The role of the public in municipal strategic planning has evolved from old-school, top-down processes to today’s highly collaborative approach. Community input is critical to municipal planning, and while public meetings and focus groups provide great venues for in-person comment, they can fall short. In-person collaboration often omits swaths of residents who can add value—caretakers, single and working parents, night-shift workers (nurses and hospital staff, for example), gig workers, underserved communities, people without reliable transportation, and more. Public leaders must extend every
Survey data is an important component of research methodologies, especially for municipal planning. However, survey fatigue and constraints around open-ended questions mean the insights generated often lead to one big question, “Why?” Why did respondents say this was an issue? Why do residents over the age of 45 see this as an issue, while younger residents do not? Small-group discussions around specific questions and topics can help decision-makers see the “Why?” behind their survey data. Although these groups are widely used by
