Neighbourhood Planning

Neighbourhood Planning - mind map

Lets start by looking at the overall picture in the form of a mindmap. Is this the way the process is happening in your experience? Are the boxes OK?

Mind map on neighbourhood planning/Peter Backa.

Neighbourhood Planning - process

POSSIBLE STEPS IN THE PROCESS OF COMMUNITY PLANNING

- or what we as an network should do (and not do!) to create a LINUX-inspired method development on neighborhood planning

1. "Why making a common plan"

Before a neighborhood or community development process can start there has to be a community - a local area where people are interested in working together. In some cases you can find a "ready to start"-community. In other cases you have to start by showing the people that there are benefits in working together and create a commitment to do so. This process can happen in many ways. In my experience crises often triggers development processes, but also new possibilities. There are a lot of tools to be used in this kind of animation work, and for now I would like to leave this part out of our focus. We should concentrate on the planning process. Other vice we might try to involve all methods in one model. And I think that it might be wise not to do that just yet. The planning process is in my view large enough - maybe to large even.

2. "Our neighborhood to day"

Before we start to develop a community we need to know the community. In our experience we need to know the history, all the facts and statistics we can get, we need to analyze the "spirit" (for instance hove people react on crises and worked together) and the resources and the weaknesses of the community (that last point is a little close to SWOT but other methods can be used). I suggest that the task of the network starts here: We describe witch methods we have used in the boxes (history, facts, spirit....) and give examples of how these methods have been used. We also might consider new boxes.

3. "Our common vision"

Here I think that the network could com up with lots of new ideas. We have only suggested that we can work with trends and scenarios as background to a common vision. I think that many other methods have been used. And for creating the vision itself we need methods. So here I expect lots of new boxes and methods and examples.

4. "Priorities and actions"

When the community knows where it stands and where it wants to go, it is time to decide how to get there. We have only one box for this but I guess we can make several boxes to divide this process. And many different methods can be used.

5. "Development work"

This is in, my view, outside our target at this point. This box can contain everything that will develop the neighborhood. Here it means carrying out the plan but it might mean everything from having neighborhood parties to founding enterprises and organizing demonstrations. So my suggestion is that we also leave this point out for now, just as number 1.

6. "How the plan was made"

This is merely a description of the process. It is useful to include in the plan because it hopefully helps the reader (the authorities perhaps) to understand that the plan is the genuine will of the neighborhood and that the people are committed to carry it out.

Read more

the community planning website: www.communityplanning.net

Grundtvig seminarium about Village planning, view broadcasts.