Best Practices for Community Engagement

Community engagement is a critical skill for planners that requires time and effort to develop. When done well, community engagement can lead to dramatic improvement in plans, more support for plans, and improved efficiencies in cost and implementation. Yet, community engagement presents significant challenges. Dealing with the public and stakeholders is complex and unpredictable. This course provides a solid understanding of the benefits of community engagement, the psychology of public participants, an overview of the tools and tactics to choose from in community engagement, and advice on the creation of a public engagement plan to meet the needs of your projects.