Ariana McBride's Blog

Photo: Workshop participants take advantage of Belfast’s public art chairs while doing fieldwork.

Heart & Soul Community Planning is rooted in the idea that people share common values when it comes to what makes their cities and towns unique. Although the language people use may be similar across communities, the specifics of what people mean by that language can be quite different from place to place.

So how do you get beyond nebulous conversations about “sense of community” to a shared understanding of the specifics of your town? You get on the ground and figure it out.

Visit any local planning office and you’ll find an abundance of plans addressing housing, transportation, open space, economic development, etc. These issues are important building blocks of community planning and development, but do they really express what makes our communities special? Did the process of creating them tap into a shared community vision? Did that process help people take action and achieve tangible results?

If we are to fight off the spread of “Anywhere, USA” and help people take ownership of the future of their towns, we need a planning process that embeds community values in decision-making.

So, what are community values? They are what people care about in their community—the customs, characteristics and places that create a town’s unique identity. They are what connect people to their community and to each other. They are a community’s heart and soul.

Photo: Biddeford students share stories they gathered for a class designed by Carolyn Gosselin.

I’m not sure at what age it happens, but at some point, you find yourself saying something about “Kids these days...” and it’s rarely the start of a compliment about the younger generation.

I routinely hear people complain about how teens are apathetic, consumer driven and that they would rather text with their friends than have a real conversation.

I’m writing today to share three stories from Maine that fly in the face of that common sentiment.

We all research other places for ideas and examples but how often do those places come to us?

That was what happened last month in Damariscotta, ME when Patricia Sears (Newport City Renaissance Corporation’s Executive Director) and Paul Dreher (City of Newport’s Zoning Administrator) came to town to share their experience developing Form Based Codes in a small New England city. The fieldtrip was an outgrowth from CommunityMatters’10 where folks from the two communities first met.

Looking for effective ways to find common ground in your town? Tired of the same old public hearing as the primary way to get community input? Take heart! Participants at a series of regional events led by the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation will be tackling these questions and more.

In the Foundation’s work, we stress the importance of meaningful dialogue in communities. Our Heart & Soul Community Planning Principles emphasize the importance of listening to everyone to find the best possible solutions for the challenges facing communities today. There are no shortage of methods and tools out there to achieve this objective (check Planning Tools Exchange and NCDD’s Resource Center for more info). But how do we ensure these approaches get embedded in the daily work of community planning?

Many cities and towns are looking to Form Based Codes (FBC) as a way to combat the woes enabled by traditional single use zoning (e.g. the loss of historic neighborhoods, sprawling development patterns, increasing reliance on the automobile, to name a few). In a nutshell, FBC regulates how a building relates to its surrounding environment and less so on the building’s actual use (I’m oversimplifying here…for a better definition check out the Form Based Code Institute).

Many great communities share a particular DNA—the scale of the buildings, the width of the streets, the mix of uses, etc. Just as slight variations in DNA result in different people, slight variations in land use regulations can lead to different places. These differences can be essential to retaining what makes our cities and towns unique.

Photo: eddejesus.wordpress.com

Think about the last planning meeting you attended. Did you notice that practically everyone in the room was between the ages of 40 and 65? And that they were having the same conversation they had five years ago? Here’s an idea for moving the discussion forward—why not involve more young people? It’s not just that the next generation has to live with the decisions we make today, it’s that our decisions will be better for it.

I’ve heard many excuses for why younger generations are not part of the process. They don’t care. They’re hard to reach. The issues are too complex for them to understand. What do they know that we don’t? Funny…these excuses sound a lot like the ones people use for not making more of an effort to include other marginalized populations in a community.

In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity of having two different daily routines. I used to live in Quincy, Massachusetts and work in Providence, Rhode Island. My day-to-day experience outside of my job involved spending about two hours in my car on interstate highways in bumper-to-bumper traffic or whizzing by folks in the breakdown lane (yes, that’s legal in MA during certain hours of the day). Typically, I’d get home and throw a frozen meal in the microwave and settle into and episode of Law & Order. I’d fall asleep by 10 p.m. and do it all again the next day.