Citizen Planning Academies build local leadership, increase awareness, and broaden involvement through community education. CommunityMatters highlights examples of citizen academies along with five reasons to start one in your city or town.
Many communities struggle to recruit volunteers for local planning boards and commissions, and are challenged by communication with the public around planning issues. Citizen Planning Academies are one tool for increasing interest and capacity of residents to get involved with local planning issues.
Building on PlannersWeb.com's 2014 article on Citizen Planning Academies, CommunityMatters takes a look at a handful of examples and offers five reasons to start an academy in your town:
- Academy graduates understand planning language and processes.
- Academy graduates run for office.
- Academy graduates are practiced citizen planners.
- Academy graduates boost capacity for public engagement activities.
- Academy graduates teach each other.
FULL STORY: Five Reasons to Start a Citizen Planning Academy in Your Town
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Economic & Planning Systems, Inc.
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
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