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
