Designing the Path to a Consequential Place

No matter where you live, I’d be willing to bet you could name at least one special project or opportunity that’s captured the imagination of your community. It could be a great street, a lakefront, or a new venue. It could be a truth and reconciliation project, or an important public space. It could be some combination of these, or something else entirely—but it’s something people are talking about because it has a community impact.

Public interest design projects come in many forms. They have unique, but in some ways predictable, characteristics. Projects with public interest at stake have a discernible critical path that differs in specific ways from typical private development. After briefly level-setting, that’s what this article will explore. 

Private development often starts on a site with clear boundaries, under control by a developer through either ownership or option, and usually with a plan informed by market study and product type. 

Public interest projects may have private components, but they often start with a broader view of “the project site," which is likely informed by a perceived asset: a natural feature, an area of cultural vibrancy, important economic activity, or any number of other community assets. For these kinds of projects, you need to be thinking at multiple scales, and listening to multiple stakeholders. Rather than the process starting with site control and focused on delivering a financeable product, the process often begins with engagement and ends with a new or improved community asset. It is inhabitable and identifiable as a place that has a sense of community ownership.

Establishing a reasonable timeline and milestones for designing a public interest project is important, and doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The significance of good process design can’t be overstated. The “process” is a set of relationships and a journey to finding the project’s identity. It needs to be unique and customized, not generic. You also need a clear understanding of the jurisdictions and authorities governing the site. All of this requires time, intention, and resources. 

One of the most important things to understand right upfront is who owns and maintains what within the project area, before and after the project is completed. Figuring this out will help you to define both your funding strategy and your operations plan.

In private development, questions about ownership and maintenance responsibility are typically not hard to answer. But in projects where the answer may be complex, it’s valuable and mobilizing to seek clarity early. 

The second key question to ask right upfront is about leadership and decision-making. Who’s managing the process? Who’s paying for it? And who is empowered to make decisions? These aren’t necessarily all the same party, and possibly shouldn’t be. Think about whether the structure of decision-making is demonstrative of the project’s vision and values.

No matter if a public interest project is led by the private sector, the public sector, or a nonprofit, the process itself should be designed with the intention to achieve a good outcome both practically (from a project implementation perspective), and ethically (from a community trust perspective).

Finally, most people have a pretty clear understanding of what private developers can bring to a project. But what about cities, and nonprofits? How do they participate, and what are their limitations?

Cities have unique and powerful authorities, including financial, regulatory, legislative, and technical. The challenge for city staff or elected leaders seeking to catalyze change or support a vision is that "the City" is often a multi-headed entity when it comes to planning and implementation. 

Siloed authorities within the City Enterprise need to be purposefully coordinated and aligned in order to fulfill their potential. This may sound simple, but it’s not. 

Authorities often reside in different departments, under different leaders, operating under separate budgets. Separate departments or agencies that may need to be aligned include Public Works, Planning & Economic Development, Parks & Recreation, Housing, and a Development or Port Authority.

So for city leaders seeking to engage the community, and fully advance a public interest project, one of the most important questions to raise is about political will: How will all of the necessary resources and authorities within and across the City Enterprise be aligned to the purpose and the timeline? 

Cities do well to acknowledge that local stakeholders such as businesses, nonprofits and residents are often the initial authors of ideas and solutions. They're close to the ground, and they deeply understand the potential (and the challenges) of emerging place identities. 

Nonprofits have begun taking larger roles in shaping the built environment. They have the capacity to partner, to engage and be the voice of a constituency, and to add capacity through philanthropy and other unique funding sources. 

But nonprofits don't have the regulatory or jurisdictional authority that may be necessary to fulfill a big project vision on their own. Nonprofits are first and foremost mission-focused. When it comes to participating in (or leading) capital projects, advancing the mission may necessitate bringing new skillsets into the team, and building productive relationships with allies including government, other nonprofits, and the private sector. Strategic board and committee actions, MOUs, joint public statements, and other concrete actions can help to cement key commitments and build momentum to close gaps.

With an engaged community, coordination and alignment of resources and authorities, and good process design, the public interest becomes a design that can be realized. The process reveals a place, and once built, the people who dreamed it into being will inhabit it for years to come.