Community Engagement

The Pittsburgh Marathon was canceled for five years due to budget constraints, but a recent study shows that the 2009 race generated over $22 million in spending.

September 12, 2009 - PopCity Magazine

A review of a new book Building Commons and Community by Karl Linn, a landscape architect and psychologist who worked to create vibrant community spaces in abandoned lots and boring institutional settings.

August 30, 2009 - re:place Magazine

An interview with Eric Gordon, who was part of a team that recently won a MacArthur grant for using Second Life as a community planning tool.

June 12, 2009 - Metropolis Magazine

Residents in the greater Boise area are teaming up for a community visioning process they hope will help guide future physical and economic development in the region. It's been tried before, but organizers argue this time will be different.

May 19, 2009 - The Idaho Statesman

In central New Jersey, all the signs that usually indicate extensive community involvement are there: affluence, education, and diversity. But in reality, participation levels are low. A new study shows that sprawl may be the culprit.

October 21, 2008 - Princeton Packet

Steven Bingler of Concordia Planning and Architecture discusses the process and thinking behind the Unified New Orleans Plan, which engaged large numbers of citizens to plan the recovery of their neighborhoods in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

September 4, 2008 - The Planning Report

Students in Ohio State University's City and Regional Planning department worked closely with the Franklinton neighborhood in Columbus to create a new vision for the community.

June 1, 2008 - Columbus Alive

As Mayor Bloomberg moves forward with an eco-friendly redevelopment for the crumbling Willets Point neighborhood, locals feel pushed aside and complain that eminent domain is out of control.

May 23, 2008 - The Christian Science Monitor

I think many planners, in principle, agree that public involvement and grass-roots approaches to planning are necessary. The emphasis on the sheer numbers of people a plan "includes" is only one recent example of our profession’s emphasis on public involvement. But I think deep down, many colleagues see a distinctive split between involving the public and empowering them to implement. Involving is necessary and important to get any plan endorsed. But once that plan is complete, the public (residents, business owners, local stakeholders) is many times not regarded as an implementation partner except perhaps in roles of advocacy.

March 31, 2008 - Scott Page

 We all saw it on the Internet—the fellow at a public meeting being hauled away from the microphone before getting wrestled to the floor and tasered during a Q&A with John Kerry. Fortunately, silencing argumentative speakers with a taser is not a common occurrence at most public meetings. While I might confess that there have been meetings where, in retrospect, one might have secretly wished one was armed with a stun gun, facilitators generally try to avoid confrontation. Yet there’s no denying that sometimes people show up at public meetings looking for a fight, begging for outrage, and hoping to irritate and inflame.

September 27, 2007 - Barbara Faga

The message from last weekend's two-day symposium at Columbia University, the Queens Museum and the Museum of the City of New York on Robert Moses: many aspects of the master builder's place in history haven't been told, despite Robert Caro's 1,162-page Pulizter Prize-winning biography; and that New York may need to rethink the paradigm for big plans and community engagement as the unique metropolis makes new investments in transit, roadways and large redevelopment projects from Ground Zero to Hudson Yards.

March 5, 2007 - Anthony Flint