal and regional planning. Such as: Our misplaced overconfidence in the stability of basic institutions, especially those requiring... Continue Reading

Sometimes all the right people seem to be at the table, all singing from similar hymnals, and all seemingly focused on transcending growth-as-usual and yet, still, the results fall flat. Today we look at one of those times. The scenario Imagine this: A site area that retailers describe as a “100% corner.”... Continue Reading