Feb. 15, 2024
Imagine an engaged constituency who understands the role of planning and its importance — who are trusted partners and advocates at every level of the community. They understand power networks and how to achieve more equitable development. They share their knowledge of planning and zoning with others in the community, and they proactively participate in local planning processes, support planning staff, and make their neighborhoods better places.
Community planning academies have existed for many years to educate local leaders about local land-use issues. More recently, the role of the planning academy has expanded from a focus on education for residents to the facilitation of capacity-building at a neighborhood level. With this shift in perspective, planners gain not just a constituency to help them advocate for policies, but trusted partners in planning at every level of the community.
An early start and still thriving
Yvonne Hughes participated in the Spring 2022 cohort of the Philadelphia Citizens Planning Institute (CPI), which was launched in 2010 to empower citizens to change their community by gaining a greater understanding of city planning and how development projects work. As part of her experience with CPI, Hughes learned about the various resources and services the city provides and how to use them to support her ongoing work in the community. CPI also helped her learn how to make strong connections.
"I believe in the four Es: Educating to Empower people to be Engaged with others to help people Embrace themselves," she said in a testimonial for CPI's website.
An active member of the Community Connections Collaborative — a group that tackles community health and empowerment — Hughes, who is legally blind, has worked tirelessly to be an advocate for those in her community.
Recently, she has focused her efforts on starting a Senior Summit series designed to educate older Philadelphia residents about the resources available to them in the area. She also plans to launch a similar series for younger people with disabilities that would provide job training and internship opportunities.
Author Donna Carney (left) and Spring 2022 graduate Yvonne Hughes are pictured at Bash at the Boathouse!, a recent CPI alumni event. CPI has a strong alumni base that remains active in the program and provides peer matches and mentoring. Photo by Jane Whitehouse.
Hughes is one of many success stories for the CPI program, which has graduated more than 730 participants from about 130 neighborhoods. Her acceptance into the CPI made the program more inclusive, as the team had to learn how to make the virtual coursework accessible for blind participants.
CPI's latest cohort of citizen planners graduated in November 2023. And as the world has evolved over the past 13 years, so has the program, including shifting to largely virtual coursework in 2020 and returning to in-person last fall. The program also features a peer match component, in which graduates of the program are paired up with new participants to offer advice, feedback, or build relationships in the community. That mentorship is due to the strong alumni base that has remained active in the program over the years.
Philadelphia was an early adopter of the community planning academy concept — Philadelphia city planning staff noted just nine active programs in 2009 — but the ranks are growing. By 2023, a CPI staff search found 18 such programs. Most are hosted by municipal or county planning entities, though one is led by a regional American Planning Association (APA) chapter and one by a university extension.
Long-lasting benefits of community planning academies
Community planning academies have mutually beneficial outcomes for both planners and participants, as is noted in A Guide to Community Planning Academies, a PAS Report published by APA in August 2023. Planners gain relationships with a more informed and involved constituency, and participants gain a greater understanding of the role of planning and how they can influence positive change in their communities. There are several other notable benefits for planning agencies and other providers of community planning academy programs.
CPI's alumni pool is sought after by other Philadelphia city departments — with some serving as facilitators in community meetings for the city's district planning processes. Photo courtesy CPI.
Trust-building: Participants can become important liaisons in their communities, helping staff to build trust and relationships in those neighborhoods and sharing the information they receive with other community members.
Advocacy: Planners can gain new allies and advocates for land-use policy by accepting participants into the program who represent a variety of political constituencies.
Upskilling staffers: Interacting with individuals from diverse cultures, classes, races, and ethnic backgrounds can help build internal cultural competency.
Cross-agency collaboration: Adding other local government departments and agencies to this network — for focus groups, surveys, and to test new initiatives — strengthens the program and broadens buy-in.
Participants of such programs point to their ability to develop a strong network of like-minded citizen planners. Often, the experience also encourages future engagement, as it did for Hughes and another CPI participant. "I've become a member of several community organizations and business associations," Ted Smith told CPI staff after completing the program. "I'm using the knowledge I learned from CPI to become more of a force than just an individual."
They also reported feeling more empowered to become the go-to person in their neighborhood and possibly leveraging their experience into larger roles in the community, as well as understanding how to better network and who to contact for specific issues.
Contents of the mailer created by CPI staff for the first virtual CPI course with key logistical, program, and participant information. It is crucial to the program's success that it be grounded in clear outcomes. Photo courtesy CPI.
Deepening the role of planning
The stimulus for considering launching a planning academy could come from various sources. Maybe the idea hatches at the beginning of a comprehensive planning process, because of a specific local development issue, or via an internal or external mandate. Whatever the impetus, it is crucial to the success and sustainability of the community planning academy that it be grounded in clearly articulated outcomes. Goals should be transparent, and organizers should understand that they may evolve over time as conditions or sponsors change.
It is important to establish a vision and goals for the program when first laying the groundwork. Careful consideration needs to be given to who the target audience is, what outcomes are expected, and the kinds of metrics that will be tracked for evaluation, among other criteria. The investment of time and resources in a well-designed program will pay off over time through better representation of all community voices during engagement efforts.
Contemporary planners also are tackling issues of inequity and social justice, making planning more relevant, equitable, and inclusive. As they move toward more inclusive processes to inform their plans, there will be increasing scrutiny on how authentically they are engaging with the public. There are no shortcuts in creating trust, but community planning academies offer an opportunity to build enduring relationships with a more informed and involved constituency, one cohort at a time.
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