Browse Content: Tool, public participation & outreach

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.

Flickr is a popular online image and video hosting website that allows users to upload and share media. The site is also popular with bloggers as a way to host images that they embed in blogs and social media.

Do you ever think about building, or fixing up, a playground? The KaBOOM! Project Planner is a step by step tool that has everything you need to learn, plan, organize and build a playground or site enhancement project.

A start-up project in Vermont, FPF creates online communities for each city neighborhood, where residents can get to know each other, post requests for help or information, discuss neighborhood issues, and make announcements.

A blog is a type of website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or media. When blogs focus on communities and planning they can be powerful tools for up-to-date information sharing.

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.

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.

Mobile Polling allows audiences to provide live feedback and vote on choices via their cell phones. Polling can be conducted live during a meeting format, as with keypads, or among dispersed respondents.

A variation of traditional opinion polling, deliberative polling measures subjects’ opinions, but also the reasons for those opinions and their capacity to change.

The Common Ground process focuses on identifying and working from areas of overlap and consensus in people's viewpoints, rather than focusing on differences and disagreements or necessarily striving for consensus.