Designing public engagement
Arnstein’s ladder, the IAP2 spectrum, stakeholder analysis, choosing outreach and deliberative techniques, and evaluating whether engagement actually worked.
Lesson 11 of 40 · about 27 minutes · Outline areas: 3.1 Communication; 3.9 Outreach strategies and techniques; 3.10 Evaluation of outreach strategy; 1.4 Community involvement to develop understanding of a community
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.
Key terms
- Arnstein's ladder: An eight-rung ranking of participation from nonparticipation through tokenism to citizen power.
- Tokenism: Participation that offers a voice without real influence (informing, consultation, placation).
- IAP2 spectrum: Five levels of public influence: inform, consult, involve, collaborate, empower.
- Stakeholder mapping: Identifying who is affected by or can affect a decision.
- Power-interest grid: A stakeholder analysis tool that sorts stakeholders by their influence over a decision and their interest in it.
- Deliberative polling: Polling a random sample before and after informed small-group deliberation.
- Citizens' assembly: A group of residents chosen by lot to hear evidence, deliberate, and recommend.
- Communications plan: A plan defining audiences, messages, methods, and timing.
- Charrette: An intensive, time-limited, collaborative design workshop.
- Visioning: A process for describing a community's desired long-range future.
- Visual preference survey: A technique in which participants rate images of development types.
- Fishbowl: A format where a small group discusses while a larger group observes.
- Public hearing: A formal, legally noticed proceeding that creates a record for a decision.
- Closing the loop: Reporting back to participants how their input was used.
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