Planning & Social Media

May 2015 Andrew J. Crisp Boise, Idaho

COMMUNICATIONIN THE CITY

Planners are by nature communicators. We work with diverse groupsto solve problems, discuss new ideas and institute change.

Today national dialogue plays out on social media, internationalnetworks with millions of users and a seemingly endless stream ofinformation. 

This report in was created as part of a capstoneproject designed and produced by Andrew Crisp,a graduate student in the Community andRegional Planning program at Boise StateUniversity. Dr. Amanda Ashley and Dr. Jaap Vosserved as faculty advisors.

Boise, IdahoMay, 2015

"Why social media?"Planners may benefit from use of new tools andplatforms changing the way people connect.

For those looking to leverage these tools within broader approaches toplanning communication, this report will serve as a resource indetermining the best approach, one that reflects the context of theircommunity.

This research set out to discover how social media, including Facebook,Twitter and other web-based communication platforms may positivelyimpact the planning profession.

www.andrewcrisp.com

Andrew J. Crisp

Social media requiresEXPERIMENTATION

"Which tool should I use?"No easy answer exists. "There's no magic bulletwhen it comes to engagement," according to aplanner from Philadelphia interviewed duringthis process. Finding the right platform forplanning in your community may require amore iterative process... More 

This

Way

More 

This

Way

ENGAGE

CONNECT

INSPIRE

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Numerous communication tools are available to planners, particularly as they approach community engagement during the planning process. To build a baseline understanding of how these tools are used, and where, the author interviewed planners within 11 different communities across the U.S., and asked them about their experiences.

Across the board, these planning departments stood out as city agencies initiating change in the arena of communication for and with the public. This may not come as a surprise to planners themselves. Communication within the world of urban planning takes place through diverse media. Yet the field often leans on jargon and technical information to communicate its ideas. Planners write about and discuss complex legal requirements, administrative codes and government policies, and simultaneously shoulder a responsibility to distribute volumes of information to the public, developers and other stakeholders. This dialogue takes place in the public eye yet deals with sensitive issues, including information about private property and personal investments. Effective communication remains a paramount skill for planners. Both the Planning Accreditation Board (PAB), tasked with providing professional accreditation for planning programs, and the American

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Planning Association explicitly recognize the importance of communication within the practice of planning. Yet communication has changed dramatically—and now includes a much broader group of participants through new avenues, like blogs, handmade “zines” and particularly through social media networks. Planners may not consider these and other tools when approaching their own work, either by tradition or because of constraints. At its most basic, social media refers to websites and applications that enable users to create and share content—pictures, videos, and text, and in some applications drawings, secrets, information and ideas. Taken as a whole, social media encompasses various “social networks” with communities of users in the hundreds of millions. Some of the most commonly used communications tools in the world include Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. More than 1.3 billion people are on Facebook, on average each month, compared to 288 million using Twitter. Approximately 300 million users populate Instagram—a number just shy of the total population of the United States. Research literature suggests an evolving understanding of how planners communicate with the public. The theoretical impact of engaging the public through the use of gaming technology, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has been explored, but use remains limited. Social media in particular may be an attractive tool for planners anxious to engage the public, in part due to the recent and rapid growth of these tools in terms of number of users. This report aims to answer some of the questions about these tools, how they’re used, and to what end.

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This report will hopefully help planners expand their suite of available tools when communicating planning ideas to the public, while also providing context on the necessary considerations for successful implementation. This research also represents an attempt to understand the role(s) these communication tools, strategies and techniques play in the planning process. Functionally, planning communication encompasses both: 1) how planners effectively deliver information and “sell” their ideas to the public, but also 2) how citizens provide new narratives to introduce ideas, challenge existing beliefs or address challenges relative to how cities function and grow. URBAN COMMUNICATION IN PRACTICE

Planners across the United States shared insights into their process. Traditional meetings and surveys tended to play a large role—but an emergent group of tools may broaden the planner’s ability to access and engage with their community…

Cities targeted for inclusion were selected through a multi-phase process. The work of numerous cities within the realm of public participation have been included as part of previous research studies on the subject. An article written in 2006 by Jennifer Evans-Cowley and Maria Manta Conroy cited innovative projects undertaken in Aspen, Colorado and Austin, Texas. The interviewer reached out to and interviewed planners with both cities—providing an update on efforts in those places. In a second phase, Internet searches were conducted to determine which cities had a presence on various social media platforms. The author searched Facebook for

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“comprehensive plan,” “planning” and “planning department” in late March 2015, revealing a number of different project-specific pages from municipalities across the United States. In most cases, these were current projects organized and run by planners at the particular municipality. In the third phase, the author relied on a form of snowball method for finding additional cities for inclusion in the research. In the first two interviews conducted with planners from Boulder and Aspen, the names of projects at the City of Cincinnati and City of Austin were mentioned, and so forth. The municipalities included in this research are by no means a comprehensive representation of social media engagement within the planning realm. 11 cases of social media use by planning organizations in American cities represents only a fraction of the larger topic, and fails to include use of social media within urban planning in countries beyond the U.S. However, the issues raised by practicing planners over the course of these interviews hold key commonalities useful for planners approaching more inclusive public engagement, be it online or by traditional means. Below is a brief description of the cities included in this report: PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA Philadelphia’s planning department had recently participated in two separate pilot projects aimed at online citizen participation. The first, Community PlanIt, comprised a gaming platform designed to solicit public involvement in the planning process. The second, using the MindMixer platform, helped the city engage in dialogue with the public and collect comments regarding individual planning initiatives as part of a major plan update. CINCINNATI, OHIO Cincinnati incorporated social media into a recent planning process as a type of low-cost experimentation. According to the respondent, the planning department was interested in anything they could do to reach more people—particularly if that approach were a low- or no-cost solution.

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA Social media use in the Minneapolis planning office was limited. According to the interviewee, the city had explored numerous concepts and tools, but had not wrapped social media into their public engagement processes. While the respondent detailed the city’s current approaches, and related the breadth of conversations among the city’s planning department, this interview served to provide context on the issue. KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Public engagement processes already include social media in Kansas City, far beyond many of the other cities included in the report. Within a recent planning effort in the city’s core downtown, MindMixer and other platforms were used to solicit public input on alternatives and ideas for the future. In this particular city, online and social media approaches were rolled into individual projects.

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AUSTIN, TEXAS According to a planner interviewed in with the City of Austin, social media use pervaded an initiative underway at the time, known as “Imagine Austin.” The program encompassed not just land use and transportation planning, but also health, mobility and education. LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA The community of Lafayette was smaller than the other cities included in this research. However both the planner and communications person interviewed highlighted a recently completed comprehensive planning effort with a significant social media component known as “Plan Lafayette.” SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Seattle had recently launched a major plan update process at the time of interview, dubbed “Seattle 2035. It included a significant social media component, including dedicated project pages and efforts to engage the public using those platforms. The author interviewed both a communications staffer and a project manager in the planning department. The communications staffer indicated his role is to help planners in their efforts to engage the public. BOULDER, COLORADO In the case of Boulder, social media played a significant role in the municipality’s public engagement approach. While not a planner, the interviewee worked closely with planning staff and was employed by the planning department. His communication and marketing skills suggest a level of sophistication not found in other municipalities in this study.

ASPEN, COLORADO Aspen had a large part-time resident population, which may have skewed some of the takeaways from the use of social media in planning for public engagement and citizen participation. The respondent interviewed indicated that online platforms, including MindMixer, offer avenues for participation from residents unable to attend a meeting in person. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA The planning department within the City of Los Angeles government is very large, according to the interviewee. The planner interviewed indicated her experiences with social media extended to a citywide initiative currently underway, as well as work in mobility in particular. Both included social media within an informational and public engagement role. SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA Unlike others included in the study, SANDAG was not a planning department but instead a consortium of governments in the San Diego area. This organization encompassed land use and transportation planning as well as duties and responsibilities associated with Metropolitan Planning Organizations. Her organization is comprised of more than a dozen cities in a metropolitan area, and does not have land use planning responsibilities. The organization does however engage in transportation planning, in criminal justice issues and other areas. The respondent herself was officially a Public Information Officer (PIO), and as a social media manager, her work encompasses communications across departments, including planning.

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SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PLANNING PROCESS Surprisingly, planners are already using social media to more effectively conduct the planning process. Planners themselves were, across numerous cities, leading the way in the use of a variety of tools. Across conversations with planning staff, a number of commonalities begin to stand out. These are grouped into four distinct categories, each encompassing important foundational elements necessary as municipalities consider using social media within public engagement. They are: resources, tools, structure and approach. Comments about the strengths and limitations of social media often highlighted a need for increased resources, or of making efficient use of existing or new tools. Explicitly or otherwise, planners also referenced the importance of considering how these processes are structured within planning approaches, as well as the particular details and outcomes intended through their approach. Planners and communication professionals currently use social media to influence public engagement within the planning process, however its application varies in the composition of these four different areas. A majority of those interviewed indicated social media played a role within a larger community engagement strategy. To solicit feedback and input from the public, the planning departments examined in this report hosted traditional outreach approaches including community meetings, workshops and design charrettes as expected. But they also employed a suite of marketing tools, including postcards, email newsletters and other forms of notification and information. One product in particular, the Nixle community information tool (with a slogan of “Building Stronger Communities Together), was wrapped into public information approaches across departments in Kansas City. Based in San Francisco, Nixle is a for-profit company offering its platform to municipalities, often law enforcement agencies, as a means of relaying safety and emergency information to the public through text (SMS) messaging, email, voice and other tools. In Kansas City, the respondent indicated that Nixle alerts were broadcast to alert residents of upcoming meetings

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relevant to their neighborhood. This functionality was managed by a city communications department, and was often used to reach the public via their cell phone’s text messaging software. “People who have registered their cell phone number are registered to receive notifications by text from the City, about whatever’s happening. We can target geographic areas. We can drop a point on a map, and say ‘Send a note about the meeting to everyone within a mile of this point,’” he said. While in Kansas City use of online tools like Nixle took place on a more broad level, department-level communications about specific planning issues took place via alternative tools—including social media. “[W]hen it comes to the social media—we have our own department Twitter feed, we have our own project social media that happens—and we pretty much do all of that ourselves,” he said. A deeper look at the tools of communication within the planning process will help provide an understanding of what, how and when to implement them in your community. The following is by no means exhaustive, but provides perspective on how the individual tools fit within different public engagement efforts.

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TOOLS A variety of tools were mentioned over the course of this research. They ranged from the free-to-use and well known to emerging niche products aimed at specific uses. Textizen, for example, aims to foster increased community engagement through the use of text messaging. Its application in the now defunct Austin, Texas area initiative SNAPPatx (not included in this study) was specific to planning and relied on mobile technology. MindMixer, a more contemporary platform developed by a startup in Kansas City, Missouri, was referenced numerous times across interviews with planners. Not all cities interviewed for this study referenced or had used the software, but those that did indicated it was wrapped into a larger community engagement approach. One planner interviewed indicated his municipality, the City of Boulder, relied on MindMixer as a primary avenue for online public comment. It was wrapped into a larger “Interact Boulder” approach, encompassing a website designed for citizen interaction. Boulder had used MindMixer since 2012. “[It’s] just really a way for people to share their ideas—whether it’s voting on particular ideas that the city is putting forth, or policies, they can answer questions, write-in comments, they can submit their own ideas, and then have their neighborhood vote up or down on different things,” he said. “We have some key planning staff kind of listening in on the conversation, and we’ve had a lot of success with that two-way conversation from a really wide variety of demographics. The City of Cincinnati’s planning department, however, found MindMixer brought mixed prospects. “With MindMixer, we couldn’t hack it,” she said. “It didn’t work for us.” The respondent indicated they had used MindMixer as part of a zoning code rewrite process, but that the nature of the program, she felt, behooved engaging residents on “big topics, big ideas” rather than the technical process of zoning administration. She indicated it might have been more successful had staff used MindMixer as part of their comprehensive plan update process, and in doing so acknowledged the potential for certain tools to ill fit some applications. A consultant hired to help with the process presented an additional mitigating factor in the successful use of MindMixer within the city’s planning efforts. “[I] don’t think we used it for

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something really useful… We also had a consultant that was supposed to stay on top of MindMixer, and I’m not sure that they did as well as they could. It’s probably something we should have taken on ourselves,” she said. The City of Seattle has employed MindMixer as well, within a few projects according to the interviewee, but it “never fit” what staff was trying to accomplish.

The respondent from Boulder noted that the city had had less success with tools set up by staff on an experimental basis over the years, including Pinterest and Tumblr accounts. Less commonly used social networks, like Google, Inc.’s Google Plus, garnered a surprising amount of

interaction, he said. Boulder is also unique in that the city employs a video production team and regularly broadcasts information in a video format. Broadcasts are uploaded to various social media pages, according to the respondent, including the video platform Vimeo, which is known as a powerful competitor to Google’s YouTube service. The City of Boulder hosts official channels through both services. In the case of Philadelphia, which participated in a pilot project for Community PlanIt and MindMixer, responding to resource limitations they initiated a new approach using ESRI’s StoryMaps software, a free-to-use GIS platform leveraged for visual communication purposes. “[O]ur GIS Division set up the StoryMap website and between Esri and Wufoo [an online form building company, with both free and paid options, based in Palo Alto, California), we are setting up different interactive questions that we can garner participation from people who don’t traditionally come to public meetings.” This shift from one tool to another within Philadelphia suggested the planning department iterated due to changing circumstances, picking new tools to help create similar functionality where financial resources were no longer available. The planner from the City of Los Angeles, importantly, indicated the potential for an emerging fusion of urban planning concepts with the precepts of communications and marketing. The respondent indicated she spent time researching social media marketing tips in order to better convey her department’s message to social media followers. “Part of the planning education doesn’t really cover marketing, and public outreach, and that’s what, when looking back at my planning education I’ve felt that’s one of the major holes in what was covered,” she said.

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The amount of time required to maintain an active presence on social media channels was cited by the planner in Los Angeles as a barrier to becoming more active with Twitter users, in particular. In doing so, the respondent highlighted a significant limitation in how cities approach social media within the planning process. “[I] guess Facebook and Twitter haven’t been as successful. But that’s just because we don’t have the—It’s basically me trying to do everything, but I don’t always have the capacity to be on top of Facebook and Twitter. When you’re using Twitter as a communication tool, you really have to be on top of that. Twitter is something—to stay active in the Twitter world you need to be tweeting at least once a day, at the very least.” The planner from the City of Austin cited a similar concern with using Twitter for community engagement. “I find that Facebook is much more successful in that effort than Twitter,” she said. “That’s why I always say Twitter is anomaly for us. Because you get buried—you get buried in your Twitter feed, unless you’re tweeting every 30, 45 minutes to an hour—it doesn’t get seen.” The potential for using new tools represents an opportunity and a challenge for planners. In the latter sections of this document, more information from planner respondents about the issues confronted in building new approaches to communication will be explored, including takeaways from the issues encountered, the context of the situation and how they approach public engagement now.

Across interviews with planners, comments spoke to the strengths and weaknesses of tools used within public engagement. These comments were aggregated into a rough estimation of the potential social benefits of the tool, weighed against its cost. An undertsanding of how these tools fit into a larger social ecosystem may help planners decide between free-to-use software and software requiring a contract.

Austin, Texas' "Imagine Austin" MeetUp grouphelped support the planning process through theorganization of social capital building events.

MEETUP

SpeakUp, here used in the City of Scottsdale, Arizona providesopportunities for dialogue between government officials and thepublic. Here, a city staffer responds to questions about bringing theGoogle Fiber service to Scottsdale.

SPEAKUP

Within a recent Open Town Hall post, the City of Aspensolicited comments about a specific connectivity issue inthe Castle Creek/Hallam Street area.

OPEN TOWN HALL

The Kansas City, Missouri MindMixer page was branded as "KCMomentum," and included links to videos and other sources ofinformation. Users were given the option to login with a Facebookaccount, or create a MindMixer profile.

MINDMIXER

LIKES1500

TWO-WAYSTREET."

"It has to be a

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CONSIDERATIONS

RESOURCES Respondents indicated two important categories of resources: the first being staff knowledge, or level of familiarity with the tools and how to use them. Second were monetary resources, in the form of budget to spend on different tools and the capacity to assign significant staff hours to them. Both were significant hurdles in refining citizen engagement approaches to even experimenting with social media in the planning process. In Kansas City, staff has already made use of social media within the planning process. Recent staff turnover lead to diminished capacity in terms of knowledge resources. “We did have a staff person who was assigned to manage our Twitter feed, but that person is gone, and hasn’t been replaced,” the planner from Kansas City said. Similarly, staff experience and interest in community engagement may dictate their willingness to try new things in this arena. “I think there are some planners who really love public engagement, and some who don’t. I really love public engagement. I’m always going to those sessions and trying to learn the new thing,” said the planner from Aspen, Colorado. This respondent in particular, like many of those interviewed in this study, were directly responsible for posting content and managing different platforms. In Philadelphia, a recent planning initiative included a blogging component that, according to the respondent, helped generate interest in the initiative and provided a platform for more long-form communication about planning issues. Importantly, the “voice” of the blog did not belong to any one writer with the department, but rather represented the department as a whole. While the blog remains operational at PhiladelphiaPlaneto.com (a play on “Philadelphia Maneto”), at the time of interview it had not been updated in almost a year. “[U]nfortunately the one staffer who was really into it left, and we haven’t been able to find

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another staffer who has the same passion, and it’s not something you want to just assign to somebody, it has to be somebody who’s really interested in doing it,” she said. According to the respondent, a senior staffer with her division, they are looking to hire an additional staffer just to manage her department’s public relations. Diminished capacity may be a result of losing staff with experience in these tools. Additionally, planning departments may consider staff level of interest and willingness to participate within social media platforms. “[W]ith Facebook and twitter, one of the biggest things about it is you have to have somebody who’s assigned to it,” said the planner from Cincinnati. Interviews with planning professionals also revealed the importance of financial resources. One of the most common references was in direct contributions or allocations for public engagement in general and social media in particular. In Philadelphia, the respondent indicated that her city was the subject of a pilot project for two different tools. The first was Textizen, a community engagement platform developed through a Code for America project around text (SMS) messaging—leveraging the power of communication software across mobile phones as part of survey-based data collection campaigns. The second was Community PlanIt, a gaming platform created by the Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College in Boston. Both were provided free of charge to the municipality, and the interviewee indicated they were beneficial to the planning process. “We got considerable participation—we had over 500 people participate in that game that we put together for that plan,” she said. The interviewee indicated that, given sufficient resources, in future planning projects they would make a game similar to Community PlanIt as part of their community engagement approach. However, she said the cost of such an approach would exceed $10,000—well beyond budget restrictions for the planning department. Real costs of building, maintaining and utilizing platforms represent one significant barrier, as do operations costs in the form of staff hours. According to the same interviewee, as many as 100-120 staff hours were put into the Community PlanIt project within the setup phase alone. While the platform was provided free of charge due to the nature of the pilot project, its use remained costly in terms of staffing and professional resources. Textizen, as well, required significant staff hours—in the neighborhood of 25-30 hours, according to the interviewee. “If we had the money to do Community PlanIt again, we would probably scrimp and save to find the staff time to do it, but the staff size is definitely something that hinders us as well,” she said. Financial resources were problematic in other cities, according to respondents. Free-to-use platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were highlighted as important considerations in using social media within community engagement processes. The cost of staff time commitments remained a constant with these tools, as well. Creating robust engagement, even with these inherently social platforms, required significant time commitments—though the time commitment necessary to become actively engaged tends to vary, according to respondents. Twitter was perceived as requiring excessive amounts of time to remain “active” in the community, and to regularly “engage” with users. Facebook’s barriers to entry were perceived as smaller, and the platform easier to maintain for the use of a planning department, or within a particular planning initiative. This perception may stem from the wide scale use of Facebook for personal use, providing a level of familiarity and comfort with the platform and how it works.

PLANNERS:LEARN

BYDOING

Reach a younger demographic - Be more connected- Expand beyond public meetings - Embrace new

ways to communicate information - Engage abroader section of the public - Solicit greaterresponse from the citizenry - Collect data -

Collaborate 

Why be social?

No matter your reason, bringing planning into thedigital world requires thoughtful consideration.

WHERE TO START:

2. RESOURCES

1. STRUCTURE

3. TOOLS

4. APPROACH

Consider how department responsibilities and decision-making arecurrently organized. Can social media be wrapped into the internalprocess?

Determine what resources exist to support your effort. Experiment.Where can planning intervene that's free, or low cost?

Fit the right platform to the job at hand. Community engagementmay be difficult to manage via free tools. Does a more robust toolmake sense, given staff time and organizational capacity?

Reporting and measurement are important. How can planners makesocial media matter long term?

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Twitter, by contrast, is much less common and requires knowledge of the methods of interaction (“retweeting,” “hashtags,” etc.). One respondent referred to Facebook interactions with the public as less formal, more ad hoc, and more genial. Twitter, on the other hand, according to the same respondent, was more focused and often more hostile. Within Twitter, the public tended to talk about or “mention” the particular planning initiative—but not submit comments directly to the planners. Mentions on Twitter refer to including the “handle” (name) of an individual’s account within a message. In this individual’s experience, Twitter was commonly used as a platform for individuals associated with planning issues, and specifically invested in discussing issues relevant to her municipality’s initiative. By comparison Facebook tended to generate more on-subject responses, with specific questions and comments, according to the respondent.

STRUCTURE Use of online tools, in particular social media, remains a new consideration in urban planning at the city government level. A few years ago, the Kansas City planning department had a much less developed approached to using social media as part of their approach. “We had no idea of how to use a Facebook page—we knew Facebook was there and a lot of people were on it, and we threw a Facebook page up there for our [plan].” According to the respondent, in those early days there was little activity on the project page. Planners had not yet solicited a level of sustained engagement from those interested in the project. “[I]t was just sitting out there with no real mining going on,” he said. Kansas City’s structure for incorporating social media has evolved significantly since then. Los Angeles’ planning department today highlights a much more expansive use of social media within existing processes:

“[Social media has] been one of the main communication lines when we have a big event coming up, or when we’re releasing a new document, or a new draft of something. We’ve used it for every major milestone of our project, from when we released our first draft, from when we needed to ask for additional comments of the public, and had open public comment periods. But we’ve also used it for kind of idea, crowdsourcing—that was mainly in the beginning phases, “What do you think of this?” or “What do you think a street should be used for?” Open-ended questions like that. And we’ve used our blog site as really more of, kind of an informational look into the reasoning behind our projects, and the transportation policy we’re setting forth, and what are the best current practices out there? The blog has been really kind of an informational line for the public to get insight into what this project is about.” —Respondent from Los Angeles

Just as various governments approach the structure of their planning departments differently, the agencies represented in this study approached the structure of communication with the public, through social media in particular, in different ways. In the case of Boulder, a

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communications staffer was employed directly within the planning department. “Individual communications specialists are assigned to specific departments so we develop close relationships with the context experts and planners,” he said. While not a planner, it was this staffer’s job to work closely with planners throughout the planning process, and to craft messaging via social media and engagement approaches to fit the needs of the project. In Seattle the author interviewed both a communications staffer and a planner. At this municipality, the communications team worked with planners to craft their messaging for individual projects. As a project manager, the planning staffer indicated that the use of two social media pages for a recent plan update was used primarily in an informational role. Both platforms were used to promote events—and in order to craft those messages for disseminating to the public, planners are required to work with the separate communications department. “I think because the planners aren’t doing it [social media] directly, we’re less inclined to use it as an ongoing kind of community dialogue tool. Because it’s not something we’re doing personally, it’s not like we’re—we could pick up the phone, or we could send out an email—but doing social media, there’s another step involved,” she said.

Within planning in Kansas City, the planner interviewed felt strongly tools like Facebook and Twitter served primarily as a tool to inform the public. “It’s an informational thing—we have a number of Twitter followers who just follow our Department in general, and so we’ll shoot out a Tweet about a meeting

we’re having, or something like that. So it’s much more about just what’s going on. The Facebook page, it has been a little more static, and honestly not all that productive. It’s just hard to get people—and maybe it’s a marketing issue on our end—but we’ve typically just used it for meeting announcements and project info,” he said. In the Midwest, use of social media at the City of Minneapolis was wrapped into government quite differently. “[W]e have a communications department that’s kind of an umbrella department for the whole city. They maintain a Facebook page for the city, and a Twitter account for the city. But departments are also authorized to create their own social media accounts with the permission—they have to have the permission of the communication department,” the respondent said. All messages from planning staff were vetted through this separate communications department and communications staff prior to posting, and were distributed through a channel branded as “City of Minneapolis”, not a specific channel dedicated to planning issues. While the city’s planning department had an individual Twitter account dedicated to specific planning initiatives, staffers had not set up a Facebook page. In this setup, planners were insulated from using platforms for informational purposes, and the use of these tools for community engagement were, according to the respondent, very limited or nonexistent. According to the respondent, some of this may stem from evolutionary decisions—when Minneapolis’ communications team began creating social media accounts for the

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municipal government, they actively discouraged the creation of project pages, in a page for a comprehensive plan update, or a specific area plan. This may change in the near future—according to the planner the department is considering how to incorporate social media more thoroughly into an upcoming comprehensive plan update. Currently, however, comments received via social media aren’t easily incorporated into the process. “If [a comment] came in unsolicited right now, I honestly don’t know what we would do with it,” he said. In other communities, the capacity for social media use in planning appears to have developed more organically. A communications staffer at the City of Boulder indicated that the community demanded a certain level of involvement in planning, and that social media had

become one of the outlets for that to take place. “As a whole, Boulder is a very tech-savvy, and digitally connected community. Social media provide us with another means of connecting with more people than we would be able to reach using traditional communications tactics and community engagement and outreach alone,” he said. In some municipalities, it may not be planning staff that takes the lead in retooling citizen engagement, but the public themselves.

In two city governments in the Western United States, Los Angeles and San Diego, staff was tasked with creating content, disseminating messages and soliciting public feedback online. Respondents in Austin, Los Angeles and San Diego indicated they were given a great deal of latitude in designing the process, crafting the messaging and reporting the results. This was in contrast to Seattle, Boulder and Aspen, each of which had a more structured, bureaucratic protocol for disseminating messages via social media. These three cities (Seattle, Boulder and Aspen) range in size, from approximately 7,000 people to approximately 600,000. Concentrating social media management and planning within one position suggested a lack of sophistication with the approach, as indicated by conversations with respondents. Individuals working for municipalities with very structured community engagement approaches, with specific online participation and commentary protocols, indicated a greater degree of comfort with utilizing tools like Facebook and Twitter. Those respondents suggested that social media can indeed fulfill some of the lofty goals of greater participation and inclusion. In Aspen, the planner interviewed indicated that the city had been using social media since 2011. However, after the completion of a specific planning initiative around that time, the city went through a change regarding its approach to tools like Facebook and Twitter. According to the respondent, the plan included its own project website, its own blog and a social media platform. At the time, many different departments within Aspen used the same approach—creating new channels for individual projects, building followers and disseminating information. “The city said we need to have one repository for this thing,” according to

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the planner from Aspen. “I think it was just there was so much out there, people when they were engaging with one of them, they were confused about what they were engaging with.” The result was a consolidation lead in part by the city’s communications staff, part of “quality control,” in her words, for maintaining a government social media presence.   Process may be a critical component of successful public engagement via social media. After creating an account, building a following and contributing to the conversation, planners have to be prepared to show results from those dialogues. Managers of different communication tools need to show understanding and responsiveness to citizen concerns, according to the respondent from Cincinnati. “You pose these questions, and try to have people respond to you… You have to be ready to follow up on it. When you put it out there, we have to be ready to do it,” said the planner from Cincinnati. At the same time, comments may not relate to specific planning responsibilities. The respondent used citizen complaints about, for example, lamppost design and potholes, as an example. While not the particular purview of the planning department, comments about these and other issues may end up on planning accounts and pages. Developing a process for routing these comments to the appropriate department, and relating that information to the original commenter may help mitigate issues related to off-topic conversations. Planners in Philadelphia opted to formalize their approach to social media through the use of a social media task force, where, according to the respondent, representatives from each department came together to discuss issues experienced in each, and events taking place in the near future. “The city government as a whole is starting to figure out how to take advantage of social media,” she said. In Kansas City, comments received from the public in any forum during a planning process—online or face-to-face—were included in summaries submitted to a steering committee. “We’ll put these comments directly in the plan to show the connection. So we really do try to reinforce the idea that the input we’re receiving has been considered and is being integrated where it’s appropriate,” said the respondent. The approach to collecting and reviewing public commentary varied from city to city—with important considerations for planners and project managers, particularly as they relate to legally required public comment periods. In San Diego, for example, official public comment periods for planning projects take place at key milestones in the process. According to the respondent, comments received about that particular issue via social media would not be factored into the process. “[W]e don’t accept comments via social media during those periods—so it doesn’t play into that. So if we have a document or a project that’s in a public comment period, we may receive comments, but they aren’t logged as official comments,” she said.

Financial resources

Staff time

Staff knowledge base

Technical skill

barrier to implementing new

approaches to communication

and community engagement.

Hiring planning staff with

these skills may be beneficial.

However, planners may not

come equipped with these

skills fresh from University.

Capacity building may be

important.

According to the planners

interviewed, structure helped

social media managers build

and maintain a digital presence

in the community--a crucial

step when asking members of

the community for feedback.

Creating a posting schedule,

and assigning responsibility

were cited as important.

set of opportunities and

limitations. Platforms like

MindMixer and Speakup have

an associated cost, but free-to-

use tools like Facebook and

Twitter were also referenced

often. Consider resources, staff

capacity and community needs

when determining which tool

makes the most sense.

Applications and associated

outcomes vary. Trying a mix

of engagement approaches

may be a valuable first step.

Asking the community about

their preferences for

interacting with government,

digitally or otherwise, will

help inform how these new

tools are used.

Staff knowledge

base in particular

was cited as a major

Developing a

process for social

media is important.

Each tool mentioned

in this study

provided a different

How does your

department intend

to use social media?

Refine process

Schedule engagement

Build audience

Catalogue comments

Social vs. informational

Goal setting

Measuring success

Maintaining a presence

Level of engagement

Starting dialogue

Soliciting feedback

Posing questions

CONSIDERATIONS

START WITH...

RESOURCES STRUCTURE TOOLS

Across 11 interviews with city planning departments, these issues stood out asvaluable to consider when implementing new communication approaches.

APPROACH

INFORM ENGAGE OTHER?

possible scenarios by which planners may introducesocial media into community engagement.

[YOURAPPROACH

HERE]

Building on insights from practicing planners, the above graphic presents twoPATHWAYSTO IMPLEMENTATION

1 Determine goal(s) Determine wheredialogue takes place

Analyze what's said withinthe planning context

Determine approach

Measure outcome, evaluate

Determine how/if toengage directly in dialogue

Choose tool/platform

Structure approach

Collect information throughprocess

Measure outcome, evaluate

- Establish timeline- Plan milestones- Establish measurement

- Build rapport with groups- Develop new ways to reach thedepartment

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

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In Seattle, at the time of interview, a forthcoming phase of a major plan update called “Seattle 2035” included a public comment period per federal regulations. As staff approached that comment period, part of a complex environmental analysis process, planners were tasked with determining the best way to approach comments received by social media within the window for public commentary. According to the planner from Seattle, the federal guidelines in no way spelled out social media specifically as a vehicle for public comment. “[I]t’s our intention to sort of gather all of the comments that are received during that comment period and then it’s up to us to sort them out. Which ones are...legal comments, and then there’s probably going to be a basket of other comments that, ‘Gee these aren’t really a part of [the process], this mandated environmental process, but these are great comments and we’re going to take those into account as we move toward the next stage of the planning process.’ So we’re just going to be open to accepting comments, and then we’ll have to sort them into buckets after we get them,” she said. Additionally, she indicated it would be important to provide a variety of different structured methods of response to the plan during the comment period, as the sophistication and familiarity of citizens will vary. Some members of the public have no problem with submitting a formal letter with specific comments, edits and suggestions, while others feel more comfortable responding to survey questions.

APPROACH According to respondents, use of social media within the planning process was a relatively new phenomenon. Motivations for creating these accounts represented an effort to reach a broader section of the population with the planning process. In Seattle, the decision the wrap social media into a comprehensive plan update process, dubbed “Seattle 2035,” was a relatively recent development. “[It’s] not something that we do for every project,” said a planner interviewed during the research. “At the beginning of the process we had a consultant work with us to think about a public engagement strategy, and that was something that they strongly recommended.” Within Cincinnati, new social media profiles were created in 2009 as part of the planning department’s first comprehensive plan update in 32 years. Surprisingly, the planning department represents a thought leader of sorts within the larger City of Cincinnati

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government. “[W]e had a social media for [the comprehensive plan update] before anyone else in the city,” said the respondent. “I think we were first in the city to have a presence on social media. This is this hot new technology, and because our business is engaging the public, we’ll sort of try anything. That’s sort of what planners do—that’s kind of the planner’s role in a city.” Social media was integrated into the city’s planning process, alongside traditional public meetings and smaller focus groups. According to the interviewee, some members of the public didn’t feel as comfortable participating in large group meetings, or in topic-specific focus groups. Use of Facebook and Twitter was an attempt to acknowledge this. “That’s kind of what we had in mind, to meet people where we saw them most engaged in the process,” she said. “That’s where social media fit in.” Boulder has also maintained social media accounts starting in 2009. “[T]his is really just a means of helping give our...community members more convenient access to their local government, providing information, resources and web-based services,” said the interviewee from the City of Boulder. Respondents commonly referred to social media as part of a larger community engagement approach—an important finding for planners examining their own organizations and how new tools may fit into the process. In the City of Aspen, a suite of techniques is employed before any effort. “Any time we do engagement on a major policy issue, we do some kind of traditional open house, we do an online survey, and we do open city hall. And then we pull all of the comments we’ve gotten together into a summary,” said the City of Aspen planner. In Kansas City, the planner indicated a more data-driven approach to taking the temperature of the community’s thoughts on a given project.

“At the beginning of every process we do a community survey, and that’s a mail and phone survey. We know going into the process what the majority of the community, what their opinion is about certain ideas. And so we kind of use that as a base. And so if somebody comes in with a comment that’s way, way different than that, you know, we’re able to show that that’s not really in line with the community’s—at least based on what we heard in the survey—that that’s not really in line with the community’s vision for this area. We aren’t drifting

about—we are kind of anchored somewhat in that survey that we do initially,” he said. Most respondents indicated social media served primarily an informational role. Across the numerous municipalities included in this study, Facebook and Twitter were always used to share information with the public, in some capacity. Posts ranged from articles published by local or

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regional sources, information about public meetings, updates about the status of plan updates and planning initiatives, and status updates about the progress of plan adoption. Other respondents indicated a desire to reach specific demographics. Respondents from Philadelphia and Cincinnati mentioned an interest in involving a younger demographic of citizens, specifically a millennial generation described as “not really much for going out to meetings.” As a planner from Los Angeles summarized, social media provides an opportunity to solicit input from a variety of different demographics, without some of the constraints of in-face public meetings. “I think it’s great that this is a new tool for us, as planners, that never existed before. Before, we would have traditional in-person meetings, but we wouldn’t actually get a variety of people coming to those meetings…[H]aving an online presence connects you to thousands of more people. People can access whatever they want at any time,” she said. While planners often highlighted the power of social media and online tools to deliver information to the public, some in particular highlighted the opportunity for two-way communication. While the planner from Philadelphia described social media as a way to “reach” members of the population, the respondent in San Diego used a different vernacular to describe the opportunity. “I think the social media gives people, the public, another way to contact us and to receive information from us. So I think that’s another role, too. I mean they can call us up, or email—some people still come in to see us. I think it just plays another, it’s another way for us to communicate back and forth, with the public,” she said. While social media may provide this opportunity, currently its applications in San Diego (within SANDAG) are as “more of a public information tool, right now.” In Austin, the role of social media expanded beyond a tool for providing information to, or soliciting feedback from the public. The respondent from the City of Austin detailed her use of the social organizing platform MeetUp, which played a major role in a citywide initiative known as “Imagine Austin,” encompassing land use and transportation planning, as well as public health and other government programs. The city worked to organize this MeetUp group to discuss topics related to the initiative. According to the interviewee the group was successful at involving individuals typically outside the planning process. This represents an area where government may move beyond using online social platforms merely to disseminate information, but to sourcing ideas from the public, building planning capacity and creating avenues for robust participation. The interviewee indicated that the MeetUp approach had helped to engage new members in the planning process around public gatherings. “I feel that our MeetUp group is very successful in that it’s gotten a group of individuals together who may not have ever gotten together before, in a room, to talk about some of the issues that relate to

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[the larger planning initiative]…” she said. In April, the author found opportunities for residents to participate in a hike with fellow residents, organized by the planner interviewed. Another group conversation concerned taking action to combat climate change, and included numerous respondents. Austin’s MeetUp group stood out from other initiatives detailed in this process. Unlike other social media platforms, the group’s purpose appears to have evolved beyond merely serving as a vehicle to provide information to the public, or to soliciting their feedback on specific planning initiatives. Instead, the group helped loosely connect individuals who normally would not have met, with the option to discuss planning issues more broadly. “[A]s we roll along—that group’s been going on for about a year now—we get more and more and more people, new people to Austin who don’t know anything, who never knew anything about [the planning initiative], who find it through the MeetUp platform, or who find it from our Facebook page, or who find it from our newsletter, or from our website,” she said. The experience in Austin suggests planner may be able to make an impact beyond disseminating information to the public, or soliciting comments for inclusion in the process. Importantly, comments received via social media were catalogued in a variety of different ways, according to respondents. In Philadelphia, the department maintains a protocol for including comments in the process. “For all of the outreach that we do, whether it’s a public meeting, or its a platform like Community PlanIt, or just ESRI, after we close the period for comments we always write a summary for the comments that we receive. We use the results that are put into that summary, folded into all the other comments that we’ve gotten from public meetings and such, and that folds into recommendations that we put out there. So it’s been very helpful and it’s been rather easy for us to incorporate the comments that we receive,” said the planner. As the respondent noted, creating a record for those comments is important for accountability. “And so by creating these summaries, and posting these summaries, it’s our way of being able to say to the public, ‘Hey, you did this work for us, we heard you, and this is what we heard’” she said. In the City of Boulder, staff had moved beyond experimenting with social tools to formulating extensive communications plans with social media weaved into the process. Key milestones in the communication plan included soliciting feedback via social media, and using Twitter and Facebook channels to direct the public to comment via MindMixer. Those comments are then, according to the respondent, factored into the planning process—included in documents detailing the plan’s public outreach component, and ultimately delivered to decision-makers in elected office. “MindMixer has a pretty robust reporting program,” he said. “Those comments are aggregated and then shared with planning staff and project managers.” This may represent a possible future for planners looking to engage in social media as part of traditional planning approaches. Selling the value of this approach to elected officials may help build support for its use. Put another way, the digital nature of these outlets presents opportunities for analysis and data collection, providing a layer of accountability for public outreach investments.

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“Before even getting community feedback on any of the options being considered for the plan, we’re first just getting their perspectives on whether the communications and community engagement plan meets their needs and will do a good job of reaching them where they are at.”

Opportunities Motivations for incorporating social media into the planning process varied among the cities included in this research. “In my experience, [social media] has really provided a broader range of opinions that [the City Council] can consider in their process. It makes the process feel more inclusive, and more democratic,” according to the interviewee from Aspen. One of the respondents from Seattle suggested a similar added benefit in attracting additional members of the public to meetings, in particular:

“I think the social media’s effective in bringing some new audiences to some of our events, where they can learn about the comprehensive plan. I think it’s also been successful when we’ve partnered on events with other organizations who kind of have a much broader reach in social media. It’s been successful when we’ve tapped into the Mayor’s social media…[W]hen our social media is being more social, we’re more successful. If we’re just kind of talking, like putting just kind of random information out there, it doesn’t really go very far.” —Respondent from Seattle

While opportunities and applications may vary from place to place, there are important challenges to consider no matter how these communication platforms are wrapped into the planning process.

Challenges The experience of using social media as a form of two-way communication and within community engagement met with mixed results. According to the respondent, efforts in the City of Cincinnati to solicit public commentary and input through a variety of different platforms was unsuccessful for their goals. “I don’t think it’s about engagement,” she said. “I don’t know that it works for engagement, truly. When we’re working at citizen engagement—there’s no magic bullet when it comes to engagement. You’ve got to be doing a whole bunch of stuff, and it’s got to be at different levels.” With a staff of 10, the department has to make decisions about how to maximize their community engagement budget, according to the respondent. Within community engagement, some groups work best in small meetings, but limited staffing means the number of meetings hosted by the Cincinnati planning department remain finite. Initially, social media had appeared to be a strong opportunity, but in Cincinnati the experience has not been one of robust back and forth dialogue, according to the interviewee. “When it comes down to it, people do engage better face-to-face. There’s no replacement for face-to-face engagement.”

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Respondents in other cities echoed this sentiment. The respondent from Los Angeles stated emphatically that social media could not replace the “one-on-one, in person” approach. Using slightly different language, the planner from Aspen indicated traditional outreach methods could not be replaced. Respondents recognized that in their current form web-based approaches, in particular social media could not provide all the important public feedback and input necessary to the planning process. Beyond the limitations of the tools themselves, some of those interviewed indicated the potential for off-topic or off-color comments to undermine the possible benefits of social media use. In the City of Seattle, a communications staffer interviewed indicated that comments may be beyond the scope of the planning process.

“A lot of times we’ll get some that are just kind of basic complaints about parking, or rents going too high—not very many that are specific that we can use as we’re working on the plan. And I don’t know if it’s just because the amount of space people have on Twitter doesn’t give them as much, as like on our blog. We’ll get a lot more detailed comments on our blog, on a certain topic than we do on Twitter or Facebook. They may have more space to kind of talk about it.” —Respondent from Seattle

Within the City of Austin, the interviewee indicated that she had to some degree stepped away from Twitter in particular. Direct engagement, she said, was largely absent on Twitter. Instead, two groups, “detractors” and “supporters” tended to mention the City of Austin without directly interacting with its posts. The respondent went on to describe lengthy conversations between detractors and supporters, but indicated that she generally tends not to get involved. “[I] generally kind of take a back seat and let it just play out. Because it’s not something we put out there, it’s something that they start, that they initiate the conversation about. So I just sort of observe, and watch it unfold,” she said. Asked further about the individuals involved in these conversations, the respondent indicated it was a group of “highly engaged” individuals sparking dialogue on their own forms of communication (blogs) and through social media channels.

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Another important consideration is the pace of government, and how that impacts planners’ ability to consistently engage with the public. Traditional planning efforts are organized into phases, with public engagement as a significant phase, or key components within phases. Maintaining a presence on social media, however, is a consistent job—requiring regular updates, and a need for regular content, according to interviewees. According to the communications person from the City of Seattle, during those periods staff shared more perennial types of content, like articles from sources relevant to urban planning and/or urban issues. “Where things really slow down... What we have to share are the outside [news] articles that are just, other sorts of vague information. During those periods, it’s hard to sort of use social media when we don’t have much to offer people. It’s hard to keep people engaged,” he said. More dire consequences may arise from the use of social media, as well. The respondent from the City of Minneapolis pointed out there may be legal issues associated with experimenting in this arena. “There are legal issues—I’m sure you’ve encountered this in your research, but what constitutes the public record? Especially in matters of an actual decision that’s coming before City Council. Is something that somebody says in reply to something I say on Twitter, is that something that needs to be included in the public record and brought forward to the City Council when they’re making a decision? Those are important questions that kind of need to be figured out,” he said.

LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE Planners are already using social media as part of the planning process. The power to disseminate information remains a key allure of tools like Facebook and Twitter, both of which provide a significant audience and easy-to-measure engagement. Both platforms represent the low-hanging fruit in web-based planning communication. Agencies often have some presence on both or either platform, and it was not uncommon for specific initiatives or projects to have their own pages or accounts. In some municipalities, management responsibilities were concentrated in the hands of experienced professionals—in others communication took place more informally, subject to the discretion of an individual planner or communications person. Considering the right approach for your municipality or organization should be one of the first steps toward establishing a meaningful presence on social media, and certainly well before leveraging these tools to engage the public or impact the planning conversation. Yet social media is still a relatively new frontier. Much like the industry that created it, time will tell how impactful web-based communication will eventually become, and the roles it will take in shaping our lives. In 2004, when Facebook was first founded, Twitter was just an idea and would not be launched for another two years. Within a decade, the number of users on both sites has grown exponentially, as has the role these tools play in the national identity and zeitgeist.

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Conversations about social media within the planning process should include, in some way, dialogue about the following:

1. Does social media fit within existing community engagement approach? 2. Determine which tools make the most sense for municipality, considering time,

resources, level of sophistication and structure 3. Plan a strategy for tools, making decisions about how to use social media within an

informational role or as more of a participatory venue. 4. Develop milestones to reach within strategy. 5. Determine how comments and other information will be collected, catalogued and

wrapped into the process. 6. Determine how to measure success—is it level of engagement, number of comments,

or quality of participation?

BACKGROUND This research project began in January during the Spring 2015 semester at Boise State University. Institutional Review Board materials were approved and data collection began in late March, lead by principal investigator Dr. Amanda Ashley, faculty liaison for the project, and co-principal investigator Andrew Crisp, a Community and Regional Planning graduate student and designer of the study. A semi-structured interview approach was employed in an effort to collect common responses across respondents, and to provide flexibility in gathering further information about each municipality’s social media approach. With most respondents, follow-up questions were necessary to suss out details about their projects, and the structure of each approach. Additionally, clarifying questions helped respondents better engage with and respond to the questions and provide more rich data for the study.

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A full list of the baseline questions asked in each interview is available below:

Interview Questions — Semi-Structured § Which online social media tools/platforms does the City use? § How has the City used social media? - In what ways have you used them? § What has been your experience with social media as a planner for the City? § Which efforts have been successful? Which have been less successful? § As a planner, when using social media, what roles would you say you play? § What role do you see social media playing in the work you do? § What role does comment from individuals received via social media play in the

planning process? § Are social media comments factored into planning documents/processes? § Are comments from social media reported and catalogued in any way? § Does the city planning department have a specific protocol or structure for social

media use? § How are messages/posts scheduled?

Each interview was approximately 20 to 30 minutes long, depending on the depth and breadth of the respondent’s answers. Interviews were conducted by phone, with the use of a digital recorder, with planners in 12 different locations. A preliminary interview was conducted with a former planning graduate student at an influential Ivy League University for the purpose of refining the questions used in this methodology. This individual helped launch a blog-based planning communication platform, and had conducted research at the intersection of online communication tools, planning, and public engagement. Her responses were used to help the author further clarify his approach, and as such have not been included in this report. The other 11 interviews took place with planners at the local government level. In the case of two different cities, the author spoke with two different staffers to provide further context to the project under consideration. One interview with two different participants was conducted with a planner and a former mayoral staffer turned communications professional working in Lafayette. In Seattle a staffer and communications person conducted a conference call with the author. In the 9 other examples, the author interviewed a single planner speaking for their municipality’s planning department. Anonymity for interview participants was preserved in accordance with Boise State University IRB requirements. Comments from respondents were kept anonymous throughout the results of this study to protect them from possible retribution, and in the interest of their individual privacy.

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CREDITS Tools used to create this report in part provided by Canva.com, the free-to-use online software engineered to make design accessible. Additional support for this product was made available courtesy the talented photographers on Flickr. The photos featured in this report were made available with a Creative Commons license, allowing the author to share, remix and reprint photos from photographers. Photo credits include (by order of inclusion):

• “Texting…” by Giuseppe Milo. https://www.flickr.com/photos/giuseppemilo/13908545259/

• “Give Me a Ring” by Kat N.L.M. https://www.flickr.com/photos/orangegreenblue/10284643356/

• “Untitled” by Nicolas DECOOPMAN. https://www.flickr.com/photos/koopsdk/15998186595/

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dr. Amanda Ashley was an indispensable resource through the extent of this project. The author credits Boise State University’s Community and Regional Planning program for the skills and support necessary to refine and reformat this document to fit the needs of practicing planners. Special thanks to Dr. Jacobus “Jaap” Vos, as well as my peer CRP students, and to all the individuals who graciously volunteered their time to participate in this study. Cody Butler, a gifted student and friend, provided ample guidance and countless hours of his time through the planning and execution of the research approach, and through formatting of this report. Without his help, this would not have been possible.