Exploratory research: planners’ challenges and strategies
CMU Graduate Design Thesis 2018–2019
This post is part of an ongoing documentation series for my design thesis research on Maintaining Policy Intent for City Planners. Please find the full collection here.
In my last post, I gave a bit background on how I arrived at my thesis topic — Maintaining Policy Intent for City Planners and introduced the four components of maintaining policy intent. Since then, I have reached out to city planners across the nation to better understand the magnitude of the problem as well as the methods, challenges, and strategies planners have to accomplish the maintenance of policy intent.
Process
The exploratory research process so far includes an online survey, an in-person survey (“open house” style) at the Rail~Volution conference, and many phone interviews with planners, “innovation officers” in the city government, design practitioners, civic tech startup founders, and task force members.
Key Findings
1. “Make it Real” is the hardest; opinions are mixed for others.
The surveys (online and in-person, n=approx. 60) showed that “Make it Real” was the hardest out of the four components. For the rest, the levels of difficulty were more evenly distributed.
While many people at the conference claimed to have observed a pattern — easier in the beginning (clarify intent) and more difficult towards the end (make it real) of the project, the pattern is less strong when seeing the result as a whole.
2. “Meetings” are most popular but often influenced by politics. Testing and tracking are viable strategies.
As seen in the diagram, most participants recognized meetings as a traditional yet invaluable component throughout the planning processes. However, meetings (and the whole process) are unproductive due to leadership/politics causes— leadership’s lack of political will, conflicting priorities of stakeholders, special interests dominance, and more.
Overall, there were more entry in the clarifying goals and inform all categories. In clarity, participants recognized the importance but often struggled with goals that were too broad. In inclusion/outreach, participants pointed out its importance and contributed mindset-like strategies (“listen to all”/ “be proactive”). In engagement, the challenge lied in raising both the quantity and the diversity of engaged population; strategies for this topic were simply having things that people like (food, time, culture-specific, etc.).
Follow through and make it real had less methods entry other than “meetings”. For both categories, both testing/evaluation and setting checklists/action plans were reported as viable strategies. Lack of funding and resources was the number one challenge in making it real. Feasibility and action-oriented items appeared as the overarching theme here.
3. There needs to be a real stress for change.
My case study interviews include both very traditional planning processes to more iterative process involving human-centered design and technology. From my observation, projects that were/turned “innovative” often had real stress and sense of urgency as the main driver for change, including:
- funding competition emerged from the agency’s poor reputation
- leadership wanting to make a splash/leave legacy
- mid-point project meltdown and turnover
- significant and threatening growth
- angry/hostile community
- “nothing is working”
The stress for change applies to all sectors — leaders, planners, and communities. However, the more power the sector has the more likely the stress leads to faster and more impactful change. The forthcoming points will illustrate the differences in greater detail.
4. Identify and leverage elective officials’ motivations — they are how you go from policy-drafting to policymaking.
Every elective official has different concerns — some are data-driven, others have political ambitions, still others latch on particular policy ideals based on their personal experiences and beliefs. Knowing what type of decision-makers they are helps planners set up the game plan that will lead to final approval (use data-driven facts to fight politics? emphasizing specific messaging? pressure with community voices? what do the leaders care?). Some interviewees saw political will as a barrier, others treated as a reality that planners simply had to confront. As one planner said, “There is a reason why people (leaders) feel a certain way.”
5. Government structure is a big barrier, and it takes willing leaders and proactive staff to remove the road blocks.
All of my interviewees agreed that the rigid government structure such as procurement and state/federal requirements made practicing agile/human-centered design nearly impossible. An opportunity within the system, as many innovators identified, is the leadership’s discretionary signing power. A check for project kick-off or temporary permits waivers are invaluable resource to prove a concept and establish evidence for buy-in. Note that most of these mechanisms are small, temporary efforts many leaders would be comfortable providing.
Planners also do more ground-level improvements such as proactively pursuing funding before project is finished or tweaking the format of processes. However, these improvements requires planners’ will to provide additional labor with often no compensation or encouragement.
6. A top-down approach only works when the leaders care to participate throughout (and be okay with taking the hit).
While a top-down approach has got bad reputation in the history of planning, it was the secret sauce of success for some of my case studies. In addition to provide funding and political support, leaders can also make implementation faster by adding relevant policies to existing plans or demanding certain items becoming priority. These nimble responses are only viable when the leaders actually participate throughout ideation and concept generation process, as opposed to the traditional report-and-approve model, often at the end of the project.
By investing in the process, the leaders give constant pressure on and permission to implementers to think outside of the box. This (perceived) shared responsibility often makes implementers more comfortable to experiment. When things fall apart, they will not be the only ones to blame.
7. Planners need the creative confidence to fail.
Even with leadership buy-in and attention, a project wouldn’t be successful if the project managers lack the will and skill to innovate. There are many reasons why some planners don’t have the momentum to try — overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated, stuck in political battles, and have learned to question everything in a risk-averse environment.
Creative confidence in this context is key to breaking through the traditional mindset. Many planners I interviewed got their creative confidence through:
- curated learning environment offered by leadership,
- expert hand-holding throughout the process,
- personal belief and training in human-centered design, and
- rock-bottom context (any solution is better than the existing solution)
For most interviewees, the rest became easier when the confidence kicked in. They found themselves crafting experiment and recognizing the importance of trying something completely different. Many interviewees also mentioned that the project’s past mistakes became blessing in disguise, helping them see exactly what needed to change and act upon them.
For the less confident ones, however, they had a hard time seeing how creativity applies to their daily jobs. As one designer described, “we need to help the staff see the connection between pipe cleaners and their everyday public service work by learning through solving their problems.” Trust and personalization became key to getting planners step out of their comfort zone and embrace uncertainty.
8. Recognize, celebrate, and learn from the small wins.
Traditional or innovative, everyone I interviewed has attempted some strategies for better outcome. Some established clear measurements within the existing framework to track implementation, others redesigned meetings into “retreats” to boost productivity, still others added additional workshop when recognizing that certain communities weren’t reached.
Not all interventions got big spotlights or applause, and frankly some were executed better than others. It became important for the planners to set up a learning system for the methods used. Satisfaction surveys, participation, efficiency–planners would use these tools to avoid (the feeling of) “checking-the-box”.
9. Consensus building and environmental justice — two barriers remaining unresolved.
For many planners, stakeholder diversity is a double-edge sword. On one hand, it is critical to involve all parties affected embrace their concerns; on the other hand, consensus building is extremely challenging amongst a diverse group, especially on contentious topics like transportation and housing. The interviewees brought up the following complexity of consensus building:
- leadership’s desire to hold decision-making power
- community distrust (from historical disinvestment and/or displacement)
- regional priorities (often) trump local priorities
- philosophical differences in opinions, especially on environmental justice
- weighing opinion based on participation (working group vs. the public)
- people’s ability and willingness to make themselves heard in different stages of the process
- opinions swayed by events
10. It is hard for policies/plans to have teeth … but there are ways.
“Once they are done, plans sit on the shelf and never get touched again.” This is perhaps the number one frustration many planners experience in their career.
The reasons can be political: ignored by the leadership, disconnect between planning agencies and implementing agencies (different in most plans), and ongoing petitions halting implementation .
The reasons can also be contextual: policy language too vague/visionary (often as a result of poor consensus building), policy reflecting on past/present context (outdated immediately), conflicting policies amongst local and regional plans, and the sheer timeline (often 15–25 years)the policies are written for.
With that said, some planners I interviewed employed strategies that gave policies the muscles for implementation:
- including matrix and “target”
- evaluating and adjusting them frequently
- listing out and holding designated implementing parties accountable
- engaging with implementing party early so tasks are baked in their agenda
Note that not all of them would work in all contexts. The key is being aware of the social and political context in order to maximize the impact of resulting policies.
Design Principles
Based on the exploratory research thus far, I’ve identified six design principles I’d like my proposed solutions to accomplish:
Next Steps
1. Get feedback and further define my “how might we” statement
I’d love to get reactions from planners and other stakeholders in the planning space and further shape my “how might we” statement that is achievable in this year-long thesis project.
2. Focus Group/Generative Workshop
“What is the ideal planning process?” “If you have a magic device that removes one barrier in the planning process, what would it be?”
Moving forward, I want to tap into the creativity of planners, community partners, and elected officials and discover their fundamental needs. Coordination for this activity (virtual/in-person) is going to be quite tricky and I will certainly be looking for interested partners to participate, virtual or in-person.
If you are or know someone who might be interested, please let me know (or email yinjenw@andrew.cmu.edu)! I’ll be based in San Francisco starting January 2018 and hope to connect with local planners in the Bay area.
3. Interview elected officials, community partners, and implementing agencies
I’m fully aware that the exploratory research thus far includes only the perspective of planners and that opinions from elected officials, community partners, and implementing agencies would be equally important. Moving forward, I plan to understand the motivation of these population and adjust my design principles as needed.
Lastly …
Planning is complex, context-sensitive, and simply hard. I have grown so much empathy towards planners and touched by their resilience. Every planner I interviewed wanted the best for the community and has tried their best to maintain the policy intent throughout policymaking and towards implementation. For this thesis research, my intent is to learn and hopefully co-create solutions with planners and stakeholders to ultimately help cities grow sustainably.
Thank you for reading this! Again, please email me at yinjenw@andrew.cmu.edu if you have any question, comments, or just want to say hi!
