Buy-In from the Beginning: Planning as Politics

This webinar recognizes that when it’s not business as usual, planning is politics. When livability and sustainability are being implemented via Smart Growth approaches, it means changes in the daily business of cities, towns, and counties. Which requires a change in politics. Getting buy-in from the beginning allows for a higher quality, more effective product.

Learning Objectives: 1: Explain how to get effective at telling the livability story. 2: Describe early methods for building community support. 3: Assess the methods to keep the fire alive via web-based and community-based channels, and case studies of other places who are getting it right. 4: Participants will begin to understand how to employ traditional facilitated meetings, story-telling, and web-based new media to achieve transparent and collaborative community planning.

Nathan Norris’s expertise is in land development: management, design generation, project build-out, phasing & marketing strategy. A licensed attorney and real estate broker, he’s been instrumental in developing the Appraisal System for rating the merits of smart growth development. Nathan works with city officials to help develop strategies that address how to encourage smart growth, as well as the integration of neighborhood schools within the urban fabric. He serves as a board member on the Transect Codes Council, is a Principal of PlaceMakers, and Director of Implementation Advisory.