The Challenge of Regional Planning

PlaceSpeak board member Ken Cameron talks about the challenges inherent in regional planning and how PlaceSpeak can help overcome some of the hurdles. Ken has 26 years of experience in senior planning and management positions in local government in the Greater Vancouver area, most recently as Manager of Policy and Planning with the Greater Vancouver Regional District (now Metro Vancouver).

Transcript: The Challenge of Regional Planning

Planning for the regional level in a metropolitan area is a real challenge because you’re dealing with a citizenry of 2.2 maybe 2.3 million people, and obviously you can’t talk to each one of those people about the issues that are important to them. When we were doing the Creating Our Future in 1990 we had the engagement of 4,000 people total for half a day or more, which is a huge amount of participation  but still tiny in relation to the whole population You always rely on media in one way or another; one type of medium or another whether it’s working with the municipalities, through their citizens, or through the print or electronic media, you having to work with system which always enables / permits some distortion inevitably.

PlaceSpeak allows you to have a structured conversation with as many people as you can locate and enlist in the system and have that feedback be provided to you in a way that is statistically useful and can inform decision-making at all levels, but is particularly important, I think, at the regional level.