It is with a certain humility that those at the Regional Plan Association embark on a fourth Regional Plan for the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey metropolitan area. The first plan for the region was drawn up from the top down in 1929, and it served as a framework for Robert Moses to build a network of roads and bridges. The second plan came in the 1960s and tried to engage the public much more; RPA presented research and data, and essentially said to the citizenry “what do you think?” recalls executive director Thomas Wright. But it was challenging to get residents to take it all in and offer opinions. The third plan, published in 1996 under the title, "A Region at Risk," included hand-drawn future development scenarios and polled residents’ satisfaction with their quality of life in the tri-state region compared with other parts of the country. Still, it seemed, something was missing. As the RPA embarks on its fourth Regional Plan, it is determined to use social media and technology for better civic engagement in planning the future of the region. But the question remains: is there really an app for that?Planners have for many years used scenario planning software in “visioning” exercises to facilitate better citizen engagement in long-range planning for cities and regions. Notable examples include the tools developed for these “visioning” exercises by Fregonese Associates for Envision Utah and MetroQuest in the Chicago 2040 planning process. Typically the programs take different inputs such as density, mixed-use development, and transportation nodes, together with population estimates, and show different outcomes. It’s all very visual, with three-dimensional animations making it easier to peek into the future. But planners everywhere are faced with a daunting task in the face of a dizzying array of visioning tools, and it’s not easy to figure out which ones to use, or how to use them most effectively. To address this need, a team convened by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute has been working on a way to make these tools more openly accessible on a common clearinghouse website, and open-source as well, to take advantage of ideas and innovations in technology going forward. The thinking was that by better packaging critical information about these tools, planners could make informed decisions about which tools to use and how to use them – a kind of Consumer Reports model for scenario planning software.
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