Visioning is a community engagement process that helps people to articulate or define the future they want for their communities. Visioning is often completed in conjunction with a master planning initiative and often looks decades ahead.
“CommunityViz is advanced yet easy-to-use GIS software designed to help people visualize, analyze, and communicate about important community planning decisions.”
Community Video projects are any type of video documentary or film describing local community or presenting profiles of residents. They can be used specifically as tools for planning when they address certain complicated planning topics or issues.
Graffiti Walls (or "Idea Walls") are public spaces for citizens to brainstorm graphically. They provide an informal place to help community members generate ideas or suggestions and respond to the ideas of others.
Participants in a Crayon Your Community event draw maps of their neighborhoods or towns, including all natural and built elements that they identify as important to their vision of the community.
Community members can create collages to share what they love about their town, what they'd like to change, ideas they'd like to see developed, or to answer some other question or challenge.
Electronic Town Meetings are community meetings that allow people to participate via digital technology. Whether virtual meetings with remote participants, or in-person meetings aided by technology, these meetings offer new ways of engaging people.
Outside.In collects news items and information about neighborhoods across the country. A GoogleMaps interface is linked to blogs, news tracks and other information, so that users can search a specific location and see information tied to that place.
EngagingPlans is a powerful and comprehensive tool for creating and maintaining a public involvement Web site. The platform allows citizens to create accounts and have conversations or offer feedback about community planning processes.
Human Geographic Mapping abandons typical political boundaries and maps areas based on natural elements and human interactions. The process is used to outline boundaries and important features based on social networks and scales.