26 October 2007

Burlington, VT — More than 300 community activists, citizen planners, professional planners and local elected officials gathered here for the annual COMMUNITYMATTERS conference and wrote a Declaration of Community Heart & Soul Beliefs. So far, 103 attendees have signed the declaration, making a commitment to put their shared beliefs into action toward greater citizen participation in defining the future of communities. The conference was co-sponsored by the Orton Family Foundation and PlaceMatters.

The Declaration sets out fundamental beliefs for a new path to building and creating community across America—a Heart & Soul path that goes to the citizens of a town to discover and voice what the community values most about itself. After this process of discovery—with faith in the citizens’ vision for their town and trust in a fair process—communities can embark on long term planning, reordering priorities and rewriting town plans. 

View PDF of Declaration >>
 

Context for Declaration

Small cities and towns are facing many growth challenges: increasing local or regional development pressures to aging populations; increasingly mobile residents; youth out-migration; crumbling infrastructure; and antiquated economies (to name a few). In all of these communities, change is occurring and competing interests often fracture the social fabric. Stories of confrontation and alienation are commonplace in local newspapers, while other citizens opt out of their towns’ important discussions and decisions.

While innovation and success has occurred across the country, land use planning in America has not yet lived up to its full potential in engaging a broad base of local citizens and helping them define and shape the future of their communities. Traditional quantitative approaches to land use planning use important data about demographic and economic shifts, traffic counts and infrastructure needs, but frequently fail to account for the particular ways people relate to their physical surroundings and ignore or discount the intangibles—the shared values, beliefs and quirky customs—that make community. Furthermore, a collection of quantifiable attributes without an understanding of shared values and a sense of purpose does not motivate citizens to show up and make tough, consistent decisions. It also fails to account for how citizens’ day-to-day lives and livelihoods, and those of future generations, will be affected by change.

Local citizens have the ingenuity and ability to ensure the sustainable economic, environmental and social well being of their communities. With the full participation of those who live, work and play in a community, a town can tap into its deep beliefs to direct the forces of growth and change, protecting and enhancing its heart and soul—the attributes and places that citizens hold dear and that connect them to one another and to the community as a whole.