Engaging the Future through Regional Visioning

Presentation to theCapital Region Transportation Planning Agency

March 17, 2008

Dr. Tim ChapinFlorida State University

Department of Urban & Regional Planning

What is Visioning?• When thinking about and investigating the future, what

some call “engaging the future”, planners, public officials, and business leaders have usually done so via Visioning.

• Visioning is:

– a process intended to develop a description of a desirable situation at a future time,

– not a fantasy, but rather an optimistic picture of what might be achieved,

– a normative process in that a desirable, but plausible future is articulated and course corrections can be made to work towards this desired future.

Why Pursue a Visioning Agenda?1. Plan at a Regional Scale

Regional visioning provides an avenue for embedding multi-jurisdictional problem solving in an environment often characterized by parochial attitudes and behaviors.

2. Promote Regional Collaboration While visioning can create a regionalism ethic, it also is valuable as a catalyst for collaborations between local governments and Public-Private-NPO collaborations to address these regional problems.

Why Pursue a Visioning Agenda?3. Link Conservation-Land Use-Transportation

Visioning offers an opportunity to forge linkages between these three “framing elements”, elements that lie at the core of any region’s long-term sustainability.

4. Bring Values Back into the Planning Process Regional visioning offers a tremendous opportunity to re-establish planning as a normative process, in which a desired future state is envisioned and policies and programs are designed to work towards that vision.

Making Visioning Work1. While regional visioning can take a variety of forms,

at its core it rests upon an articulation of a desired future state and the delineation of action steps to work towards that outcome.

2. Regional visioning requires sufficient resources to work meaningfully towards change.

3. Regional visioning takes time; any effort requires a multi-year (permanent?) commitment by local governments to come together to envision the future, develop an action plan, implement this plan, and then systematically re-visit the vision, the plan, and the implementation agenda.

Making Visioning Work4. Regional visioning should be based in a Public-

Private-NPO partnership. These partnerships lay the foundation for effective collaboration to address thorny regional issues.

5. Regional visioning is most successful when there is a commitment to:

• Process (community input and empirical analysis) • Action (policies, plans, programs)A common visioning mistake rests in the assumption

that broad community and stakeholder input is sufficient to catalyze behavioral changes and more desirable development outcomes.

Pathways to Successful Implementation1. Carrots (Incentives) to Support the Visions

2. Conformity of Plans and Policies to the Visions

3. Coordination of Local, Regional, and State entities in support of the visions

4. Comprehensiveness in the form of a broad array of implementation tools and mechanisms.

The Implementation Agenda:A “Package Approach”

Planning Mechanisms for Implementing Visions• Voluntary Agreements/Regional Compacts• Require Local Comp Plan Consistency with Visions• Require that Local Capital Budgeting Decisions Reflect

the Visions• Require that Transportation Plans and Investments

Reflect the Visions• Require that Water Supply Plans Reflect the Visions• Require that Regional Planning Efforts (DRIs, OSPs,

RLSAs) Reflect the Visions

Implementation Mechanisms

• A Focus Upon “C-LU-T”– Conservation– Land Use– Transportation

• Minimum Required Planning Documents– Regional Greenprint– Regional Land Use Framework– Regional Multi-Modal Transportation Framework

The Visioning “Outputs”

Conservation Framework Example

Source: MD Dept of Planning

Land Use Framework Example

Source: Portland Metro

Transport Framework Example

Source: Portland Metro

Before closing, it is essential to note that:

The Vision is Not the PlanVisions are loose, generalized, value-laden documents

that provide direction as to the desired future for an area.

Comprehensive Plans, on the other hand, have evolved into administrative documents that provide for specifics on planning processes, land use outcomes, and implementation mechanisms.

Visions vs. Plans

The Vision-Comp Planning Model

Capital Improvement Program (CIP)

Local Comprehensive Plan

Infrastructure Investments

Land Development Regulations (LDRs)

SMART GROWTH --Compact Dev. --Green Infra. --Proactive Planning

Regional/Local Vision