Friday, July 31, 2015

Works In Progress....

There are no press releases or other flashy announcements, but one of the things I'm managing at CTAA is a contract from the Federal Highway Administration that aims to show how transportation planners in rural communities and small cities can get the kind of stakeholder involvement that leads to good outcomes in transportation decision-making. We're doing this by carrying out capacity-building efforts with planners in six competitively selected communities.

We'll have some neat results to share with the public in early 2016. For now, though, I wanted to share the list of participating sites in this project:

Southern Georgia Regional Commission, Valdosta GA
Midland Area Transportation Study, Midland MI
St. Joseph Area Transportation Study Organization, St. Joseph MO
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Stateline NV/CA
San Angelo Metropolitan Planning Organization, San Angelo TX
Yakima Valley Conference of Governments, Yakima WA

Just Another Crazy Blogger?

When you've got some possibly crazy, radical ideas that you can't resist sharing, there's only one thing to do: fire up a blog. Right?

Well, I've got two avenues of exploration that are going to be appearing in these posts:

1. Communities succeed when they engage with their residents.
2. Communities can succeed even more when they set goals and aim to achieve these goals.

Those aren't necessarily radical concepts, but putting them into practice can be challenging stuff, especially for smaller communities. That's my aim in this blog: to see how folks in smaller cities and in rural areas are strengthening their communities through stakeholder engagement and through carrying out performance-driven processes. Since my foundation is in transportation, that's the lens through which most of this stuff will be viewed.

I'm not sure quite where this "travelogue" will take us, but it could be an interesting journey.

Oh, and there are some important footnotes: although I'm employed by the Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA), and most of the work I do is performed through grants and contracts with the Federal Highway Administration, the Dept of Agriculture, and other governmental agencies, nothing in this blog represents views or opinions of CTAA or the United States Government. The ideas are public; the opinions are mine.