Envision Utah Provides Model for Civic Engagement In Growth Visioning

How is Envision Utah's smart growth planning relevant to like efforts in California?

We've been through a real learning process in Utah, in a very interesting political environment, about how people's values actually converge on common solutions when considering the way our metropolitan regions grow. So, we've been through what we think could be helpful, irrespective of size, in many other regions of the country.

But what can Envision Utah possibly teach Southern California, with a population and economy larger than most states, about how to organize ourselves intelligently to link land use and transportation?

States are not the competitive element on the world's stage that they used to be. Today, regions compete. For example, we're doing this interview in Sacramento. Sacramento has about 1.8 million people. The Greater Wasatch area in Utah has about 1.8 million people. Sacramento over the next 20 years will grow by one million people. The Greater Wasatch area is also growing by one million people. We have all the same challenges regarding water supply, water quality, air quality, congestion, and so on. These are all regional issues. Nevertheless, we still tend to attack these problems along old legal jurisdictional boundaries that were created a hundred years ago.

We need to learn to solve these problems on the basis of air sheds, watersheds, and commuter sheds in light of our regional current growth trends and regional needs. We, in Utah, have had the experience of creating a regional vision, of getting tremendous stakeholder buy-in, and now of actually changing the way our region is growing. And it's exciting to see areas like Sacramento, with their Blueprint project, doing the same thing and moving ahead to improve the quality of life here over the long term.

You mention regions as more relevant re planning than states. But, there is nothing in our federal or state constitutions that recogizes the legal significance of regions. How did you entice the state of Utah to help you create a regional collaborative?

A lot of the resources to analyze potential future visions reside at a state level. If you want to help the public understand the long-term choices that are available, you have to take the logical area, which is a region, and analyze what it will be like in twenty or thirty years given the choices we make today. And so the state is actually the repository both of technical information and technical expertise to analyze alternative future scenarios. We learned in Utah (and other places such as Sacramento, Chicago and Baltimore are learning as well) that looking at alternative futures with scenarios is the best way that the public can engage and actually see what their choices are. That process enables and empowers the public and public officials to make better choices.

But how did you enlist the state's support for the creation of a collaborative Wasatch regional envisioning effort?

We went around and met with the key leaders of our community before we actually talked to state leaders. And in that process, we tried to be as inclusive as possible by approaching the leaders of the largest businesses, banks, developers, environmental and conservation groups, as well as the faith-based communities.

Envision Utah was designed not to be government controlled, but to be a balanced public-private partnership. So, the government actually was invited into the partnership by the private sector to look at our future. And perhaps a lot of the power of the stakeholder concept was that it was so well balanced between private and government interests. It was the private groups who invited the public sector to join the effort.

Elaborate on the original organizational design of Envision Utah. Who was invited to participate?

Utah passed a state land use planning law in the early 70's, like Portland. It was resoundingly defeated with a public referendum within a year. We met with the former governor from that period, who is now in his eighties, and asked him what went wrong. He said, "In that process we left out some people." So, we set out from the beginning to create a stakeholder group that had everybody "in the tent," including prominent individuals who most people in the region knew and trusted. We knew that the make-up of the stakeholder group would be critical if this effort was to have staying power once the scenarios were developed, a growth strategy was chosen by the public, and implementation began.

And then, once we assembled this group, we asked everyone to shed their self-interests and help us look at the future for the benefit of our children. The focus was on Utah's future because we care about this place and those who will live here in the future. That's why Envision Utah was successful. We didn't invite the normal cast of characters. We targeted individuals, such as the CEOs of significant regional businesses and the leaders of religious institutions, making this a very broad and high-level spectrum of Utah.

In retrospect, how would you do things differently?

I wouldn't change that part of it at all-it actually worked very well. There's always an ongoing requirement for continuing energy to maintain the stakeholder group. And so, if there is a lesson we've learned, it is the necessity to continue to reenergize and to invite existing and new stakeholders to be involved.

Robert, many of the veterans of the regional civic entrepreneurial movement have begun to realize that as volunteers, as civic entrepreneurs, they are not the equivalent of a public institution, and that sustaining their efforts, as well as institutional memory, is a major challenge. What's been learned about the difficulty of trying to be a non-governmental catalyst for reform of local and regional land use planning?

If you're smart, you learn quickly that you don't want to be the government. There is power in being a broad mixture of stakeholders. And, if there is power and energy in what you are doing, it's because there are great ideas coming out of it. And, honestly, that's the way our government ought to work-the best ideas should move forward.

In some respects there is a fundamental disconnect in the way our government is organized right now. It is this disconnect that has brought forth this revolution in civic entrepreneurship, particularly with respect to growth issues. The two major inputs to the outcome of a region's future are land use and transportation. Transportation is predominantly a federal, state, and regional issue. Land use is predominantly a local issue. As a result, there is no governmental layer that provides the natural forum to discuss these two issues together, despite them being inextricably linked. So, efforts such as Envision Utah or Chicago Metropolis 2020 or Envision Central Texas largely exist to fill an existing vacuum because current governmental structures are not well designed to solve many of the regional challenges we face today.

There is obviously a disconnect among our governmental bodies. But given the strongly held views about local control of land use, which I personally I agree with, it is not one of our objectives to change that structure. What Envision Utah does is "set tables" and invite people to share ideas and work together. This is about working together in a different way. It is not about creating a new government structure. Coercion and manipulation are always bound to fail in the long term. We must face our regional challenges together in a voluntary process.

And the results. How is government incorporating the work of Envision Utah?

Envision Utah has never created a plan. It worked with the public to see what the public's vision was for the future. From that emerged a strategy for growth. But the reason our region is changing is because the governmental entities, which actually do have responsibility for transportation and housing and other aspects of the future, are evolving and changing. Their policies are now beginning to more clearly reflect what the public said it wanted in the long-term future.

For example, Northern Utah's long-range transportation plan, which seven years ago had only a few miles of high quality public transportation in it, now has been reassessed and expanded by the municipal planning organizations ("MPO") to contain 300 miles of system. The MPOs, which are the governmental entities required to develop the long-range transportation plan, have recently substantially rewritten the plan to reflect the quality growth strategy.

Have you evidence that local government land-use decision-making and federal, regional and state transportation funding and planning are positively influenced by civic efforts like Envision Utah? Do current regional governmental organizations need reform?

There are lots of ways to connect them, but let me give you an example. The largest MPO in the Greater Wasatch area is organized and is operating much differently than it did a number of years ago. Envision Utah is not trying to replace it. In fact, we helped develop substantial public support for the MPO to develop new approaches to take our region to a different future more in line with the public's vision. And those governmental entities are carrying that new plan forward. As a representative of Envision Utah, I sit on the board of an MPO which has rearranged its structure to separate its long-range planning committee from the short-range planning committee in order to provide greater focus on better long-term issues.

Some civic entrepreneurs are trying to change the governmental structures. Philosophically, as an individual having experienced significant land use choices in my own neighborhood, I would much rather have a governmental entity that is close to me and understands local choices and challenges making decisions about my neighborhood than a governmental body that is just thinking about regional issues. I live in a human scale environment and I care deeply about that human scale environment. Therefore, I care deeply about local control of land use.

On the other hand, I also care about the quality of life that is driven by the major issues that can only be understood, analyzed and dealt with on a regional scale. Therefore, I view regional problem solving as also very critical and essential to our future, but I can't visualize what regional government structure I would replace the current system with, even with its unique challenges.

You note the conflicting pull of local control and the tug of regional governance. The Founding Fathers grappled with similar conflicts vis a vis federal and state authority between populous and rural states. Their compromise was a House and a Senate, an executive branch, and a judiciary-all created to assure no one body could dominate lawmaking and power and to encourage compromise. You are now working on creating constructive governmental cooperation within Utah's regions. Is there an innovative 21st-century model for putting in proper tension with local, regional, state, and federal funding and regulations to encourage smart growth?

I'm going to take you away from your terminology of region. Let's call the objective "appropriate scale" problem solving. What are the "appropriate scales" of the challenges we face? If I want to deal with air quality issues, then I must deal with the natural boundaries of that issue and, therefore, the appropriate problem-solving scale is an air shed. If we are going to deal with water supply and water quality, we want to deal with an entire watershed. If transportation is the issue, the best solutions will appear as mobility is analyzed on the scale of a "commuter shed." As an engineer, I was trained to understand that the correct analysis of a complex system requires a clear understanding of that system's boundaries. My neighborhood is also a system and one must also respect its boundaries, although sometimes it's quite geographically "fuzzy." Therefore, often the appropriate scale to resolve what happens in my neighborhood is very local, while the appropriate scale to resolve other problems is much larger. The natural tension arises as we seek to determine the "appropriate" scale to decide an issue and that tension is not going away.

Final Question: Envision Utah is looking to foster holistic solutions- holistic place-based solutions. Watersheds, air basins, and the linkage of land use and transportation are your focus. What level of government do you expect will integrate and implement Envision Utah's recommendations?

If the public truly understands the choices about our future, the people will drive the different governmental institutions to integrate the issues-integrate the short term and the long term, the local and the regional, and the interconnected issues both temporally and spatially. Public understanding and will is the answer and not necessarily new layers of government or new governmental structures.

I prefer having a layer of government close to me when predominantly local issues require action. I would not advocate the elimination of local land use decision making. I am happy with having local government make the land use decisions, but only if they understand how those day-to-day decisions on a small scale impact the region as a whole.