Civic Site Staff Talk Inclusive Community Planning in National Series

This week, our own Tra­mun­da Hodges and Moki Macías from the Atlanta Civic Site team shared their take on inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ty plan­ning with par­tic­i­pants on the Orton Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion​’s Com­mu­ni­ty­Mat­ters month­ly con­fer­ence call series. The con­fer­ence call series began in 2010 and has a nation­wide audi­ence includ­ing prac­ti­tion­ers in the gov­ern­men­tal, envi­ron­men­tal, plan­ning, social ser­vice and eco­nom­ic and com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment fields. 

The June 12 call focused on how to cre­ate more inclu­sive process­es for com­mu­ni­ty vision­ing, plan­ning and deci­sion mak­ing: what it takes to get peo­ple into the room, spark the cre­ative wis­dom of those most affect­ed by issues of com­mon con­cern and facil­i­tate action-ori­ent­ed dia­logue that acknowl­edges and address­es pow­er dynam­ics. Fol­low­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion on the civic site’s com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing prin­ci­ples and a case study of the Peo­plestown Com­mu­ni­ty Vision­ing day, 100 par­tic­i­pants from more than 30 states par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Q&A session.

High­lights from the dis­cus­sion includ­ed a con­ver­sa­tion about how cities can break-out of tra­di­tion­al pub­lic adver­tis­ing meth­ods by tap­ping into infor­mal com­mu­ni­ty net­works and sup­port­ing stand-alone com­mu­ni­ca­tion vehi­cles; how to encour­age cumu­la­tive learn­ing and sus­tained lead­er­ship in com­mu­ni­ties while also involv­ing new stake­hold­ers; and strate­gies to avoid the dynam­ic of one per­son speak­ing for the entire community.

In addi­tion to answer­ing ques­tions gen­er­at­ed by par­tic­i­pants, Hodges and Macías shared their per­spec­tives on ways to cre­ate acces­si­ble spaces for pub­lic dia­logue to occur and the need for tar­get­ed strate­gies to engage diverse stake­hold­er groups.

Lis­ten to their pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cus­sion.