Pachamama Alliance of Oregon

Small cities and towns across America face many challenges. Towns that are close to significant natural resource amenities face increasing development pressures from urban professionals plying their trades via the Internet and enjoying the great outdoors, and from burgeoning retirement populations seeking the high quality, low stress way of life found in these picturesque and desirable places. Other communities suffer from youth exodus, crumbling infrastructure and antiquated economies, and are tempted to embrace development at any cost. Stories of confrontation and alienation are commonplace in local newspapers, and many citizens simply opt out of their towns’ important discussions and decisions due to skepticism, fatigue, intimidation or a sense that their voices don’t count.

 

While innovation and success has occurred across the country, land use planning in America has yet to engage a broad base of local citizens to help them define and shape the future of their communities. Traditional quantitative approaches use important data about demographic and economic shifts, traffic counts and infrastructure needs, but frequently fail to account for the particular ways people relate to their physical surroundings and ignore or discount the intangibles—shared values, beliefs and quirky customs—that make community.

 

Furthermore, a collection of quantifiable attributes without an understanding of shared values and a sense of purpose does not motivate citizens to show up and make tough, consistent decisions. It also fails to account for how citizens’ day-to-day lives and livelihoods, and those of future generations, will be affected by change.

A community is a special place full of stories of the people who live there. Collectively, these stories are a big part of the community’s character: its heart and soul. In a way, planning is like writing the next chapter in a community’s story.

As we enter the 21st century, there are signs that citizens expect to have a greater role in community decisions. In The Next Form of American Democracy, Matt Leighninger wrote, “[C]itizens seem better at governing, and worse at being governed, than ever before…. We are leaving the era of expert rule, in which elected representatives and designated experts make decisions and attack problems with limited interference, and entering a period in which the responsibilities of governance are more widely shared.” The Foundation has witnessed many examples of “ordinary” citizens leading the way.

We believe that local citizens have the ingenuity and know-how to write the next chapter: to ensure the sustainable economic, environmental and social well being of their communities. With the full participation of those who live, work and play in a community, a town can tap into its deep beliefs to direct the forces of growth and change, protecting and enhancing its heart and soul.

 

Heart & Soul Planning is an iterative process beginning with:

1. Discovery and Articulation of valued assets
2. Implementation of policies, regulations, institutions and traditions to enhance and protect agreed on assets
3. Stewardship of those assets and characteristics through evaluation, accountability and regular review and reassessment of Heart & Soul assets and the health of the community.

The Heart & Soul approach builds on innovative efforts in many disciplines across the country and around the world, including: values-based planning; consensus building; participatory democracy; citizen engagement; appreciative inquiry; community development; grassroots sustainability and buy-local movements; digital and other storytelling; the arts as a catalyst for citizen engagement and change; economic development; land conservation; “Smart Growth”; visualization; quality-of-life indicators; landscape design; historic preservation; applied GIS and other technologies. We acknowledge our many partners—known and unknown—for their groundbreaking work.

The first four communities (Biddeford, ME; Damariscotta, ME; Golden, CO; and Victor, ID) to undergo full-scale Heart & Soul Community Planning processes are currently one year into their initial two-year initiatives.

 

Based on surveys, media coverage and tracking, and records of local events, the towns have already seen a number of results in the first year:

 

• Increased dialogue between diverse community groups that rarely interact
• Increased participation in community activities and planning processes from a wide range of community groups and demographics
• Successful community storytelling and story gathering initiatives, which have revealed widely-shared community values and will inform land use policies
• New action projects and volunteers for a wide range of community projects, from landscaping initiatives to digital storytelling and youth engagement
• Increased transparency of community decisions and government actions, along with improved communication and information about local decision-making
• Heightened sense of activity, enthusiasm, and hope for the future

Detailed case studies of the activities in these four communities are available at the links above, along with information about other communities using similar methods and tools to improve civic engagement and protect community character. Many other communities and organizations across the country have been working on projects over the years with similar goals and techniques; some of these examples and results from them are profiled in a research publication, Planning for Community Heart and Soul

The concepts behind Heart & Soul Community Planning have existed for years and have been put into practice in communities around the world, but the process as a whole is relatively new and untested. No communities have gone through an entire process yet, so there are no long-term results to share or lessons to guide other communities looking to take the process on. Preliminary results are very promising and suggest strong impacts on civic engagement, local democracy, and quality of planning policies and documents, but it will be several years before there is enough data to evaluate the full process.

 

The greatest limitation of the approach to date seems to be the resources required to conduct a full-scale processes. Communities currently undertaking Heart & Soul Community Planning initiatives have budgets of approximately $200,000 for two-year processes and have at least half-time coordinators to organize the projects. It is often possible to leverage existing funding and form partnerships to cover costs for this type of process, but communities cannot expect to take on a comprehensive initiative without complete buy-in from local government and non-profit partners and without some resources. Communities and organizations without the time, staff, or other resources to do a full-scale Heart & Soul Community Planning initiative can still apply many of the tools and strategies to other aspects of planning and civic engagement.