Neighborhood planning requires one or more people to analyze a neighborhood, determine what needs to be done to make improvements, and then details how these efforts will come together. The writer develops a vision with all stakeholders with the intention of using it to guide all recommendations. The hope is the neighborhood becomes the vision statement.
Neighborhood planning sounds easy on the surface but becomes a blend of science and art, relying on the skills of the plan writers. The writer needs a significant understanding of how all the stakeholders think and operate before the planning process concludes. Recognizing the abilities and limitations of stakeholders and resources is required if the best neighborhood plan is to be produced.
The content and the form of the plan is very important; however, the growth of the people who participate is possibly greater than the sum of the graphs, charts, objectives, and commitments. The stakeholders need to grow in their understanding of the issues and their ability to create successful solutions.
Neighborhood planners do not discuss healthcare very often and most will not be sure how it fits into their planning efforts. It is only after they learn about how healthcare sees social determinants of health do they realize it should be incorporated in their plan. The next question then becomes how to include healthcare professionals if they are not prepared to discuss neighborhood planning and development. The answer is to start by matching up the issues in the neighborhood to the their list of social determinants to identify joint goals. As healthcare representatives see all the planned activity, they can identify how their resources can be incorporated. To accomplish this, the neighborhood planning process needs to be designed so groups who do not normally see themselves engaged in community development find a way to inject their professional input to the process and plan.
These are three good places to start when it comes to developing a neighborhood planning process.
Many neighborhood plans try to compile all aspects of the plan within one document. This makes an impressive volume of information, but creates a readability problem as it is overwhelming to the reader and hard to amend over time. The neighborhood plan should be divided into three distinct documents.
The Study is a summary of all the facts about the neighborhood regardless if they are used by the plan writer.
The Plan is a collection of possible solutions designed to work in the specific neighborhood being written about.
Action Plans are where organizations place their commitments to the neighborhood. These Action Plans get updated annually.
The first step is to understand the neighborhood you are about to plan. Many neighborhood plan writers gather data to use later in their document to show the reader the status of the neighborhood. The first step is to gather data to build a complete description of current state regardless of the current availability of resources or funding. |Read More
Stakeholders need a way to participate in the plan writing and implementation. The process needs to let everyone put ideas forward during planning meetings and to make changes as the plan is being implemented. |Read More
The plan needs to be written to describe how to address all the issues of a neighborhood. Many times the plan is written based upon what the employer of the plan writer feels comfortable addressing, what their organization is responsible for, and what resources they currently have. |Read More
Funding and resources may not be committed to the the plan before or during the writing of the plan. Often, stakeholders are not in a position to commit resources at the time the plan is being written. |Read More