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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Over the last two years, we’ve quickly grown our presence in North America. We now have a team of 8 dedicated participation experts based across Canada and the United States to support growth and client success in community engagement. Get to know our team a little better – we’d love...
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Ensuring that your community engagement is successful and worthwhile requires the full buy-in and continuous support from all levels of the community, starting with your organization and eventually also your residents. It requires developing a culture of engagement in your city. This doesn’t have to be daunting, and in the...
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