ENVISION UTAH PROCESS

As a neutral facilitator, Envision Utah brings together diverse groups of stakeholders and citizens to collaborate, address future challenges, and create the communities they want. Since our initial visioning effort in the 1990s, communities across the state have invited Envision Utah to facilitate conversations where citizens can voice their hopes and dreams for their community’s future. Our award-winning, innovative process has also been recognized and replicated in urban regions throughout the country.  

We follow a five-step process to help Utahns create their vision for the future. Using interviews, mapping exercises, surveys, and other means, we find out what residents want most and use that information to present different community scenarios. Residents react to the scenarios and choose the future that best matches their vision. Based on public input, Envision Utah's voluntary recommendations for achieving that vision respect private property rights and are grounded in the realities of the local market. Local elected officials, along with residents, have the opportunity to implement the public’s vision as they best see fit.  

Any Envision Utah visioning process is overseen by a group of local stakeholders. This diverse group typically includes public officials from local jurisdictions, development professionals, conservationists, media, and community leaders, among others. The stakeholder group will be witnesses to the process–ensuring that all steps are done in a transparent manner based on sound public input. They will also help ensure that the process represents local values, tests ideas that have some pragmatic grounding, and is communicated in a way that makes sense to residents. Learn more about each step of the process below.

 
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Values ↓

We start every project by asking Utahns what they want for the future. This involves an in-depth analysis of what residents value about living in the area, with special care to ensure equal demographic representation. This foundational understanding helps elected officials and planners see how growth, transportation, and environmental issues can be solved to respond to residents' most fundamental values about quality of life. This analysis also helps local leaders communicate the benefits of growth planning more effectively to residents.

Stakeholders ↓

Next, we seek input and participation from local stakeholders and experts with a wide range of experience and opinion. Staff also seeks commitments to participate in good faith in the effort. A steering committee will be created representing public officials from local jurisdictions, development professionals, conservationists, media, and community leaders, among others. The steering committee will be witnesses to the process—ensuring that all steps are done in a transparent manner based on sound public input. They will also help ensure that the process represents local values, tests ideas that have some pragmatic grounding, and is communicated in a way that makes sense to residents.

 

Scenarios ↓

With the assistance of our stakeholder and expert teams, we then draft scenarios for what the future could be like depending on the choices we make.

Scenario Development

This task involves the development of scenario maps that project a variety of ideas of how private development, transportation investments and environmental conservation might occur in the future. Included in these scenario maps is a "Baseline Scenario" that provides a picture of the area’s projected fate if current development trends continue. This baseline acts as the control and helps us understand the relative advantages and disadvantages of each alternative scenario. Future quality of life is projected for each scenario, including elements such as air quality, traffic and congestion, development, housing mix, etc. These quality-of-life benchmark criteria help residents understand the consequences of the land-use and transportation strategies embodied in each scenario. This approach also allows the public to compare various quality-of-life measures among all scenarios, including the baseline scenario.

Evaluation of Scenarios

After alternative scenarios are developed and tested, community meetings are scheduled. Here, the scenarios are evaluated by residents and results are made know to the general community. The community meetings are opportunities to learn which elements within each scenario have the most public support. Online surveys are another avenue for the public to evaluate the scenarios.

Public Input ↓

We present the scenarios to the public through interviews, mapping exercises, workshops, surveys, and other means to figure out which scenario Utahns want to work towards in the future. During the public workshops, attendees learn of the area’s projected future (the Baseline Scenario) and its attendant impacts on transportation, air quality, infrastructure, etc. An educational presentation provides background information on issues to consider. Keypad polling—an interactive wireless survey technology—and online polling may be used to gather public input.

Workshop attendees may also engage in a mapping exercise. Through this exercise, groups of approximately ten interested citizens, appointed officials, business owners, and land owners brainstorm their preferred future for the area. Each group uses a map with an air-photo color-coded with information about the area, such as developed land, land uses (commercial, residential, industrial, parks, and open space), extent of sensitive lands (e.g., hillsides, floodplains, areas of significant plant life), and key landmarks. On this map, each group negotiates among themselves areas to delineate for growth and for conservation, and they will represent the form they would like growth to take, using chips that represent different types of housing, commercial and mixed-use forms of development, etc. Each table aims to have a microcosm of all the parties interested in the long-term success of the area. Having participants who represent diverse opinions come together to brainstorm a long-term future tends to produce pragmatic and innovative solutions.

Vision ↓

Finally, we take the public's input to create a vision—a roadmap—for the future, and continue to work with officials, residents, businesses, and other organizations to make Utahns' vision of reality.