Community Needs Assessment techniques identify and prioritize specific problems within communities that need to be addressed. This generally entails the collection of first-hand information from relevant sources in the local community.
Open Space Technology is a system for facilitating group meetings. Open Space meetings allow participants to set the agenda, facilitate and record the sessions, and move around as they please.
Participatory Budgeting refers to involvement of the community in public budget planning and spending decisions. The degree of participation ranges from giving citizens a voice during budget development to actual approval power.
Asset mapping is the process by a community inventories its assets and capabilities. The process can take many forms, but is a positive way of identifying both strengths and gaps and identifying a plan for moving forward.
Mind Maps are non-linear organizations of ideas using keywords and images. Elements of the maps can be ‘linked’ with others to clarify relationships, obstacles, and paths. More recently, software has been developed to create Mind Maps digitally.
Guided Visioning is a process that allows participants to open their minds and create a vision of the future of their community and the necessary steps to manifest it.
Stakeholder mapping is a way of geographically showing and analyzing the stakeholders in a situation, along with their relationships, values, attributes, or other information that might impact the situation.
The vote count is a method for categorizing and extrapolating information from published sources with the aim of gauging support, evaluating awareness, or identifying important issues by analyzing how often a certain topic is mentioned.
GeoImmersive video is a powerful tool for providing realistic views of potential developments and existing sites with the ability to visualize the project's potential impact against the existing conditions.