Jennifer Hurley of Hurley-Franks & Associates centered the first 15 minutes of the webinar on creating a framework for virtual community engagement. She shared critical questions that must be considered before crafting a public engagement plan—virtually and otherwise:
What is your participation purpose?
Who needs to participate?
How do people participate?
How many participation feedback loops do you have?
What resources and limitations do you have?
(Image: Christina Anderson, City of Kalamazoo)
Christina also introduced a more sophisticated tool, Open Town Hall, which allows Kalamazoo to replicate in-person meetings with full comment transparency, mapping and survey features, and a question database used for different types of projects across the country.
Overall, she echoed the importance of a wide-ranging and resilient engagement plan that incorporates both virtual and in-person strategies. Kalamazoo approaches different types of virtual engagement tools depending on the nature of the project and dynamics among stakeholders.
Participants then heard from Tom Evans of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority (CRA) in Cambridge, MA. Tom began by explaining the transformation of Cambridge in recent years—a formerly underutilized industrial area replaced by substantial amounts of office, housing, and institutional buildings. About 6 years ago, the CRA turned to coUrbanize to give stakeholders ample opportunity to weigh in on the redevelopment that’s rapidly unfolding and expected to accelerate in the future. Tom explained how the city has used the tool to supplement in-person techniques for large-scale development projects in Kendall Square and surrounding areas and focused specifically on The Foundry—an “adaptive reuse project to build a self-sustaining center for creativity and collaboration for the Cambridge community with a mix of arts, cultural, educational, fabrication and commercial activities.”
As with the other panelists, Tom recognized the shortcomings with coUrbanize, which is primarily a site-specific real estate development tool, and noted that some projects in Cambridge are increasingly reliant on other forms of outreach like Esri Story Maps to improve information sharing and make engagement more interactive.