Designing public engagement

Learning objectives

• Explain why planners engage the public and what makes engagement meaningful rather than token.
• Name the rungs and groupings of Arnstein's ladder and the five levels of the IAP2 spectrum.
• Design an engagement strategy by matching purpose, audience, timing, and technique.
• Describe common engagement techniques, including charrettes, visioning, visual preference surveys, and the fishbowl.
• Use a stakeholder analysis and choose deliberative methods, such as deliberative polling and citizens' assemblies, when informed judgment matters.
• Distinguish a public hearing from a public meeting, and evaluate whether outreach worked.

Key concepts

Why engage?

Planning decisions affect people's homes, streets, and livelihoods. Engagement:

• brings in local knowledge that data can't capture;
• surfaces values and priorities, the choices that are political rather than technical;
• builds legitimacy and trust, which makes plans easier to implement;
• is often legally required (notice and hearing requirements, federal Title VI obligations); and
• is simply part of the profession's ethical commitment to give people a meaningful role in decisions that affect them.

Engagement is also a research method: talking with residents is how planners come to understand a community.

7 more sections follow in the full lesson.