Community Engagement & Development Blog
From shaping the future city of Lancaster to improving parks and rec in Carlisle, PA, surveys are used across our platforms to gauge a community’s opinions on specific topics. Surveys and polls are easy to set up and provide a low-threshold way for community members to weigh in on policy...
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Storytelling is an important aspect of community engagement – that’s why Inform is the first step on the participation ladder. Storytelling cultivates a foundational understanding of an engagement topic, the parameters and criteria for engagement, and sheds inspiration for engagement. For better participation projects, cities should tell these stories in...
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Can you believe we’re already halfway through the year? As the saying goes – time flies when you’re having fun! And in CitizenLab’s case, plenty of developments have kept time flying: we grew rapidly with the addition of 20 new team members and released 63 updates & upgrades across our...
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For the last several years, CitizenLab has been working to build a community. Over the course of those years, we had the privilege of convening hundreds of clients at meetings and feedback rounds to gather their input on our platform and around the idea of online community engagement more broadly....
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When it comes to engaging with the public, social media is often a first instinct for many government officials. It is easy to access, widely utilized, and is often the first place people go to share their opinions on trending issues or topics in their communities. In fact, according to...
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In-person town halls have long been the foundation of community engagement for local governments. A tried and tested method for engagement, in-person meetings provide a moderated forum for people to voice their opinions directly to their officials. But they are far from perfect. In fact, they can be quite exclusionary...
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Localized flooding and poor stormwater drainage can significantly disrupt communities, causing problems from road and property damage to safety issues due to hydroplaning. In a city like Lancaster, stormwater management is particularly important as they run on a combined sewer system, meaning it collects and transports both domestic sewage and...
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Community engagement isn’t just about increased transparency between government and residents. It’s also an important tool that can improve communication across internal departments and key community stakeholders. This is accomplished through detailed reporting, made possible with an online engagement platform and proper community collaboration. More efficient and accurate reporting To...
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Understanding how your community – and who in your community – currently engages with local topics is crucial to identifying opportunities and gaps for your next community engagement project. Before getting started, consider who you need to reach and how you will do it. Decide who you need to reach...
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Once you decide to run a community engagement initiative, there are a lot of participation methods to choose from. Ranging from in-depth offline deliberation to direct online voting, it can be overwhelming to decide which method to begin with. Below are ideas of what your engagement could look like. Identify...
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