Public Participation

Candy Chang is using public art installations to spark community involvement and input on land use.

August 16, 2011 - Grist

Cities across the U.S. are increasingly looking to technology to improve the public participation process and increase the ways citizens can engage with the government. Chief technical officers are becoming more common.

August 4, 2011 - Design Mind

Artist Candy Chang has taken an old building in Fairbanks, Alaska and turned it into a public idea board that asks locals what they think should be done with it.

July 1, 2011 - Fast Company

The sudden appearance of a ping pong table in a public park in Dallas is a perfect example of the concept of emergence in cities, according to this post on Pegasus News.

June 10, 2011 - Pegasus News

In this op-ed for The Detroit News, Rob Goodspeed argues that Detroit needs to exert more effort to dialog with its citizens about how the city should change.

June 4, 2011 - The Detroit News

An independent group is seeking to "ignite essential discussions about art in Los Angeles" by getting locals to put APPROVE or DISAPPROVE stickers on public art around the city.

May 12, 2011 - MOCA-latte

That was David Motzenbecker's thought as he began a public meeting of the Minneapolis Planning Department, which inspired him to re-think how the city engages the public.

May 11, 2011 - On The Commons

In 2009 we worked with Ron Thomas, Mary Means, and Goody Clancy to help plan and run a large 500+ person visioning event in the town of Shreveport. We set up the event the night before with computers at every table for brainstorming and a [...]

March 19, 2011 - Ken Snyder

NYC's Deputy Mayor of Operations Stephen Goldsmith reflects on the value of listening to people, and talks about the new crowdsourcing projects the city is rolling out.

February 27, 2011 - Governing

Using the example of the failed regeneration of Green Bay's downtown led by Victor Gruen, Della Rucker argues that disregarding input from the public can have devastating repercussions.

February 14, 2011 - New Geography

NIMBYism is obstructing the urban planning process, according to architect and New Urbanist Andres Duany. He suggests changing the public participation process to unclog the system.

January 11, 2011 - Architect

"Give a Minute" is a program that seeks ideas for fixing cities directly from the people who use them, using ads in newspapers and displays in public spaces to ask a big question, such as "What would get you to walk, bike or take transit more often?"

December 25, 2010 - Urban Omnibus

A simple sticker that says "I WISH THIS WAS" gives New Orleans residents a way to comment directly on their communities.

December 2, 2010 - Candy Chang blog

Washington D.C.'s Metro is expecting a major increase in ridership over the next 30 years. To try to meet that demand, they're recruiting ideas from the public with a new outreach effort.

December 1, 2010 - The City Fix

This post from The City Fix looks at various efforts to increase communication between transit riders and transit providers in Chicago.

November 18, 2010 - The City Fix

An experiment in community participation conducted by a multinational group of architects, planners and artists in south Delhi tests the efficacy of guerrilla neighborhood planning methods in the developing world.

November 17, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal

Over the last six months some of my blog entries have highlighted plans and places. This month I turn to processes that are important in planning. This is a bit trickier than plans and places as the web presence of processes tends to be dominated by project examples and how-to instructions. It’s also hard from the web to get a sense of how processes have developed over time—for example what passes as rational comprehensive planning today, complete with numerous participatory processes and evaluation strategies, is quite different from the much criticized technical model of the 1950s and 1960s. Of course that’s a good reason to go to planning school.

October 31, 2010 - Ann Forsyth

Looking to spur civic engagement, officials in Boulder, Colorado are experimenting with unusual incentives for attendees of city-sponsored meetings.

October 25, 2010 - Daily Camera

A new museum exhibit in Vermont invites visitors to review various proposals for updating the riverfront in Brattleboro -- and allows them to submit their own ideas.

September 22, 2010 - Change Observer

The city of Lincoln, Nebraska, is asking locals to submit and vote on ideas to integrate into its new master plan, hoping to get citizens more involved in the process and test out unconventional ideas.

August 18, 2010 - Lincoln Journal Star