For immediate release
Contact: Anthony Flint 617-503-2116
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Effective regional planning today requires extensive citizen engagement, but the process can be challenging. A new subcenter in the Resources and Tools section of the Lincoln Institute Web site provides a case study in how to use the latest technology to guide community consensus on future growth.
At Visioning and Visualization , the latest addition to the Visualizing section containing Visual Tools for Planners and the award-winning Visualizing Density, users are walked through the step-by-step process of the development of the Kona Community Development Plan on the big island of Hawaii.
Work on the plan, which begun in 2006 with the team of ACP Visioning & Planning and the Environmental Simulation Center , was based on a vision for more sustainable growth patterns in the Kona region, which was threatened by the loss of significant natural, cultural, and agricultural resources, housing growth. New housing construction, primarily second homes, outpaced already significant population growth two to one, and there was no clear plan for infrastructure.
A critical component of developing an enforceable, long-range regional plan was to engage the citizenry and reach consensus on goals and priorities. A special emphasis was placed on visualizing options and on using images to engage the public in making informed choices. The site details that process, as citizens, planners, and public officials worked together to gather ideas, agree on challenges in focus groups, examine different future growth scenarios, levels of density, and development boundaries to protect open space. The site is structured to follow the different uses of technology in the chronological order of the process:
--Gathering Ideas
--Focus Groups
--Where Do We Grow?
--The Base Maps
--How Do We Grow?
--Development Principles
--A Vision for Kona
Ultimately, consensus was reached on the concept that future growth should be guided into dense, walkable, mixed-use, and transit-oriented villages in already developed places. The participants in the process could see that future in a three-dimensional video simulation of a prototypical transit-based neighborhood.
The end result of the process, the Kona Community Development Plan, has won an American Planning Association award and helped guide two compact, mixed-use development projects that are already underway.
The Kona case study on the Lincoln Institute Web site appears in the book, Visioning and Visualization: People, Pixels and Plans, which explores the marriage of technology and citizen engagement to help communities visualize different growth scenarios. The site can be explored on its own, or as a companion to the book, illustrating key concepts with added illustrations, charts, and graphics.
“Any region trying to map future growth would benefit from looking at the tools and the process at this site,” said Armando J. Carbonell, chair of the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute.
Visioning and Visualization: People, Pixels and Plans was based on a series of workshops sponsored by the Lincoln Institute over the past five years, led by the co-authors, Michael Kwartler, founding director of the Environmental Simulation Center, and Gianni Longo, founding principal of ACP–Visioning & Planning.
The site Visioning and Visualization reflects the Lincoln Institute’s dedication to making case studies, information, and data readily available at no cost, for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and journalists. The site is located in the Resources and Tools section where users can also find databases on the property tax and local government finance, land and property values in the U.S., and university real estate development. Sites on community land trusts, the management of state trust lands, regional collaboration, resolving land use disputes, and measuring fiscal impact can also be found in Resources and Tools .
Planetizen recently highlighted the Resources and Tools section in naming the Lincoln Institute Web site as one of its Top Ten Web sites for 2010.
# # #