By Nora Bland, AICP in Expertise, Residential, Cushing Terrell.
How to engage with residents today to shape thriving communities tomorrow.
First, the obvious: Housing affordability has become a major problem in Colorado. Per a recent Colorado Health Foundation poll, 82% of Coloradans say the cost of housing is a serious problem and 47% of renters aspire to own a home but believe it’s unlikely for them. With these numbers, it’s no wonder that in 2022, Colorado voters passed Proposition 123, a state ballot measure that aims to address the state’s affordable housing crisis. It allocates a portion of state tax revenue, specifically 0.1% of state income tax revenue, to fund affordable housing initiatives.
Already the creation of an estimated 628 affordable housing units have been funded with a total of $39,390,879. But funding alone isn’t the only hurdle to the creation of more affordable housing. Public outreach and education are crucial components in the process of realizing new affordable communities.
Public funding and approvals for affordable housing projects are often tied to some degree of public outreach, and with good reason, but this is often where projects run into trouble. Believing that affordable housing is imperative and wanting to see more affordable housing built in your own neighborhood are two different things. The same is true for virtually any aspect of development.
Robust and equitable engagement are absolutely crucial to development that supports the community’s needs and wants. But sometimes, the best time for outreach is long before one particular project is on the table. Timing really is everything.
Based on Cushing Terrell’s planning experience across the United States, here’s a look at why the best time for extensive public outreach can actually be during the long-range planning, comprehensive planning, master planning, or growth planning process, and how to do it in a way that is both equitable and keeps the community focused on its shared goals.
Defining the Goals of Long-Range Planning
Intended to create a vision for what a community wants to be, these plans answer questions such as: Should our town grow fast or slow? Should there be increased density? What are the commercial, retail, or industrial needs? They’re meant to be holistic and high level and touch on elements such as land use, housing, transportation, sustainability, and local economies.
Developing long-range plans can be tricky to navigate — in terms of communication and education, gathering public feedback, sorting through that feedback, and possibly shifting the way a community typically handles new development. Professional planners, including our team here at Cushing Terrell, help local governments effectively manage each step of the process with an end result that facilitates smart growth with community buy-in.
Whatever the route taken, the most important question for residents to answer is: What do we want our community to be and to look like?
Navigating the Public Feedback Process
Because a long-range plan impacts current residents, immediate future residents, and generations beyond, it’s important to engage with as many people in the community as possible. This means you can’t solely rely on municipal meeting participants, as they may not be representative of the full population. In fact, a 2018 studyfound meeting attendees make up only a portion of the overall community demographic. According to the study, they tend to be older, male, longtime residents, voters in local elections, and homeowners.
So, how do you reach a wider array of people with different viewpoints and lifestyles? For example, those who might work two jobs, or work evenings, or have kids who would require sitters to attend a meeting? There are many people who simply aren’t accustomed to showing up to a municipal building to give their input on public matters. These community members are no less important and should have an opportunity to be heard, but it requires employing different strategies to reach them.
Gathering representative public input in an equitable manner provides an important benefit to a town as a whole. It can lead to a greater sense of community when people see that a municipality wants residents to be involved in the process — especially when residents can see their input reflected later on in the plan. For example, when updating Chaffee County’s comprehensive plan here in Colorado, there were conflicting views on how the County should grow between long-time residents and new residents. To engage the conflicting sides in meaningful community conversations, the Cushing Terrell team modeled three different growth scenarios including low-density or dispersed growth scenario, a concentrated growth scenario, and a corridor-centric scenario. In the end, the team leveraged the community’s shared values and landed on a final growth scenario, where both sides supported the plan at the hearing for adoption.
Getting more people involved can be resource-intensive, but it will lead to a more equitable plan that more accurately reflects a community’s needs and wants. The overarching idea is to meet people where they are, rather than just letting them know they can attend a meeting. You’ll need to communicate what a community long-range plan is, why it’s important that everyone is involved, and how they can continue to stay in the loop throughout the process.
Planners can enhance long-range community planning efforts by using a variety of outreach strategies. Pop-up events at transit stations, grocery stores, or community festivals provide interactive opportunities for public engagement. Recruiting community ambassadors—trusted and connected individuals—can be highly effective, especially when they are trained and compensated for their efforts to facilitate conversations and gather input. Digital platforms are crucial for maintaining a feedback loop; they allow planners to communicate what they’ve heard from the community, showcase feedback, and provide updates, timelines, and resources like zoning maps and community rules, ensuring transparency and ongoing engagement. You can see an example here of our work for the Town of Fraser.
While you’re gathering public input, it’s important that it be managed in an equitable and transparent way. Catalog everything: Record every single comment you receive and have a team member responsible for tracking topics that come up regularly as well as general themes. Be prepared to share it transparently at any time it’s requested.
Staying the Course
Now, here comes the most important part. Once you’ve collected and organized community input and developed recommendations based on that input, you’re left with a comprehensive, long-range plan. This plan acts as a guiding document to help staff and officials make decisions about development proposals. When a developer comes to a municipality or county to apply for rezoning, for example, there’s public input already in place for what residents hope to see their town become. If the rezoning aligns with what the future land-use plan suggested — backed by ample public input — it gives community leaders reason to approve the proposed development.
(It’s also important to periodically update the future land-use map so it’s not outdated and still reflective of the current community. It’s a living document intended to change with the times.)
If some community members oppose new developments — because of a concern about diminishing property values, for example — officials should keep the original long-range plan in mind, knowing it was thoroughly informed by community feedback, and then find trusted information to alleviate concerns. In my earlier example about affordable housing, sharing research on the impact of low-income housing on neighborhood property values could be helpful, as it points to positive impacts on property values rather than negative.
Here’s the part that might make local leadership a bit nervous. Once it comes time for decisions to be made on rezoning or affordable housing, for example, it may be time to limit community input — especially if it takes away from the vision established in the long-range planning process. Often, this involves restructuring the development/zoning review process. The review can be administrative instead, handled by staff appointed to be the rezoning reviewers. There would be no need for a public hearing as they would be working from the long-range plan.
This all underscores the importance of letting people know they should let their voices be heard during the long-range planning process because their input will help drive decisions made in the future. Explain that the structure of the rezoning or development review process is changing, so you encourage community members to speak up now.
This is a primary reason to have professional planners engage with the public as part of the planning process. These professionals can help people understand what makes sense (and what’s possible) when it comes to land use and help determine what the needs of the community are — across demographics.
A long-range plan is an incredible opportunity to engage with the public in an equitable way. When done thoughtfully, it builds not just a guide to how the town will look in the future — addressing both challenges and aspirations — but also strengthens the sense of community among its members.
Denver-based Cushing Terrell specializes in architecture, engineering, and design. The firm has been servicing the greater Denver community since 2007.
