Public participation is increasingly becoming an expectation and is often mandated in government policy and planning processes around the world. However, eliciting public participation in large-scale community visioning is fraught with challenges as public officials navigate the abstract nature of visioning, the abundance of public participation approaches, and the emerging Web 2.0 services and technologies.
In response, this article outlines an approach used by a local government authority in Australia for its community visioning initiative entitled Living Kingston 2035. The use of extensive communication and promotion channels, coupled with traditional and online participation approaches, has delivered broad public participation. It has also resulted in an endorsed long-term vision, a suite of publicly accessible research reports, and a community knowledge database to guide future plans and decisions for the municipality.
Download: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23276665.2015.1018370?needAccess=true
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