Welcome to the Collaborative Planning Website!

The Smarter Land Use Project, after twelve years of philanthropically funded research, has discovered a collaborative planning process that focuses on building trust among the stakeholders. It's a step-by-step, hands-on process that is used by town boards, concerned citizens, environmental groups, land owners, developers, and city planners to improve relationships and get better ideas.

Community strength is related to trust. A proposed project is an opportunity to initiate a process to improve trust. Past confrontation can give way to productive collaboration. When a special interest group concerned about a proposed project hosts a collaborative process specifically to improve trust, all stakeholders are generally willing to participate and explore new ideas.

The primary emphasis of the research was to find a way to redirect the combative energy of confrontation to collective problem solving. To do the research, Karl Kehde participated in more than 500 meetings between neighbors of proposed projects, developers, planning officials, and environmental groups on 48 proposed projects across the United States.

The major benfits of this collaborative planning process are as follows:

• Community-enhancing features are added to each proposed project.
• Neighborhoods adjacent to the proposed project gain an improved sense of safety and community.
• No outside facilitator is used.
• As stakeholder trust improves, the permitting process becomes less aggravating, more efficient, and with less litigation.

Is a proposed land use causing aggravation in your neighborhood or community? The Collaborative Land Use Planning Guidebook, which may be downloaded free from this website or purchased, can help you set up a process for improving relationships among stakeholders and upgrading the proposed project to include community-enhancing features. The collaborative planning process detailed in the guidebook can be particularly effective when there is distrust or confrontation between stakeholders.