Public Participation

Community-Wide Visioning
Keene, NH (2008)

Brown Walker Planners worked with community participation expert, Daphne Politis of Community Circle to design and manage an effective and innovative community visioning process for the City of Keene. The successful community-wide visioning effort involved over 300 residents and employees in small group discussions and set the stage for the City’s comprehensive master planning process.

In addition to formulating a thoughtful and community-based vision, the project goals were to reach as broad a portion of the City’s population as possible, engage new people, and generate enthusiasm for the comprehensive master planning process. In order to run an effective outreach process within the City’s budget and time frame, the project combined our team’s professional expertise with a significant volunteer and community-led process.

From the outset, the team worked closely with the City staff and the steering committee, drawing on their expertise and understanding of the community. The majority of the project hours were devoted to design, coordination and follow-up for the community visioning process. Drawing from the “Study Circles” model used in Portsmouth, NH as well as other communities, the team enlisted the assistance of a corps of community volunteers to facilitate a series of community visioning discussions throughout the City. The team trained the volunteer facilitators, developed questions for two rounds of visioning conversations, and managed the matching of residents with visioning conversations.

With the collaboration of City staff, the City’s process was an overwhelming success, resulting in a strong vision report that will be used as the framework for the comprehensive master plan and building community support and enthusiasm for the planning process. The vision report was awarded "Plan of the Year" from the 2009 NH Planning Association.

For more information, please visit the City's project web page.