Effective community engagement builds trust between government staff and residents, provides space for community members to share meaningful input, and adds transparency to the decision-making process. Collaborative planning, which treats residents and representatives from community organizations as peers to agency staff, is often the most effective approach to achieving these goals.
Collaborative planning should be integrated throughout the process, including the creation of a Bike Network Plan, the establishment of the near-term action plan, and the implementation of specific projects from the action plan. In each phase, staff must actively seek and respond to feedback from individuals with an awareness of their varying levels of influence and privilege.
Disagreement is a natural part of any participatory process. Pushback can and should be viewed in context. City agency leadership and staff need to understand the impetus behind pushback and develop effective responses and strategies to prevent programs and projects from being watered down, delayed, or abandoned altogether. Community members and agency staff should work together to establish norms for collaboration, including clear decision-making structures.
Well-resourced residents who have developed a playbook for limiting what city agencies propose and enact often wield their power to stop projects that make communities safer, more accessible, and more sustainable for the whole. Resistance in these communities requires different engagement and leadership tactics than in marginalized communities experiencing systemic disinvestment. Spend time engaging with the broader community and engaging more voices in the conversation. Strategically engage agency or city leadership in meetings with these residents to demonstrate firm support for the project.
In marginalized communities, it is important for staff to be mindful of how they work with residents. Staff leading Bike Network Plans, action plans, and project design processes may not have control over forces like gentrification or may not have been involved in past interactions between the government and residents. However, they will be the face of the entire local (and sometimes state) government. Staff need to demonstrate empathy and understand why some residents feel their neighborhoods have been ignored or divested. Related, these same staff need support from their agency leaders, including time to process and decompress following community conversations and events.
Disagreement is a natural part of any participatory process. Pushback can and should be viewed in context.
Build Trust Through Communication
- Share information honestly, transparently, and regularly.
- Be clear and consistent in communicating the timeline for all project components, especially those aspects championed by residents.
- Report back regularly with information on how input has been incorporated and general updates on project progress, especially unexpected delays or pivots.
- Acknowledge places of disagreement, as well as mistakes, oversights, and adjustments.
Engage with Issues Beyond Bikeways
- Gather and share back information about local issues, such as maintenance needs, safety concerns, and development projects.
- Where possible, broaden the project scope to include neighborhood needs that have been previously unaddressed, such as lighting, transit stops, and sidewalks. Where this is not possible, document strategies to address these issues through complementary programs or future policy changes.
- Pursue interdepartmental collaborations to maximize information-sharing between government and residents. Bring other agencies and departments to meetings to hear directly from residents who want to discuss non-transportation issues.
Seek and Build Relationships
- Identify leaders within the community who can be a bridge between city staff and local residents.
- Establish formal partnerships with community organizations that can help bring city staff and residents to the same table.
- Pay, or find other ways to compensate, partners for the time, energy, and expertise they put into the project.
- Build support for your work through early and frequent conversations with decision-makers.
Adjust Project Design
and Strategy
- Share design concepts and information in a way that is accessible and inclusive.
- Incorporate cultural or contextual cues in project design and use street design treatments that reflect local character and conditions.
- Consider an incremental approach by implementing neighborhood traffic-calming and upgrading infrastructure to a state of good repair first, then adding bike facilities in a later phase.