Full Report - Knight Program in Community Building

The Public Process andNew UrbanismBy Jennifer Hurley | 2001 Knight Program FellowKnight Program in Community Building at University of Miami School of Architecture

1Contents2Abstract4Full Report15ResourcesCover PhotoImages of the public process from Knight Program charrettes.

2The Public Process and New UrbanismBy Jennifer Hurley | 2001 Knight Program FellowBioJennifer Hurley is a partnerwith Hurley Franks andAssociates, a planning andurban design firm inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania.AbstractThe phrase “public process” refers to a variety of situations related to publicinvolvement in planning and development decisions: public hearings with planningcommissions, zoning boards, and city councils; citizen task forces; and urbandesign charrettes. The public process as applied by New Urbanists offers greatbenefits and also presents some difficult problems. This report discusses whatNew Urbanists can learn from specialists in public participation and alternativedispute resolution, and what New Urbanists have to teach those same specialists.What Can Charrette Practitioners Learn from Consensus-Building?By learning from the experience of mediators and facilitators, charrette organizerscan leverage the event to create more support for the results, ultimatelyleading to more faithful implementation.• A robust theoretical basis for practice can inform the understanding of theprocess and suggest possibilities when problems arise.A close relationship between theory-building and practice development canenrich both. Since academics have shown little interest in charrette practice,practitioners should educate themselves about relevant theories, articulatehow theory can improve practice, and illuminate the holes in theory thatpractice uncovers.• Situating the charrette event in a larger decision-making framework thatincludes pre-charrette outreach and post-charrette consensus-buildingincreases the chances of implementation.Make sure a community is ready for a collaborative process like a charrette.Include considerations of politics and community organizing in the definitionof “ready.” Make sure key stakeholders will participate. Be clear about therules of engagement, the decision-making process and the role of the public.Especially in situations with high levels of conflict, make sure the keystakeholders agree with the scope and focus of the charrette.• Using the charrette to aid group learning and building civic capital will leveragethe event to develop local leaders who can champion the plan long afterthe event.Document the stakeholder input. Make notes from stakeholder meetings,and make those notes available in the charrette report or on a project website. Demonstrate how public comment influenced the products.

3Pay explicit attention to “packaging an agreement” that builds support forlong-term implementation. Incorporating ongoing evaluation of the processduring charrettes would increase satisfaction with the experience and theoutcome in the short-term. Evaluation of the outcome of charrettes wouldlead to long-term improvements in the standard of practice.• Charrette organizers should adopt specific skills from mediators and facilitators,including stakeholder analysis, the use of groundrules, neutral mediation/facilitation,agenda-setting, and consensus-building techniques.Know the playing field. Conduct a thorough stakeholder analysis at the beginningof a project and develop the community outreach plan based on thatanalysis. Revisit the stakeholder analysis throughout the process, especiallyas the scope of the project changes. Have a charrette team member whoseprimary responsibility is to focus on the process.What Can Charrette Practitioners Add to Consensus-Building?Charrettes are a technique that discussion-based mediators and facilitatorsshould learn about.• Charrettes are a great improvement over discussion-based processes foraddressing physical and design issues. Words are a cumbersome mediumwhen the problem is visual.• The compressed time frame of a charrette creates incredible excitement andmomentum. In contrast, discussion-based processes can take months, ifnot years, and are often tedious and sometimes downright painful.• The large event and spectacle quality of a charrette generates significantmedia interest.• The variety of ways, opportunities and times for people to participate in acharrette opens the door to much broader participation than typical discussion-basedprocesses.

4The Public Process and New UrbanismBy Jennifer Hurley | 2001 Knight Program FellowThe term “public process” is a catch phrase that refers to a variety of contextsin which the public participates in planning and development decisions: publichearings with planning commissions, zoning boards, and city councils; citizen taskforces; and urban design charrettes. In trying to implement New Urban planningand development projects, New Urbanists frequently encounter problems generatedby the public process and these problems can be a source of a great deal of frustration.Of course, the public process is not the only situation that has presented obstaclesto New Urbanists, who have developed a methodology for dealing with obstacles:co-opt specialized fields, look to history, and develop new solutions. I suggest thatthe problems of the “public process” simply pose additional arenas in which NewUrban generalists must become knowledgeable: community organizing, politicaladvocacy, adult education, and dispute resolution.When New Urbanists had trouble getting good places built because of rules bytraffic engineers, they learned basic traffic engineering, found sympathetic trafficengineers to become New Urban road design experts, and re-wrote the standards.When New Urbanists were disappointed in the quality of built places, they looked tohistory and renewed the practice of using pattern books to guide builders. Whenmunicipal officials refused to approve New Urban developments because they didnot meet zoning codes, New Urbanists developed entirely new kinds of codes.It is time once again to turn to these methods. New Urbanists must learn thebasics of community organizing, adult education, and dispute resolution. We mustanalyze historical examples of political change for clues about how to be effective.We must find allies amongst the specialists in community organizing and publicparticipation, and teach them about urban design and charrette methods. And oncewe have used these time-tested methods, we will be able to develop creative newapproaches to this problem.Consensus-Building and New UrbanismTo help us down this path, this report shares some of what I know about publicparticipation and alternative dispute resolution, discussing what New Urbanists canlearn from specialists in this field, and what New Urbanists have to teach thosesame specialists.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS5Over the last thirty years, alternative dispute resolution has grown into a professionalfield of practice, complete with academic theory, field-tested techniques, andpractice area specializations. Public participation and public policy dispute resolutionis one area of specialization. Current practice and theory in this area have developedfrom a variety of sources.The Civil Rights and Feminist movements of the 1950s – 1960s drew attentionto the dynamics of power and promoted individual self-determination and socialequity. The failures of 1960s urban and transportation programs spawned disillusionmentwith government and the role of experts, leading to demands for, andeventually federal requirements for, more participation of citizens in planning anddevelopment decisions.The 1960s – 1970s environmental regulations issued to implement the NationalEnvironmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, theEndangered Species Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response,Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA; a.k.a. Superfund), among others, led togridlock in the courts. Environmentalists were dissatisfied because environmentalregulations were on hold; the EPA was dissatisfied because it could not implementCongress’ mandates, and industry was dissatisfied because of lasting uncertainty.Everyone was unhappy with the high costs and long delays engendered by fightingpolicy battles in the courts. They looked to the experience of federal programs tomediate labor disputes, and began to develop multi-party mediation techniques.Because the emphasis was on breaking administrative and judicial gridlock, the goalof these experiments was to develop consensus among all of the parties.At the same time, the growing presence of community mediation programs ledto the availability of trained mediators in community settings. Some of these programsexpanded beyond individual disputes to address community disputes, often relatedto local planning decisions.All of these forces led to a thriving field of academic study and professionalpractice. Today, the Association for Conflict Resolution (created by a merger of theSociety for Professionals in Dispute Resolution, Academy of Family Mediators, andConflict Resolution Education Network) has eighteen divisions of practice, withover seven thousand members. Universities around the world have departments ofConflict Resolution, including several with Ph.D. programs.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS6So what does all of this have to do with New Urbanism? New Urbanists arestruggling to develop answers to problems that others have already addressed, orat least have studied much longer than we have. To illustrate this point, I willcompare current consensus-building practices with New Urbanist charrettes, pointingout ways that New Urbanists could incorporate the lessons from consensus-buildinginto their practices.Theory and PracticeTheory and practice are closely related endeavors in the field of consensus-building.Most academics also practice, and many practitioners contribute to research projects.Professional associations and conferences include a diverse mix of academics andpractitioners. Consensus-building practice draws on several streams of well-definedtheory, including social psychology, group dynamics, conflict resolution/mediation,systems theory, social network theory, organizational learning, feminist theory,and cultural theory. The relationship between consensus-building theory to practiceis robust: practitioners use theory to gain a deeper understanding of their work;theoreticians test their theory through practice.In contrast, modern-day charrettes seem to be primarily practice-based, drawingvery little from theory. Academics in architecture and planning pay almost no attentionto the way the fields are practiced, and there is very little academic analysis ofcharrette processes. Practitioners believe that charrettes can produce better qualityplans through local input, interdisciplinary teams, short feedback loops, focusedattention, the creative environment, and public filtering of ideas. A related belief isthat charrettes build support for the plan by creating a high-quality plan and havingan open process. These beliefs are empirical; we believe them because we see themto be true in practice. However, they are primarily descriptive, and not normative.They describe what happens, but not why it happens. The lack of theory underlyingour practice means that we stumble in the dark. We do not have an understandingof the dynamics of the overall process, an understanding that could give us directionwhen things go wrong.Lesson: A close relationship between theory-building and practice developmentcan enrich both. Since academics have shown little interest in charrette practice,practitioners should educate themselves about relevant theories and begin toarticulate how theory can improve charrettes as well as identify the holes in theorythat experience uncovers.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 7Stages in the ProcessWithin the field of consensus-building, there are well-recognized stages in theprocess: (1) assessment/convening, (2) building the agreement, (3) implementation,and (4) evaluation. These stages are not purely linear. Activities in one stage maylead participants to revisit an “earlier” stage. However, these stages describe tasksthat must be completed, and provide a framework for understanding the overall arcof the process.Each of these stages relates to aspects of using charrettes in a planning process.I will discuss each stage in turn, describing the tasks undertaken as part of a consensus-buildingprocess, and then discussing how they relate to charrettes.Step 1: Assessment/ConveningThe assessment/convening stage is crucial in consensus-building. This stagesets the tone for the entire consensus-building process. Common tasks undertakenin this stage include:• Stakeholder Analysis• Determine if collaborative process is appropriate• Secure commitment from stakeholders to participate• Arrange first event/meeting• Agree on ground rules, including a decision rule• Choose a facilitator• Stakeholder Training (if appropriate)“Stakeholder Analysis,” a technique developed as an application of systems theory,has three primary components: identifying the stakeholders; identifying the interests,influences, resources, and power that those stakeholders have and can use; and mappingthe relationships among different stakeholders. Identifying the stakeholders simplymeans answering as completely as possible two questions: “Who can affect the project?”and “Who is affected by the project?” The first question is strategic. Anyone whocan affect the outcome of the planning and development process should be involvedas early as possible. The second question is driven by concerns about equity. Thesecond and third components of stakeholder analysis provide information abouthow to influence the “system,” the group of people who have a relationship to aproject. Some people will need to be involved early and often, some only once,some at certain points in the decision-making process. A thorough stakeholderanalysis prevents unpleasant surprises later in the project.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 8Lesson: Know the playing field. Conduct a thorough stakeholder analysis atthe beginning of a project and develop the community outreach plan based onthat analysis. Revisit the stakeholder analysis as the scope of the project changes.The last thirty years of experimentation in public policy dispute resolutionhave produced great successes, dismal failures, and everything in between. Inreflecting on the differences between success and failure, mediators have developedguidelines for determining whether or not a collaborative process is appropriate.Guidelines include consideration of many factors, including suitability of the issuesfor negotiation, ripeness for decision, time and resources available, political climate,agency willingness, and underlying interests. This task is similar to asking if a communityis “charrette-ready.” Where the charrette-ready concept focuses on projectdefinition and data support, the guidelines developed by mediators focus more onprocess and power dynamics.Lesson: Make sure a community is ready for a collaborative process such as acharrette. Include considerations of politics and community organizing in the definitionof “ready.” Make sure key stakeholders will participate and decision-makers will listento their input.One of the first tasks of a collaborative group is to discuss and agree on“ground rules.” Mediators and facilitators use ground rules as a tool to help groupsof people work together productively. Ground rules are especially important in situationswith high levels of distrust, strong emotions, and conflicting views. By discussingthe ground rules openly with participants and asking for agreement to workunder these rules, the facilitator makes the group members responsible for theirbehavior. At the same time, this agreement empowers the facilitator, because thefacilitator only enforces rules that the group has decided it wants. Typical groundrules include:• Start and end on time• Listen…Don’t interrupt• Speak up…Everyone is important• Focus on issues, not people• Respect confidentiality• Decide by consensus

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 9Another early task is to agree on a facilitator for the group, whether it is aseparate hired facilitator, or simply group members rotating to play that role. Thefacilitator is part traffic cop, part gadfly. As traffic cop, the facilitator keeps the groupfocused on the agenda and enforces the ground rules, making the group a safe placefor people to discuss ideas and problems. As gadfly, the facilitator asks for clarification,uncovers underlying interests, and tests statements and agreements to see if they hold.Having a neutral third party whose job is to focus only on the process frees upother group members to advocate their own positions.Lesson: Have a charrette team member whose primary responsibility is to focuson the process. Be clear about the rules of engagement.As discussed earlier, many collaborative projects are consensus-based. However,the key point here is to be explicit about how decisions are made and who makesthem. People should know from the very beginning what role they play. Theparticipatory process should always be tied directly to a decision-making process.In charrettes, the role of participants is typically advisory. The designers use thatinput to develop and improve the plan, but the City Council makes the decisionabout whether or not to adopt the plan. Although charrettes are transparent inthe sense that the meetings and events during the charrette are public and publicized,there is not always a clear explanation of how the charrette fits into the larger policymakingframework.Lesson: Be clear about the decision-making process and the role of the public.In some cases, one or more parties in a collaborative process may need trainingto participate effectively, training in either the process or in the substantive issues.This task is especially important if parties have very different levels of education orskills. The Opening Presentation common in New Urbanist charrettes plays this role.Some of the activities common in the assessment/convening stage are conductedby the charrette sponsor and the designers as part of the RFP and contracting process.For example, the client usually identifies some of the important stakeholders andtheir interests. That task is continued in the public meetings held during charrettes.However, I believe that more thorough attention to the tasks of this stage wouldleverage the power of a charrette to spark lasting change in a community.Strategically, I think that more attention to these tasks would lead to more frequentand more faithful implementation of charrette plans.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 10Step 2: Building the AgreementIn charrette terms, this step involves developing the plan. Tasks that make upthis phase include:• Define the problem/task (includes discussion of positions/interests)• Generate options/brainstorming• Analyze options• Point fact-finding• Package the agreement• Test the agreement• Secure support from constituentsSome mediation models place heavy emphasis on the group defining the problemor agreeing on the task. Getting to that agreement involves discussing each party’spositions, and hopefully identifying the interests that underlie those positions. Ifeveryone can come to a common definition of what the problems are, and agreethat the underlying interests are legitimate, developing a solution that is mutuallysatisfying is much easier than if all of the parties are pulling in different directions.In a consensus-building process, the stakeholders usually work together todevelop a joint definition of the problem. In a charrette, the clients and designersusually define the scope (problems to address, tasks to accomplish) during the RFPand contracting process. Although some adjustment to the scope is often madeduring a charrette, there is rarely an explicit discussion with all of the stakeholdersabout what the scope should be. In many cases, leaving out this task as an explicitstep is probably fine. However, if stakeholders have very different ideas about whichissues should be addressed, they may be resistant to any proposals that are introduced.If you experience seemingly irrational resistance to proposals during a charrette, itmay be because people are upset about a different problem.Lesson: Especially in situations with high levels of conflict, make sure the keystakeholders agree with the scope and focus of the charrette.Charrettes excel at three tasks in this stage: brainstorming, analyzing theoptions, and joint fact-finding. The synergy of having a variety of specialists, theshort feed-back loops, and the public transparency of the analysis are some of thestrengths of the charrette process.Lesson: Facilitators and mediators would benefit from learning about charrettepractices for creating and filtering physical design options.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 11Because facilitators and mediators pay explicit attention to developing groundrules, including a decision rule, consensus-building processes are usually tied veryclosely to a legally required decision-making process. In addition, because consensus-buildingincludes a step in which the group defines the problem or task, thegroup defines the product. The product of a consensus-building process is often astatement of agreement by all of the stakeholders. Frequently, this statement providesrecommendations to the body with legal decision-making authority. Finally, mediatorsand facilitators are trained to “test” an agreement, to make sure that all of the partieshave thought through the implications of the recommendation and that the agreementwill be resilient. These three factors mean that consensus-building processeswork to package an agreement that all parties will actively support.In a charrette, the product of the process is usually defined by the sponsor andthe designers through the RFP and contracting process. The sponsor may or maynot be explicit about how the charrette fits into a larger decision-making process.Even when the sponsor is explicit with the designers about how the charrette fitsinto the larger decision-making process, that connection is not always emphasizedwith the public. Commonly, the products of the charrette comprise plans or regulationsthat the designers recommend that a legal body, usually the City Council,adopt. There is substantial stakeholder input through meetings and pin-up sessionsheld throughout the charrette, but there is not usually an explicit attempt to reachconsensus among all of the stakeholders. Because of the short time frame, the productis not always completely finished when the charrette ends. All of these factorstogether contribute to charrettes creating products (plans and regulations) that donot get implemented.Lesson: Be clear about how the charrette fits into the larger decision-makingsystem. Be clear with members of the public about what their role is. Pay explicitattention to “packaging an agreement” that satisfies most parties. Question peoplewhen they agree with you. Tie up the loose ends.Step 3: ImplementationThe third major phase of consensus-building is implementation. People involvedin consensus-building include implementation as a phase of the consensus-buildingprocess (and not something else altogether) for two primary reasons. First, legislativebodies cannot legally give away their authority to make decisions. That is why theproduct of a consensus-building process is usually a set of recommendations to alegal body. In early public policy dispute resolution experiments, people sometimesdevoted extensive amounts of time and resources to processes that led nowhere,because the legal authority ignored the collaborative group’s recommendation.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 12Experiences of that kind led to the realization that anyone who cared about a projecthad to follow it through implementation. At the same time, mediators saw thatpeople who agreed to a course of action sometimes had to re-negotiate their agreements,either because flaws in the agreement became apparent during implementation,or because the circumstances changed.Tasks common to the implementation phase of consensus-building include:• Document the process• Publicize the agreement• Influence legal decision-making• Take action• Monitor actions• Re-negotiateDocumenting the process is taken very seriously in public policy dispute resolutionfor several reasons. To keep the size of a group manageable, participants in thecollaborative process are often representing entire interest groups. Those representativesmust be able to keep their group apprised of the negotiations. Public policydispute resolution takes time, sometimes years, and individuals who join the groupin the middle of the process must understand what came before. Perhaps mostimportantly, documenting the process adds to the transparency, and thus legitimacy,of the process with legislators and the general public. This transparency and legitimacymake it more likely that the group’s recommendations will be adopted.Charrettes typically have extraordinary stakeholder input. The uniqueness andspectacle of the event generate extensive media attention and public participation.The breadth of topics covered and the number of citizens participating is impressive.However, this input is rarely documented in a methodical way. People who are inthe room see that their comments led to changes in the drawings, but everyoneelse—the rest of the public and many of the decision-makers—have no idea howpublic comment affected the plan. People who did not participate can always claimthat their concerns were not addressed, because there is no record of what concernswere addressed.Lesson: Document the stakeholder input. Make notes from stakeholder meetings,and make those notes available in the charrette report or on a project web site.Demonstrate how public comment influenced the products.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 13Charrettes typically do a very good job of publicizing the product of the charrette(in consensus-building terms, the agreement). Because of the spectacle of theevent and the short time frame, media interest is high. New Urbanists have revivedthe art of making beautiful plans, and the images developed during the charrettemake good graphics for presentations and publications.Lesson: Facilitators and mediators would benefit from learning about the mediastrategies of New Urbanist charrette practitioners and the power of visual representation.Because of the explicit tie to a legal decision-making process often made duringa consensus-building process, participants recognize that the process is not completewhen the group makes its recommendations; the process is not complete untilthe legal decision-makers act. Often, participants in a consensus-building processcare so strongly about the outcome that they place political pressure on the legaldecision-makers to adopt the group’s recommendations. They become the proponentsof the recommendations, and fight all of the small battles that appear.Monitoring the actions that participants agreed to take is often an explicit partof the consensus-building process. Individuals must act, and the consensus-buildinggroup monitors those actions to make sure their intent is followed. As problemsarise, the participants re-negotiate their agreements. For a charrette to be fullysuccessful, local people must monitor the implementation actions of governmentagencies and private interests.Lesson: By adopting some of the practices of mediators and facilitators, charretteorganizers could leverage the charrette process to create and energize local leaderswho will fight for the plan long after the charrette is over.Step 4: EvaluationDrawing on insights from adult education, mediators and facilitators includeevaluation of the process as part of standard practice. Evaluation of the process inan ongoing way has several benefits:• It models a new way of working together, one that encourages self-reflectionand continual improvement• It signals to people that they can disagree or provide criticism• It gives people another chance to be heard• It provides the facilitator, in a short feedback loop, with input about theprocess, which can act as an “early warning system” to make the facilitatoraware of problems

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 14In addition, because dissatisfaction with costs and outcomes of the legal systemled to the development of public policy mediation, there has been significantattention, both from academics and practitioners, to evaluating the outcomes ofconsensus-building processes. These evaluations have provided useful insight intowhat works and what doesn’t, and have added to improvement of the practice.Lesson: Incorporating ongoing evaluation of the process during charrettes wouldincrease satisfaction with the experience in the short-term. Evaluation of the outcomeof charrettes would lead to long-term improvements in the standard of practice.What Can Charrette Practitioners Learn from Consensus-Building?By learning from the experience of mediators and facilitators, charrette organizerscould leverage the event to create more support for the results of the charrette,resulting in more faithful implementation. Key aspects that charrette organizerscould learn from consensus-building:• A robust theoretical basis for practice can inform the understanding of theprocess and suggest possibilities when problems arise.• Situating the charrette event in a larger decision-making framework thatincludes pre-charrette outreach and post-charrette consensus-buildingincreases the chances of implementation.• Using the charrette to aid group learning and build civic capital wouldleverage the event to develop local leaders who can champion the planlong after the event.Charrette organizers could adopt specific skills from mediators and facilitators,including stakeholder analysis, the use of ground rules, neutral mediation/facilitation,agenda-setting, and consensus-building techniques.What Can Charrette Practitioners Add to Consensus-Building?I have focused this article on describing what I think charrette organizerscan learn from consensus-building. However, I also believe that charrettes are atechnique that discussion-based mediators and facilitators should learn about:• Charrettes are a great improvement over discussion-based processes foraddressing physical and design issues. Words are a cumbersome mediumwhen the problem is visual.• The compressed time frame of a charrette creates incredible excitement andmomentum. In contrast, discussion-based processes can take months, if notyears, and are often tedious and sometimes downright painful.

HURLEY | THE PUBLIC PROCESS 15• The large event and spectacle quality of a charrette generates significantmedia interest.• The variety of ways, opportunities, and times for people to participate ina charrette opens the door to much broader participation than typicaldiscussion-based processes.ResourcesFor Further ReadingDoyles, Michael, and David Straus. How to Make Meetings Work. New York:Jove Books, 1982.SPIDR Environment/Public Disputes Sector Critical Issues Committee, 1997.“Best Practices for Government Agencies: Guidelines for Using CollaborativeAgreement-Seeking Processes.” Accessed athttp://www.acresolution.org/research.nsf/key/EPPbestpractices.Susskind, Lawrence, and Jeffrey Cruikshank. Breaking the Impasses: ConsensualApproaches to Resolving Public Disputes. New York: Basic Books, 1989.Professional OrganizationsAssociation for Conflict Resolution: http://www.acresolution.org.See especially the Environment Public Policy Section:http://www.acresolution.org/research.nsf/key/Sec-EPP.TrainingLocal community mediation centers are good places to get training inbasic mediation. You can look up mediation centers by location on thewebsite of the National Association for Community Mediation athttp://www.nafcm.org/pg35.cfm.More specialized training is available through the Lincoln Instituteof Land Policy: http://www.lincolninstitute.edu.See especially their Mediating Land Use Disputes course series.