How We Listen to Our Community

Recently, I posed a question to a few hundred planners at metropolitan planning organizations for urbanized areas with populations less than 200,000. I asked them what they were doing to engage their areas’ low-income and minority communities in some facet(s) of their planning processes. I got some great responses, a few of which I compiled into a short “scanning report,” as part of an FHWA-funded research project I’m conducting.

It's a brief report. To summarize it, what I found was that community engagement in smaller metropolitan areas tended to follow one or both of two paths. Half of the responding MPOs reported their staff carried out a variety of strategies in which they engaged directly with community members, such as through direct interviews, attendance at community meetings, appearances at community events, etc. Half of the responding MPOs reported various forms of using trusted intermediaries (e.g., advocacy groups, community organizations, churches, schools) to host meetings, conduct focus groups, etc. In a few instances, MPOs carried out more extensive activities to include low-income or minority community participation in planning processes, such as conducting day-long workshops or multi-day community charrettes.

The responding MPOs have given us some neat case studies. I encourage you to read this scanning report (it’s only six pages), and perhaps you can offer up your own success stories.