Placemaking is a people-centered approach to urban planning that focuses on transforming public spaces in a way that brings communities together and creates beautiful, accessible, and interactive cities. Leading with the goal to meet the needs of their residents and create more authentic and welcoming spaces, local governments have been...
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What is the Government’s Levelling Up Parks Fund? As part of this government’s mission to level up people’s pride in the places they love, the £9 million Levelling Up Parks Fund will improve both the equality of access and quality of green space in over 100 neighbourhoods across the UK....
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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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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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Across the United States, affordable housing has become a top priority for local governments as the housing crisis continues to place economic and social strain on communities. With the infusion of funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), Wichita, Kansas – which has a population of about 400,000 – ...
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