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Preface
This guide is for people who are planning for their communities’ futures, or who would like to be. It is intended especially for local officials, planners, and citizens who together are trying to ensure that their community’s quality of life will be better, not worse, 10 or 20 years from now. This guide will not give them a roadmap to the future, but it will give them ideas about the process of planning for smart, sustainable growth.
About this Guide
We developed this guide with Tennessee’s non-urban municipalities and counties in mind. We chose to focus on rural and quasi-rural areas because many are experiencing rapid change, or may in the near future, yet many have limited budgets and small staffs to deal with the complex issues facing them.
Given our own limited project budget and staff, we had to further narrow our focus: The two case studies provided in Chapter 6 are of one town and one county that are "metropolitan edge" communities and, since 1990, have had double-digit growth rates. Other examples could have been explored had our scope allowed. These might have included, not only communities at the urban fringe, but also communities that are declining because of their failing economies or burgeoning because of their scenic and recreational assets. All of these places need to plan for smart growth.
The focus of the guide is on visioning and planning processes for smart growth. Equally important, but not dealt with at length, are the politics within which any process is embedded and the implementation strategies that should result from the process. Implementation strategies abound: Some are well-known; others are experimental. (For resources on implementation strategies, see, for example, the American Planning Association and the Urban Land Institute, both of which are listed in Chapter 7.) We chose to concentrate on visioning and planning processes, not because they are the answer, but because they are an important part of the answer. This guide is the result. A "guide to the guide" follows:
• Chapter 1 introduces the concept of smart growth and compares it to other concepts such as planning and sustainable development.
• Chapter 2 briefly discusses the various strategies, or political models, within which a visioning and planning process may take place. The purpose of this chapter is not to definitively analyze these models, but rather to raise awareness of different contexts for visioning and planning. Different strategies share a common need, however: They are much more likely to succeed if they have an ardent "champion" or core group of committed individuals to push the process forward.
• Chapter 3 draws from what we have gleaned from printed and Internet resources concerning community visioning and planning. This chapter describes different techniques that can be used at each of five basic stages: (1) identifying values and setting goals; (2) gathering, integrating, and forecasting information; (3) developing and assessing options; (4) making decisions; and (5) monitoring change.
• Chapter 4 reviews computer-based tools that may be useful during these stages, especially during the second and third stage. "May" is stressed, because this review notes several current drawbacks as well as advantages of some of the more sophisticated computer-based tools.
• Chapter 5 describes a popular, low-tech means of providing a visioning and planning process with structure and focus: using indicators of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. The chapter concludes with a list of some typical indicators and possible sources of data.
• Chapter 6 tries to put together the pieces into a coherent whole—a few key messages and a 12-step sequence—with the warning that there is no single, ideal visioning and planning process. Instead, it must be tailored from the fabric of the community, as illustrated by the two case studies that accompany this chapter.
• Chapter 7 lists various resources: books, articles, and guides available in print form or on the Internet; and organizations and Internet sites, within as well as outside of Tennessee, that may be of help.
• The appendices list data sources and sources of civic assistance that may be useful to towns and counties as they conduct visioning and planning processes.
Counties, Cities, Towns, Communities
In Tennessee, municipalities are incorporated only as cities; unlike some other states, Tennessee does not officially use such terms as village, town, township, or borough. In the guide’s title, however, we refer colloquially to "towns and counties," to convey a sense of the relatively rural places we had in mind in developing the guide.
In the guide, we also frequently speak of "communities." This term refers, not just to the place in which people live, but to the people themselves. For a group to be truly a community, they must interact with each other, share a sense of a common future (if not a common past), and work together to help meet each other’s needs and promote the common welfare. Communities do not just exist; they must be fostered. An effective visioning and planning process can help build a social community, even as it helps ensure that the physical community is a good place to live.
A Regional Perspective
In this guide, we focus on local visioning and planning. We do not dwell upon the need to look across local boundaries and plan together with nearby towns and counties. But that need exists, now more than ever. Boundaries are porous, not impermeable. Interjurisdictional issues—e.g., water use, air pollution, the indirect spill-over effects of new development—won’t go away. A regional perspective and regional dialogues should be part of the county or town’s process of planning for its own smart growth.
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