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Community groups, nonprofit organizations, tribal governments, national parks, plus local, state and federal agencies can apply for technical assistance.

A National Park Service’s (NPS) case study highlighted Backman Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah, “home to a vibrant and diverse community.”

But many students’ only route to school was walking along a busy highway with no sidewalk.

The NPS team involved the students in meetings to plan for a safe pedestrian bridge to connect to local neighborhoods and an outdoor education and nature area along the river corridor.

For truly reflective community input and planning, all voices must be heard and included.

 

 

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An important voice in planning too often forgotten is our youth. 

The National Park Service’s (NPS) Youth Stewardship program wisely “works to involve youth in the planning of conservation and outdoor recreation projects as part of the community engagement process.”

The Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance program of the NPS has a more than 30-year record of supporting local conservation and outdoor recreation projects — including planning that includes youth input.

The NPS realizes that while children are often the primary beneficiaries of parks and recreation, their thoughts and feelings are rarely taken into consideration in the planning and design process.

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A city cannot simply state it wants its planning to reflect the community; it must commit to making community engagement easy for diverse audiences.

“Provide a meal, have childcare, have translation/native speakers — have it at times that are best for the community,” said Artie Padilla, DRIVE Initiative Director for the Central Valley Community Foundation.

“You have to have an informed community by providing on ramps to learning for our residents. You also should pay stipends to participants.

We have a saying here — NFL — No Free Labor.”

Neighborhood leaders strategizing on how to recruit 400 residents to an event.

Padilla said businesses used to get tax credits or other incentives simply because they promised to create jobs.

Now people are asking during the planning/land-use entitlement process, “are they full-time with benefits, are they good jobs, and are they going to be sustainable?”

In South Fresno, large distribution centers are still being built, Padilla said, but now a community benefits agreement uses a portion of revenues to fund infrastructure improvements in surrounding, previously neglected neighborhoods.

 

 

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Artie Padilla, DRIVE Initiative Director for the Central Valley Community Foundation, said cities could benefit by duplicating Fresno, California’s strong presence of nonprofits doing place-based planning.

Families living in unstable housing discuss their needs and desires to find more stable housing and opportunities for their kids.

“The city of Fresno has learned if they don’t do things in an equitable, relatable way, they’re going to be called out,” Padilla said of planning for housing, mobility, parks, the environment and more.

“The mayor even created a department of community engagement.”

Community development should be based on assets — and the assets always are the people who live in the impacted area.

Padilla said planning needs to start with nothing locked in stone. Community development should be based on assets — and the assets always are the people who live in the impacted area.

“In the past, city officials would say everybody likes parks, so they just built a park. Now, it has to be culturally responsible and super inclusive for people with disabilities,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

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The city of Philadelphia’s language access element of the toolkit uses a quote to drive home the isolation someone can feel, despite their having every right to full city services:

“For someone like me, who doesn’t have good English, it’s very difficult to visit [city buildings].

I always have to bring someone who speaks English because it’s hard to find an interpreter through the phone or in-person.

It’s very inconvenient.” — Community Member.

The language guide has sage advice for serving the nearly 22 percent of Americans who speak a language that is not English at home.

“When we don’t prioritize language access, some community members will plan their own accommodations or won’t participate at all.

That causes linguistically diverse communities to take on inequitable burdens that fluent English speakers don’t experience.

And that can lead to conflict, delays, and miscommunication in our engagements,” according to the toolkit.

 

 

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In mid-2023, the city of Philadelphia’s Office of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Service and the PHL Service Design Studio launched the Equitable Community Engagement Toolkit website.

The site has more than two dozen guides covering “project planning, evaluation, accessibility, languages access, and how to center racial equity in engagement.”

“We’ve worked with over 160 colleagues and community members to inform the vision and guidance of the Engagement Toolkit.

We’ve been transformed by this work and the care our collaborators have shown in sharing their lived expertise with us,” said Andrea Ngan, lead service design strategist.

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Andreanecia Morris, executive director of HousingNOLA, advocates for rigorous public engagement backstopped by data.

She said data shows a planning and leadership failure in the Lower Ninth, where only 40 percent of pre-Katrina housing exists, despite nearly two decades of rebuilding schemes floated after the storm.

Morris said planners should view housing as an essential need, not a status symbol.

She said lack of stable, affordable housing gets in the way of education, health care, job opportunities, criminal justice reform — everything that impacts all communities, but hits marginalized areas the hardest.

Morris said stats show a major disconnect between assets in New Orleans and a methodical plan to solve affordable housing.

“New Orleans has a 23-percent rate of occupiable homes and apartments,” she said, emphasizing that nearly one-fourth of the city’s units could become an affordable dwelling unit with just some minor fixups before move in.

 

 

 

 

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Amy Stelly said parachute planning, when outsiders produce quick fixes for complex problems, rarely helps a marginalized community.

When Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, one of the first planning suggestions was to abandon the historically Black community rather than building stronger levees and rebuilding.

Then some well-meaning, but misguided foundations, — some backed by celebrities — built structures that were out of place, and despite a slew of technology in their design, did not weather well.

Vacant lots still scar the neighborhood where Fats Domino and other music legends grew up or lived.

 

 

 

 

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While she campaigns to remove the Claiborne Expressway — lamenting that local leaders fumbled an opportunity so badly that New Orleans received only a fraction of federal funds aimed at reconnecting communities by removing freeways that divided and partially destroyed them — Amy Stelly fears another project could cause damage.

Stelly -- a planner, designer, teacher and artist -- said a viaduct to serve new port cargo storage could not only hurt the environment, but also impose more concrete and pollution on lower-income, not influential communities.

Redlining is illegal, but Stelly said it effectively exists because banks are leery of lending money to a business virtually underneath an ugly, noisy freeway.

And grand homes near the viaduct still may only have a third of the value that they would enjoy if they were in a neighborhood without a destructive freeway.

 

 

 

 

 

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As an artist, one of Amy Stelly’s strategies was to go out and take photographs of real people in the neighborhood — shunning the clip art virtual beings often dragged into 2-D renderings to portray people in a plan.

“The best way for us to speak to one another, especially in the Black community, was to see ourselves,” said.

Amy Stelly, planner, designer, teacher.

Stelly cautions against falsely mitigating the destruction of ugly infrastructure that rips though a community, saying painting hundreds of concrete supports or staging a market beneath freeway pollution does not resolve the problem.

“We can’t just put lipstick on the pig. Lipstick on the pig doesn’t remove the pig,” she said.

 

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Amy Stelly — a planner, designer, teacher and artist — has studied the health and economic impacts of New Orleans’ Claiborne Expressway, which has been recognized as “an example of historic inequity” by the Biden administration.

Until the 1960s, Claiborne Avenue was filled with live oaks trees and azaleas along a grassy median.

It was heart of the Tremé neighborhoods’ Black commerce and culture. 

By the end of the ‘60s, trees were gone and 18 blocks were dominated by endless concrete pilings holding up Interstate 10.

It became the poster child for tearing down freeways that destroyed communities, yet it still stands.

Stelly has documented air and noise pollution, loss of property value and other ill effects of an era when planners routinely ignored, and major projects ran roughshod over, minority communities.

Stelly said Black communities “have been rained on for most of their existence,” building mistrust.

 

 

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“In Lexington, Ky., the planning department combined with the elderly affairs commission to address the need for more types of housing options,” said Mike Watson, director of Livable Communities at AARP.

“A goal was to amend city code to make it easier to permit and build accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

The University of Kentucky College of Design used a Community Challenge grant to fund a competition to create models of different types of ADUs that were accessible [to people with disabilities].”

Watson said there was some opposition to adding housing, but the ADUs had intergenerational appeal.

A series of community events showed why the ADUs were needed.

 

 

 

 

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Communities that want to jump-start planning efforts, such as traffic-calming or zoning changes, can apply for AARP’s Community Challenge — a grant that funds about $12,000 in planning support.

More than $16 million has been given to more than 1,370 initiatives.

“The advice I would give folks, to reach diverse stakeholders, is step out of your perspective and your comfort zone,” said Mike Watson, director of Livable Communities at AARP.

“Surveys are helpful, but there is a difference between a survey on a website and going to where the people are and actively listening.

Go to an inviting place, like a coffee shop, for authentic input. You may need to create a comfortable place by creating a pop-up demonstration.”

Watson said some cities don’t change to keep up with community needs out of fear of opposition — opposition that might not be there.

 

 

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Mike Watson, director of Livable Communities at AARP, said the 38-million-member interest group champions bottom-up planning — working in more than 1,000 communities to support local efforts to create age-friendly communities.

Watson said planning for seniors could be as simple as creating a plan for wide, unobstructed, accessible sidewalks and safe crosswalks.

AARP has developed a free online Walk Audit Toolkit to empower communities to “assess and report on the safety and walkability of a street, intersection or neighborhood — and inspire needed change.”

“Walk audits are such an important way to increase pedestrian safety through neighborhood design that engages neighborhood residents, activists, elected officials and city staff,” he said.

“AARP state offices have done thousands of them and it’s such an important learning tool to show pedestrian mobility issues through different perspectives. 

Bring the department of public works director, the city council member, or the mayor out to see barriers to moving about, pushing a stroller or rolling in a wheelchair.”

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Cynicism from bad experiences can be addressed by involving people with disabilities in the design and planning processes from the outset, including research design.

“Collaboratively develop inclusive and accessible strategies that reflect the diverse needs and preferences of participants.

Endorse community representatives to co-facilitate meetings, review materials, and shape decision-making processes,” said Karin Korb, a public health consultant and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion professional. She is also a two-time Paralympian tennis player who uses a wheelchair for mobility.

Korb said. “By co-creating the engagement process, planners demonstrate a commitment to shared ownership and accountability.”

 

 

 

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“Create tactile maps of the community planning area to make the process more inclusive for individuals with visual impairments or cognitive disabilities.

Use various textures, shapes, and raised symbols to represent different elements such as buildings, streets, parks and amenities,”

said Karin Korb, public health consultant and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion professional. She is also a two-time Paralympian tennis player who uses a wheelchair for mobility.

“Organize interactive mapping sessions where participants can explore and provide input on the proposed plans.”

Korb said minoritized communities — including people with disabilities — feel like they are invited to a workshop or online survey just so the planning team can check a box.

“The planners heard from them but could care less about designing with them in mind.”

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Karin Korb is a public health consultant and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion professional.

She is also a two-time Paralympian tennis player who uses a wheelchair for mobility.

“Utilize virtual reality technology to provide immersive experiences of proposed community designs for individuals with mobility or sensory disabilities.

Develop VR simulations that allow participants to navigate and interact with virtual environments, experiencing firsthand how the proposed changes may impact accessibility and usability,” she said.

“Incorporate customizable features such as adjustable terrain, lighting and audio cues to accommodate various disabilities.

Encourage participants to provide feedback on accessibility barriers and suggest modifications to improve inclusivity in the final plans.

Korb said high tech, when calibrated to match the needs of various disabilities, not only enhances the participation of people with disabilities in community-planning efforts, but also promotes a more inclusive and equitable approach to decision-making processes.

 

 

 

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Transportation can be especially challenging for people with disabilities, and as such, it is exceptionally important to hear first-hand from those with disabilities when evaluating design changes.

In Maryland, Toole Design created tactile maps as part of a walking tour so that people with impaired vision could better understand and contribute their ideas to proposed transportation changes.

Sue Popkin, co-director of the Disability Equity Policy Initiative at The Urban Institute, has Sjogren’s Disease and uses a cane for mobility.

Popkin said top-down planning is a failure for people with disabilities — “Unfortunately, planners don’t do a charette until everything is designed and you basically are only asking ‘do you want to have a brown or blue cabinet in your accessible home?’”

“People may want onsite telehealth [connectivity]; they may want to be able to age in place more successfully.

Take the time to get input before you design. And compensate people for their time — you get a much better outcome.”

 

 

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Sue Popkin, co-director of the Disability Equity Policy Initiative at The Urban Institute, has Sjogren’s Disease and uses a cane for mobility.

Popkin frames the paternalistic attitude that too many planners and designers have toward disability inclusion and implementation.

“Our work has a community advisory board with a diverse range of disabilities. It enriches what that data shows,” she said.

“The planning community doesn’t realize that they must include people with disabilities.

They don’t know that the census results in a huge undercount of people with disabilities because it doesn’t count incarcerated, institutionalized or homeless people.

It leaves out people with psychiatric disabilities and many with intermittent conditions.”

Involve people with disabilities in the design and planning processes from the outset, including research design.

 

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Sue Popkin, co-director of the Disability Equity Policy Initiative at The Urban Institute, has Sjogren’s Disease and uses a cane for mobility.

“Our research revealed that more than 18 million people with disabilities face significant barriers to stable and quality housing that is affordable, accessible, and inclusive of people’s support needs,”

Popkin said of a survey conducted with The Kelsey, a San Francisco–based nonprofit that co-develops affordable disability-forward multifamily housing for people with and without disabilities.

“The Kelsey is working with people with disabilities to design affordable housing — rather than working with an architect who thinks about what accessibility should be,” she said, noting that a tiny fraction of architecture firms truly understands accessible housing.