Future Land UseFeedback

An attractive project vision of the future land use that is communicated to the community and other stakeholders and one which will ultimately lead to a successful reuse of the site in terms of environmental, economic, and social benefits is key to obtaining support from all stakeholders. The development of the project vision is critical to the success of the revitalization project.

Early community interactions, with a particular focus on the community’s desired future, can solicit important components of the project vision as well as key elements of the project goals. One useful technique for enhancing community involvement is to conduct a reuse visioning session. The visioning session is essentially a stakeholder meeting to discuss alternatives for selection of the end use. Through this creative process, community members are empowered and inspired to move forward in partnership with other project stakeholders. Other activities to consider when developing a vision for future land use include:

The Vision-to-Action tool is a process designed to inspire community members to: (1) visualize what they value about the place they live and/or visualize how they would like their community to change and (2) translate their visualizations into the actions needed to bring their visions into reality. The process utilizes an artist to facilitate the visualization and to help people get in touch with features that make communities unique and livable.

Vision-to-action has been described as “an interactive process between an individual and an artist that centers around encouraging the individual to think visually about all ways – social, economic and environmental – their community might be enhanced, and describing that vision in a way that enables the artist to draw it - in real time – as the person is describing it. The visualization becomes a catalyst to our commitment to take action to fulfill our visions; one builds upon the other.”

A “vision-to-action” template is used to coach community members, of all ages, in actualizing their ideas which is key to successful community revitalization. In this example the three right-hand panes have been intentionally left blank, representing the need for community members to create their own visual representations.

When all the drawings are done, the final step of the process involves positioning the drawings on a wall board and physically connecting them, using different color construction string, to illustrate street-level, community, regional and sometimes even global relationships. This aspect of the process shows relationships between all of the individual community visions, and hopefully leads to dialogues that encourage consensus. This will be helpful in formulating the final project and can be considered part of the community assessment. Some aspects of the project may not be obvious from model or artist sketches such as traffic pattens, noise, smell, or potential benefits such as atmosphere, outgrowth of business, or recreational areas and those should be included in presentations or some visual/audio fashion.

Example Vision to Action drawings:

Little Rock, Arkansas

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Sisseton-Waphiton Oyate Tribe

The Technical Assistance to Brownfields Communities (TAB) program was established as part of EPA's Brownfields Initiative to provide resources to help communities understand the process for cleaning up properties that have been damaged or undervalued by environmental contamination. The five regional TAB programs provides assistance to community groups, municipalities, developers and industries in the states located all 10 EPA Regions. TAB coordinators are able is assist communities with visioning sessions.

The following resources may be helpful for community 'visioning':

In developing the vision, project goals will be realized that are essential in planning for revitalization. This process can be iterative in many cases goals may be unattainable due to financial or legal constraints, access, and limited reuse options. Developing the project goals is another important aspect of planning for the revitalization of potentially contaminated sites. Knowing the site history coupled with a realistic vision is essential. Project vision is not a definitive planning document and should be flexible. The goals of the project answer the question: “Why is this project important?” and can assist the developer in addressing concerns and obtaining support for the project from political, financial, regulatory, and social stakeholders. The goals of the project should address the site-specific issues of concern based on information discovered during the visioning process described above. For example, in the case of the “Union Station model project” in Portland, Oregon, a political and social priority in the city was to provide additional low-income housing. The vision and goals of this project incorporated this priority and garnered political and social support to help propel the project forward. Based on the established vision and goals, the stakeholders can then develop the steps to achieving the intended reuse. The basic steps of a development model include the following:

For more information about how to introduce students (K-12) to the need for redevelopment of contaminated sites within their community, visit the Our Town Project hosted by Purdue University.