The Regional Vision – Why Now?
In spite of current economic conditions, the Greater Tucson Region is expected to recover and continue to grow in the coming years and decades. In fact, within the next half-century the population of the region is projected to double. While growth will certainly provide new opportunities to many of the region’s residents, it will also exacerbate current challenges and likely present many new ones. With the economic conditions as they are, now is the time to prepare for that growth.
Preparation must go beyond simply minimizing growth’s negative impacts. It must be proactive about forming a better and more resilient community. The question to be asked, and the real challenge to be confronted is, “How do we build a region in which we, and our children, want to live?” That is, a region that reflects and expresses the values of the people that live in it. How residents answer that question is critically important in shaping the region’s physical environment, growth and development pattern, and overall character. This is precisely what constitutes the essence of the Regional Vision.
The following document outlines the purpose of Imagine Greater Tucson and how a Regional Vision is developed and implemented. It concludes by providing case studies from other regions that have successfully undertaken similar efforts.
What is Imagine Greater Tucson?
Imagine Greater Tucson (IGT) is a non-governmental organization conducting a community-driven effort to develop a cohesive and realizable Vision for the Greater Tucson Region (roughly Eastern Pima County). “Non-governmental” and “community-driven,” are not simply convenient terms used to capture the legal status of the organization or to make some gesture at public process. Rather, the words and the meaning behind them are core to IGT’s mission and identity, and key to the success of the Regional Vision.
While maintaining positive relationships with regional jurisdictions, IGT is not directly affiliated or directed by any single governmental body and the agenda for IGT is not being determined by any private interest or ideological perspective. Instead, what IGT aspires to provide is a process and physical and intellectual forum where all residents, regardless of affiliation, ideology, and specific interests can come together to express and discuss their hopes and concerns for the future of this region. The hopes and concerns expressed throughout the process – the Shared Regional Values – will serve as the basis for developing a Vision for the region.
The ultimate goal for the IGT effort is to replace the adversarial model of decision making that has traditionally been dominant in this region (that is, an approach that sees business, government, and civic groups of differing perspectives establishing antagonistic stances and relationships with each other in order to compete in the “marketplace of ideas”), with a model that is more collaborative, flexible, creative and based on the values that are shared throughout the region. Using the Regional Vision as catalyst, that approach will be applied to determine how we shall grow as a community. The best, and really only, way to achieve this goal is to ensure a broad-based and inclusive effort in which all members of the community can participate and be equally influential in determining the outcomes of the process.
The Regional Vision: Setting Our Path
The primary purpose of IGT is to conduct a process to establish a set of Shared Regional Values and generate and implement a Regional Vision. But what exactly is a Regional Vision, and how does it differ from other community planning initiatives? The Regional Vision is, simply put, the document that captures and expresses residents’ desired long-term (going out 20-50 years) direction for the region. The purpose of the Vision is to serve as a guidepost to direct and orient public decision making, goal-setting, and policy development by providing community context and communicating residents’ concerns and aspirations for the future of the region. However, it is really in the process that generates the Vision, called the visioning effort, where it can be distinguished conceptually from community panning initiatives and plan development.
First and foremost, a visioning effort can be viewed as a campaign for change. It is less about seeking input on specific policy or land use actions and more about motivating residents to be proactive about defining the region they want. To do so, the process seeks to broadly engage community members to discuss and deliberate about the community they live in and to lay out a course for achieving the most desirable future for that community.
The best of these efforts will be highly interactive and asks community members to challenge one another to think about the implications of their choices. The deliberative process of identifying the implications of choices (both in workshops and through surveys) will ultimately result in identifying the ideal future that likely yields the best and most desirable outcomes: in the case of the IGT visioning process, this means the future that best aligns with the region’s expressed values given projected population growth.
Vision to Implementation
A Vision is not a plan nor a policy document, but a popularly generated guide to help direct future growth and land development in the region. As such, the Vision itself has no statutory authority. What it does contain, however, is an expression of a region’s core values and desired direction. This is very powerful, but the change for which it calls can only be implemented through the participation and support of a wide variety of local agencies, organizations, and individuals.
The most direct way in which a Regional Vision is implemented is through the various jurisdictions that make up that region. These jurisdictions can use the Regional Vision to inform the development of plans; in particular the Comprehensive or General Plan. In order to ensure implementation, those plans should outline policies that reflect the regionally held values and develop strategies that move jurisdictions closer to achieving the Vision. This includes, but is not limited to, rezoning actions, updates to zoning codes, and changes to other development standards that follow from the plan. Additionally, the Regional Vision may be implemented by steering regional economic development planning, regional infrastructure and facilities planning and allocation, and through more localized efforts in transportation and other services. Depending on what is expressed, the Vision may also help identify future activity centers and corridors and impact large-scale development project planning, transit planning, state land planning, and future conservation planning.
Outside of traditional implementation avenues of governmental agencies; civic organizations and the business community also play an important role in carrying the Vision forward. While these groups may not be tasked with developing specific actions and strategies, they can undertake a variety of activities that can serve to support the Regional Vision. Examples: Groups can convene and/or participate in sessions within their own sectors to hold meaningful discussions about how to proceed to forward the Vision; they can open dialogue across sectors to generate creative solutions to achieving the Vision; and they can focus locational investment into areas targeted for growth or development in the Vision.
The most important factor in ensuring implementation, and the common denominator in all of the above, is the continuing support and advocacy on behalf of the Vision by the community at large. Local decision makers and other leaders follow the popular will, and seek to respond to the community’s desires. If it is clear that those demands, across jurisdictions, are in support of the Regional Vision, then public decisions will be made that reflect and forward the implementation of the Vision. Without this, the Vision will become another document chronicling community aspirations but inspiring little action.
In a very real sense, the process is the product. Not only does the process provide a space and outlet for members of the community to shape a Vision for the region; it also lays the foundation of implementation. Ideally, those who participate in the visioning process will be moved to think and act differently in their everyday lives, to engage in subsequent public decision-making processes, to take ownership of the future of the region, and to work to establish and maintain a cohesive regional identity. To that end, it is crucial that the process is broad, inclusive, transparent, thought-provoking, and results in a Regional Vision that is at once achievable, but also stretches what people think is possible so that it may continue to engage and challenge residents of the region to act in accord with their expressed values.
The visioning organization itself can take several different approaches to support and forward the implementation of the vision. This is not an exhaustive list, and none preclude other options, but is intended to give an idea of the organization’s potential direction after Vision development. First, the organization could make policy recommendations, offering tools and strategies in support of those recommendations to local jurisdictions. The visioning organization could set up a system by which the implementation of the Vision and the overall direction of the region is monitored and measured. Finally, this visioning organization may seek to convene groups or other organizations to forward specific pieces of the Vision. Whatever approach or set of approaches the organization takes it must be firmly rooted in and based upon the process that generated the Vision. The cases highlighted below show how other regional visioning efforts have used one or more of these approaches to support the implementation of their own Visions.
Visioning in Other Regions
Regional Visioning and the regional perspectives that it represents, has been a growing trend in the United States for over a decade. While Imagine Greater Tucson is not seeking to directly emulate any of these processes, it is referring to a number of them for guidance and direction. In that regard, IGT is seeking to benefit from the lessons learned in previous and on-going efforts and to position itself within this stream of American thought.
Envision Utah
Perhaps the most well-known of these efforts, Envision Utah formed in 1997 to convene diverse stakeholders to make decisions about the type of growth they would like to see in the Wasatch Front Region of Utah. Similar to IGT, Envision Utah is a non-governmental organization and relies on leveraging continual public outreach and engagement to ensure implementation of the Regional Vision. As such, it was essential that the process was inclusive and accurately captured the true sentiments and desires of the entire community. Envision Utah utilized a values-based approach to develop the Vision and formulated messages that resonated with Utahans from across the spectrum.
Envision Utah’s values-based, stakeholder-driven approach garnered wide support and was instrumental in the implementation of Quality Growth strategies in the Region. The organization itself helped the various local jurisdictions to integrate elements of the Vision into their own development by providing expertise and quality growth tools. Envision Utah continues to work with the general public, jurisdictions, and regional leaders to develop smaller-scale community Visions and advocate for and implement their Quality Growth strategies. For a complete list of Envision Utah’s accomplishments, please visit their website.
Region 2020: Birmingham Alabama
Begun in 1997, Region 2020 is a citizen-driven regional visioning effort undertaken in Birmingham Alabama. At the time that the effort was initiated, Birmingham was a rapidly-growing region deeply divided with a strong sense of distrust between the City of Birmingham and some of the outlying communities. Additionally, the region struggled with a history of racial tension. The effort was characterized by starting with a “blank slate”, not a predetermined agenda, and by its commitment to broad geographic and demographic inclusiveness.
The Region 2020 Vision resulted in the development of a set of regional indicators that local communities could use to gauge whether they were moving in the desired direction; the founding of the Center for Regional Planning and Design; an Arts and Culture Master Plan that produced a Cultural Alliance; and an affordable housing institution to help support the development of entry-level housing in the region. Region 2020 was also the first initiative to establish broad regional co-operation in greater Birmingham.
myregion.org: Central Florida
The myregion.org effort was born out of a need in Central Florida to establish a regional identity and to give the place a “sense of itself”. To provide the process that helped to develop that sense of self, eighteen public and private organizations came together and launched myregion.org. Through that effort, citizens were asked the question, “How shall we grow?” In response to which they identified six growth principles, including preservation of open space, provision of transit options, fostering of a vibrant economy, etc.
Because of the myregion.org effort, Central Florida expanded medical research capabilities in the area, developed a strategy to recognize excellent teachers in the region, and formed a regional environmental coalition, among other things. Myregion.org continues to provide resources for the region in order to forward the Vision and has outlined further implementation strategies. Among those strategies is a pledge of regional Elected Officials to work together on issues of regional significance.
The three cases described above demonstrate what is possible through regional visioning. They provide a testament to the power of those initiatives that seek to mobilize people around their shared values and garner widespread support. While these cases are each notable in their own way, they are not unique. Visioning is now occurring all around the country in communities and regions of varying size with diverse challenges. In spite of those differences and distinctions, they all hope to accomplish the same thing: to create a place that fulfills the desires and expectations of the residents that live there. However, establishing the Vision is only the first step. It is not intended to be the solution for all of a region’s challenges. To implement the Vision and create the community it describes takes years of dedication, work, creativity, discussion and co-operation. The Vision says where to go – getting there is everyone’s responsibility.