Minority engagement in planning processes

Abstract

This report focuses on the understanding of community engagement and which mechanisms help enhance it more profoundly for the minority population. Despite the efforts of the community and regional planners, there continues to be a lack of representation from marginalized groups such as minorities and immigrants in planning processes. The question remains, what are the different mechanisms different cities have applied to increase the participation of minority communities? We also need to ask, how much involvement and engagement do minorities have in the planning process, and is there any inequality in their participation? This study explores these questions through literature reviews and case studies. The literature review explores the meaning of community engagement and different mechanisms that fall under the broad umbrella of community engagement. Five cities are selected as case studies to evaluate their planning processes, specifically comprehensive planning, and what community engagement tools they have applied. The case studies showed that the community engagements are performed through stakeholder meetings, forums, community surveys, and different community events and festivals. It was identified that for all cities, survey response from minority populations was significantly lower compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Cities with higher participation rates provided more engagement opportunities than those that only focus on a few methods. Communities that performed a higher number of meetings and engagement encounters also received more feedback on their planning documents. From this study, I recommend that cities should increase their number of methods for community engagement. For cities to increase their overall civic participation, including those underrepresented, their community engagement should have multiple open public events at different locations and times.