Borderlands Village Innovation Pilot: The Visioning Phase

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CBI Practitioners:

Kate Harvey
Patrick Field

Clients:

 

Issue
As part of the Borderlands Project’s exploration of how to balance development and conservation in the rural CT-RI border region, the Village Innovation Pilot (VIP) engaged two towns in creating and implementing a vision for their future. Guided by technical experts and local pilot teams, residents participated in visioning and planning exercises to explore how to preserve a meaningful sense of place (the “heart and soul” of the communities) by integrating new development into town villages and centers.


History/Background
A uniquely undeveloped corridor within the bustling eastern seaboard, the Borderlands between Connecticut and Rhode Island are home to about three million people living throughout twenty towns and villages. Each village maintains a distinctive character, but the communities share concerns about how to preserve their lands and lifestyles while pursuing economic development and accommodating new residents. The Nature Conservancy began exploring options for regional land conservation in 2001, and in 2003 partnered with the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council to form the Borderlands Project, an effort to examine conservation goals alongside options for innovative economic development. The idea for the Village Innovation Pilot (VIP) arose as participants in the Project considered the possibility of preserving land by targeting new development into existing or future town centers. The Orton Family Foundation, Rhode Island Foundation, Northeast Utilities, and other private donors collaborated with funds to explore these ideas in two Borderlands towns. Communities throughout the region applied for the Pilot, and the donors selected Exeter, Rhode Island and Killingly, Connecticut.

Exeter, RI and Killingly, CT ‘s unique settings illustrate different eras in Borderlands history. Exeter retains a rural, bucolic character highlighted by working farms, significant amounts of protected lands, and the lack of a true town center. The town is situated less than 20 minutes from Providence. In contrast, Killingly attracted significant industrial development and tourism during the 1950s and 60s. The town has six villages, a large industrial park, and a number of old mills. Both towns are becoming popular destinations for city-dwellers looking for a country escape.


Process to date
First, community members and advisors organized several teams to provide different kinds of guidance and leadership for the Pilot. Each town selected Local Pilot Teams consisting of residents and town staff, and both Pilot Teams worked with a team of consultants from the Consensus Building Institute (CBI), Dodson Associates, and Foresee Consulting. The University of Connecticut’s Susan Westa served as Pilot Coordinator, and the Nature Conservancy’s Kevin Essington and Orton’s Ariana McBride worked as project directors. A bi-state advisory team provided additional advice and support from government agencies, non-profits, and the private sector.

The Pilot was planned in three distinct phases: visioning, research and planning recommendations, and implementation. This case study focuses on the Phase I visioning process, which included focus groups, a web survey, and two public visioning workshops.

Phase I began with focus groups and a “heart and soul” web survey to help residents identify and discuss the essence of the communities they sought to preserve. CBI consultants worked with the Pilot Teams to identify key stakeholders from diverse groups within the community (e.g., large land owners, business owners, parents with children in the school system, emergency service providers) and conduct small group interviews with 40-60 residents in each town. They also designed a Zoomerang web survey to provide an opportunity for stakeholders to anonymously consider questions about their towns’ defining characteristics and what kind of changes they would and would not like to see. The survey received widespread participation and was administered in a variety of settings, including high school classrooms and the Killingly Tercentennial celebration. In addition, CBI recorded brief, one-on-one interviews with residents, which were incorporated into podcasts to share residents’ stories and feelings about their community. These podcasts were available on the internet and were played during the Phase I workshops and throughout the community.

To continue developing the ideas generated during the focus groups and surveys, each town gathered for two public visioning workshops. The goals of the first workshops included building a shared understanding of the towns’ “heart and soul resources” and “sacred places,” brainstorming key issues and problems in the town, and identifying ideas to explore further. CBI facilitators presented the preliminary results of the focus groups and surveys, and then used keypad polling and a visual preference survey to gather participants’ reactions to various existing town sites, potential land uses, and town issues to resolve. Participants then met in small groups to consider additional places and issues for further discussion. The first workshops ended with polling questions about how to shape the second workshop.

In preparation for the second workshops, the Pilot Teams and consultants evaluated the results of the first workshops and planned the best strategy for moving forward in each town. The Killingly Pilot Team also met with consultants from James Kent Associates to learn about using a social ecology-based “Discovery Process” to listen to community members in everyday settings. The Killingly Team gathered additional community input using these techniques, and decided to focus their second public workshop on future alternatives for the town’s extensive Route 101 highway corridor. In contrast, Exeter’s team determined that the second workshop should focus on the town as a whole in order to build understanding of the town’s future growth potential and the concept of organizing new development into villages or centers. Once the Pilot Teams determined the scope of second workshops, the consultant teams used Community Viz software to create buildout analyses demonstrating the extent of future growth under the current land use policies in Exeter and along Killingly’s Route 101 corridor.

The second visioning workshops were held in October 2008. In Exeter, the buildout analysis was presented in a discussion facilitated by ForeSee Consulting. Residents then used a “Chip Game” exercise to experiment with different ways to arrange incoming homes and businesses on a town map. Observing where they had clustered future growth allowed participants to envision how the town might develop new villages and centers. The Killingly workshop was led by Dodson Associates. With the help of architecture students from the University of Connecticut, participants learned about the buildout analysis and developed five alternative plans for growth along the Route 101 corridor.


Results
For both towns, Phase I resulted in final reports describing the project’s process and conclusions. The reports also listed recommendations for how to use the Phase I findings to plan an inclusive, effective research and implementation process for Phases II and III.

In Killingly, the Pilot Team and consultants used the results to create a conceptual plan for redevelopment of the highway corridor. Phase II will examine specific possibilities for development and analyze the economic and environmental impacts. In Exeter, the Pilot Team left Phase I with a vision statement, a digitized map of potential town centers, and several development alternatives to explore in greater detail during Phase II.

Both teams hope to expand their outreach strategies in Phase II to include even more residents in the process. Phase III will then involve implementing the vision and securing resources to move forward.


Lessons learned

  • Involving residents and town staff in planning teams can facilitate widespread buy-in and a more efficient process. In this case, both Pilot Teams included representatives from different community stakeholder groups (planners, economic development interests, business owners, residents, retirees, families, etc.). With diverse stakeholders actively engaged in the process, they were able to reach out to their networks, contribute different perspectives and ideas, bring technical expertise, and demonstrate both citizens’ and the town officials’ legitimate interest in the project.
  • Building a diverse consultant team can bring a variety of valuable skills, perspectives, and resources to the table. Here, the consultant team had expertise in facilitation, dispute resolution, participatory planning, and complex architectural and land use planning. Drawing from different experiences allowed the team to better explore the “heart and soul” of the community by using state of the art technical tools, mapping, stakeholder outreach and communication strategies. The consultant teams also benefited from working with each other and were able to build their collaborative networks and skill sets.
  • An empowered local coordinator can play a key role in managing outside consultants and gaining buy-in from local residents. The advisory teams supported Pilot Coordinator Susan Westa with training and resources that helped her successfully and credibly navigate and bridge diverse interests. A local coordinator could also be responsive to the day to day components of the project (communication, fielding questions, budgeting), which were essential to keeping local pilot teams engaged and consultants on track. An empowered local coordinator was also able to bring a valuable local perspective to the advisory and consultant teams (who were mostly outsiders) during the planning and implementation of the process.
  • Planning interviews and surveys in coordination with other community events can increase and diversify participation. By setting up computers with the web survey at local high schools and fairs, and visiting assisted living facilities, the towns heard from residents who otherwise might not have attended the Pilot’s planning meetings or focus group meetings. Visiting stakeholders in spaces that are most familiar to them also allowed the teams to hear stories and perspectives that stakeholders might not have felt comfortable sharing otherwise. The downside to attending other community events is that meetings are often spread apart, creating a scheduling challenge for the consultant teams and impacting the project budget.
  • Planning teams can create a more inclusive process by actively seeking out diverse minorities. While Exeter and Killingly reached a large number of community members, they could have heard more diverse perspectives by targeting their outreach and traveling to meet underrepresented groups. Typical outreach strategies do not always work for reaching people in minority, low-income, non-English speaking, or other groups that might not be formally organized and do not tend to be actively engaged in land use planning processes. The web survey allowed more of those voices to be heard, but actively seeking out these members of the community by attending church meetings, cultural celebrations, or going to laundry mats and supermarkets might have yielded more input from these stakeholders.
  • Preparing planning teams with joint trainings and guidelines creates a common knowledge base and facilitates more efficient decision-making. A joint training with the Exeter and Killingly Pilot Teams would have built a stronger foundation of shared knowledge within and between the teams, provided better context for decisions with regional impact, and allowed for more efficient meetings. It took several meetings for the Pilot Teams to fully understand and feel comfortable with their roles. An early training or engagement could have helped to energize and empower Pilot Teams earlier in the process.
  • Encouraging youth participation in planning processes lays a foundation for the interest and involvement of key future stakeholders. In retrospect, both towns needed more active outreach to hear youths’ perspectives and understand how they envision—and will eventually work towards or experience—the towns’ future development. Many youth seemed to enjoy taking the survey, and reaching out to youth by preparing a school assembly or attending events like youth sports games or music or theater productions would have provided more opportunities to engage youth directly.
  • Connecting abstract visioning processes to more pressing town issues can engage and maintain greater public interest. Many stakeholders noted that citizen participate in town meetings when they feel a threat or change is imminent. Grounding the abstract process to a current challenge, such the increasing influx of former urbanites or commercial flight, could have made the process more immediately relevant and exciting for them.