Communication in the City: Planning and Social Media, May 2015

Planning & Social Media
May 2015 Andrew J. Crisp Boise, Idaho
COMMUNICATION
IN THE CITY

Planners are by nature communicators. We work with diverse groups
to solve problems, discuss new ideas and institute change.
Today national dialogue plays out on social media, international
networks with millions of users and a seemingly endless stream of
information.
This report in was created as part of a capstone
project designed and produced by Andrew Crisp,
a graduate student in the Community and
Regional Planning program at Boise State
University. Dr. Amanda Ashley and Dr. Jaap Vos
served as faculty advisors.
Boise, Idaho
May, 2015
"Why social media?"
Planners may benefit from use of new tools and
platforms changing the way people connect.
For those looking to leverage these tools within broader approaches to
planning communication, this report will serve as a resource in
determining the best approach, one that reflects the context of their
community.
This research set out to discover how social media, including Facebook,
Twitter and other web-based communication platforms may positively
impact the planning profession.
www.andrewcrisp.com
Andrew J. Crisp

Social media requires
EXPERIMENTATION
"Which tool should I use?"
No easy answer exists. "There's no magic bullet
when it comes to engagement," according to a
planner from Philadelphia interviewed during
this process. Finding the right platform for
planning in your community may require a
more iterative process...
More
This
Way
More
This
Way

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Numerous communication tools are available to planners, particularly as they approach
community engagement during the planning process. To build a baseline understanding of how
these tools are used, and where, the author interviewed planners within 11 different
communities across the U.S., and asked them about their experiences.
Across the board, these planning
departments stood out as city agencies
initiating change in the arena of
communication for and with the public.
This may not come as a surprise to
planners themselves.
Communication within the world of
urban planning takes place through
diverse media. Yet the field often leans
on jargon and technical information to
communicate its ideas. Planners write
about and discuss complex legal
requirements, administrative codes and
government policies, and simultaneously
shoulder a responsibility to distribute
volumes of information to the public,
developers and other stakeholders. This
dialogue takes place in the public eye yet
deals with sensitive issues, including
information about private property and
personal investments. Effective
communication remains a paramount
skill for planners. Both the Planning
Accreditation Board (PAB), tasked with
providing professional accreditation for
planning programs, and the American

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Planning Association explicitly recognize the importance of communication within the practice
of planning. Yet communication has changed dramatically—and now includes a much broader
group of participants through new avenues, like blogs, handmade “zines” and particularly
through social media networks. Planners may not consider these and other tools when
approaching their own work, either by tradition or because of constraints.
At its most basic, social media refers to websites and applications that enable users to create and
share content—pictures, videos, and text, and in some applications drawings, secrets,
information and ideas. Taken as a whole, social media encompasses various “social networks”
with communities of users in the hundreds of millions. Some of the most commonly used
communications tools in the world include Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. More than 1.3
billion people are on Facebook, on average each month, compared to 288 million using Twitter.
Approximately 300 million users populate Instagram—a number just shy of the total population
of the United States.
Research literature suggests an evolving understanding of how planners communicate with the
public. The theoretical impact of engaging the public through the use of gaming technology,
and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has been explored, but use remains limited. Social
media in particular may be an attractive tool for planners anxious to engage the public, in part
due to the recent and rapid growth of these tools in terms of number of users. This report aims
to answer some of the questions about these tools, how they’re used, and to what end.

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This report will hopefully help planners expand their suite of available tools when
communicating planning ideas to the public, while also providing context on the necessary
considerations for successful implementation.
This research also represents an attempt to understand the role(s) these communication tools,
strategies and techniques play in the planning process. Functionally, planning communication
encompasses both: 1) how planners effectively deliver information and “sell” their ideas to the
public, but also 2) how citizens provide new narratives to introduce ideas, challenge existing
beliefs or address challenges relative to how cities function and grow.
URBAN COMMUNICATION IN PRACTICE
Planners across the United States shared insights into their process.
Traditional meetings and surveys tended to play a large role—but an
emergent group of tools may broaden the planner’s ability to access
and engage with their community…
Cities targeted for inclusion were selected through a multi-phase process. The work of
numerous cities within the realm of public participation have been included as part of previous
research studies on the subject. An article written in 2006 by Jennifer Evans-Cowley and Maria
Manta Conroy cited innovative projects undertaken in Aspen, Colorado and Austin, Texas.
The interviewer reached out to and interviewed planners with both cities—providing an update
on efforts in those places.
In a second phase, Internet searches were conducted to determine which cities had a presence
on various social media platforms. The author searched Facebook for

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“comprehensive plan,” “planning” and “planning department” in late March 2015, revealing a
number of different project-specific pages from municipalities across the United States. In most
cases, these were current projects organized and run by planners at the particular municipality.
In the third phase, the author relied on a form of snowball method for finding additional cities
for inclusion in the research. In the first two interviews conducted with planners from Boulder
and Aspen, the names of projects at the City of Cincinnati and City of Austin were mentioned,
and so forth.
The municipalities included in this research are by no means a comprehensive representation of
social media engagement within the planning realm. 11 cases of social media use by planning
organizations in American cities represents only a fraction of the larger topic, and fails to
include use of social media within urban planning in countries beyond the U.S. However, the
issues raised by practicing planners over the course of these interviews hold key commonalities
useful for planners approaching more inclusive public engagement, be it online or by traditional
means.
Below is a brief description of the cities included in this report:
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia’s planning department had
recently participated in two separate pilot
projects aimed at online citizen
participation. The first, Community PlanIt,
comprised a gaming platform designed to
solicit public involvement in the planning
process. The second, using the MindMixer
platform, helped the city engage in dialogue
with the public and collect comments
regarding individual planning initiatives as
part of a major plan update.
CINCINNATI, OHIO
Cincinnati incorporated social media into a
recent planning process as a type of low-cost
experimentation. According to the
respondent, the planning department was
interested in anything they could do to reach
more people—particularly if that approach
were a low- or no-cost solution.
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
Social media use in the Minneapolis
planning office was limited. According to the
interviewee, the city had explored numerous
concepts and tools, but had not wrapped
social media into their public engagement
processes. While the respondent detailed the
city’s current approaches, and related the
breadth of conversations among the city’s
planning department, this interview served
to provide context on the issue.
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
Public engagement processes already include
social media in Kansas City, far beyond
many of the other cities included in the
report. Within a recent planning effort in the
city’s core downtown, MindMixer and other
platforms were used to solicit public input on
alternatives and ideas for the future. In this
particular city, online and social media
approaches were rolled into individual
projects.

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AUSTIN, TEXAS
According to a planner interviewed in with
the City of Austin, social media use
pervaded an initiative underway at the time,
known as “Imagine Austin.” The program
encompassed not just land use and
transportation planning, but also health,
mobility and education.
LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA
The community of Lafayette was smaller
than the other cities included in this
research. However both the planner and
communications person interviewed
highlighted a recently completed
comprehensive planning effort with a
significant social media component known
as “Plan Lafayette.”
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Seattle had recently launched a major plan
update process at the time of interview,
dubbed “Seattle 2035. It included a
significant social media component,
including dedicated project pages and efforts
to engage the public using those platforms.
The author interviewed both a
communications staffer and a project
manager in the planning department. The
communications staffer indicated his role is
to help planners in their efforts to engage the
public.
BOULDER, COLORADO
In the case of Boulder, social media played a
significant role in the municipality’s public
engagement approach. While not a planner,
the interviewee worked closely with planning
staff and was employed by the planning
department. His communication and
marketing skills suggest a level of
sophistication not found in other
municipalities in this study.
ASPEN, COLORADO
Aspen had a large part-time resident
population, which may have skewed some of
the takeaways from the use of social media
in planning for public engagement and
citizen participation. The respondent
interviewed indicated that online platforms,
including MindMixer, offer avenues for
participation from residents unable to attend
a meeting in person.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
The planning department within the City of
Los Angeles government is very large,
according to the interviewee. The planner
interviewed indicated her experiences with
social media extended to a citywide initiative
currently underway, as well as work in
mobility in particular. Both included social
media within an informational and public
engagement role.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
Unlike others included in the study,
SANDAG was not a planning department
but instead a consortium of governments in
the San Diego area. This organization
encompassed land use and transportation
planning as well as duties and responsibilities
associated with Metropolitan Planning
Organizations. Her organization is
comprised of more than a dozen cities in a
metropolitan area, and does not have land
use planning responsibilities. The
organization does however engage in
transportation planning, in criminal justice
issues and other areas. The respondent
herself was officially a Public Information
Officer (PIO), and as a social media
manager, her work encompasses
communications across departments,
including planning.

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SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PLANNING PROCESS
Surprisingly, planners are already using social media to more effectively conduct the planning
process. Planners themselves were, across numerous cities, leading the way in the use of a
variety of tools.
Across conversations with planning staff, a number of commonalities begin to stand out. These
are grouped into four distinct categories, each encompassing important foundational elements
necessary as municipalities consider using social media within public engagement. They are:
resources, tools, structure and approach. Comments about the strengths and limitations of social
media often highlighted a need for increased resources, or of making efficient use of existing or
new tools. Explicitly or otherwise, planners also referenced the importance of considering how
these processes are structured within planning approaches, as well as the particular details and
outcomes intended through their approach. Planners and communication professionals
currently use social media to influence public engagement within the planning process, however
its application varies in the composition of these four different areas.
A majority of those interviewed indicated social media played a role within a larger community
engagement strategy. To solicit feedback and input from the public, the planning departments
examined in this report hosted traditional outreach approaches including community meetings,
workshops and design charrettes as expected. But they also employed a suite of marketing tools,
including postcards, email newsletters and other forms of notification and information. One
product in particular, the Nixle community information tool (with a slogan of “Building
Stronger Communities Together), was wrapped into public information approaches across
departments in Kansas City.
Based in San Francisco, Nixle is a for-profit company offering its platform to municipalities,
often law enforcement agencies, as a means of relaying safety and emergency information to the
public through text (SMS) messaging, email, voice and other tools. In Kansas City, the
respondent indicated that Nixle alerts were broadcast to alert residents of upcoming meetings

7
relevant to their neighborhood. This functionality was managed by a city communications
department, and was often used to reach the public via their cell phone’s text messaging
software. “People who have registered their cell phone number are registered to receive
notifications by text from the City, about whatever’s happening. We can target geographic
areas. We can drop a point on a map, and say ‘Send a note about the meeting to everyone
within a mile of this point,’” he said. While in Kansas City use of online tools like Nixle took
place on a more broad level, department-level communications about specific planning issues
took place via alternative tools—including social media. “[W]hen it comes to the social media—
we have our own department Twitter feed, we have our own project social media that
happens—and we pretty much do all of that ourselves,” he said.
A deeper look at the tools of communication within the planning process will help provide an
understanding of what, how and when to implement them in your community. The following is
by no means exhaustive, but provides perspective on how the individual tools fit within different
public engagement efforts.

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TOOLS
A variety of tools were mentioned over the course of this research.
They ranged from the free-to-use and well known to emerging niche
products aimed at specific uses. Textizen, for example, aims to foster increased community
engagement through the use of text messaging. Its application in the now defunct Austin, Texas
area initiative SNAPPatx (not included in this study) was specific to planning and relied on
mobile technology.
MindMixer, a more contemporary platform developed by a startup in Kansas City, Missouri,
was referenced numerous times across interviews with planners. Not all cities interviewed for
this study referenced or had used the software, but those that did indicated it was wrapped into
a larger community engagement approach. One planner interviewed indicated his municipality,
the City of Boulder, relied on MindMixer as a primary avenue for online public comment. It
was wrapped into a larger “Interact Boulder” approach, encompassing a website designed for
citizen interaction. Boulder had used MindMixer since 2012. “[It’s] just really a way for people
to share their ideas—whether it’s voting on particular ideas that the city is putting forth, or
policies, they can answer questions, write-in comments, they can submit their own ideas, and
then have their neighborhood vote up or down on different things,” he said. “We have some key
planning staff kind of listening in on the conversation, and we’ve had a lot of success with that
two-way conversation from a really wide variety of demographics.
The City of Cincinnati’s planning department, however, found MindMixer brought mixed
prospects. “With MindMixer, we couldn’t hack it,” she said. “It didn’t work for us.” The
respondent indicated they had used MindMixer as part of a zoning code rewrite process, but
that the nature of the program, she felt, behooved engaging residents on “big topics, big ideas”
rather than the technical process of zoning administration. She indicated it might have been
more successful had staff used MindMixer as part of their comprehensive plan update process,
and in doing so acknowledged the potential for certain tools to ill fit some applications. A
consultant hired to help with the process presented an additional mitigating factor in the
successful use of MindMixer within the city’s planning efforts. “[I] don’t think we used it for

9
something really useful… We also had a consultant that was supposed to stay on top of
MindMixer, and I’m not sure that they did as well as they could. It’s probably something we
should have taken on ourselves,” she said. The City of Seattle has employed MindMixer as well,
within a few projects according to the interviewee, but it “never fit” what staff was trying to
accomplish.
The respondent from Boulder noted that
the city had had less success with tools set
up by staff on an experimental basis over
the years, including Pinterest and Tumblr
accounts. Less commonly used social
networks, like Google, Inc.’s Google Plus,
garnered a surprising amount of
interaction, he said. Boulder is also unique in that the city employs a video production team and
regularly broadcasts information in a video format. Broadcasts are uploaded to various social
media pages, according to the respondent, including the video platform Vimeo, which is known
as a powerful competitor to Google’s YouTube service. The City of Boulder hosts official
channels through both services.
In the case of Philadelphia, which participated in a pilot project for Community PlanIt and
MindMixer, responding to resource limitations they initiated a new approach using ESRI’s
StoryMaps software, a free-to-use GIS platform leveraged for visual communication purposes.
“[O]ur GIS Division set up the StoryMap website and between Esri and Wufoo [an online form
building company, with both free and paid options, based in Palo Alto, California), we are
setting up different interactive questions that we can garner participation from people who don’t
traditionally come to public meetings.” This shift from one tool to another within Philadelphia
suggested the planning department iterated due to changing circumstances, picking new tools to
help create similar functionality where financial resources were no longer available.
The planner from the City of Los Angeles, importantly, indicated the potential for an emerging
fusion of urban planning concepts with the precepts of communications and marketing. The
respondent indicated she spent time researching social media marketing tips in order to better
convey her department’s message to social media followers. “Part of the planning education
doesn’t really cover marketing, and public outreach, and that’s what, when looking back at my
planning education I’ve felt that’s one of the major holes in what was covered,” she said.

10
The amount of time required to maintain an active presence on social media channels was cited
by the planner in Los Angeles as a barrier to becoming more active with Twitter users, in
particular. In doing so, the respondent highlighted a significant limitation in how cities
approach social media within the planning process. “[I] guess Facebook and Twitter haven’t
been as successful. But that’s just because we don’t have the—It’s basically me trying to do
everything, but I don’t always have the capacity to be on top of Facebook and Twitter. When
you’re using Twitter as a communication tool, you really have to be on top of that. Twitter is
something—to stay active in the Twitter world you need to be tweeting at least once a day, at
the very least.”
The planner from the City of Austin cited a similar concern with using Twitter for community
engagement. “I find that Facebook is much more successful in that effort than Twitter,” she
said. “That’s why I always say Twitter is anomaly for us. Because you get buried—you get
buried in your Twitter feed, unless you’re tweeting every 30, 45 minutes to an hour—it doesn’t
get seen.”
The potential for using new tools represents an opportunity and a challenge for planners. In the
latter sections of this document, more information from planner respondents about the issues
confronted in building new approaches to communication will be explored, including takeaways
from the issues encountered, the context of the situation and how they approach public
engagement now.

Acrossinterviewswithplanners,commentsspoketothestrengthsandweaknessesoftoolsused
withinpublicengagement.Thesecommentswereaggregatedintoaroughestimationofthepotential
socialbenefitsofthetool,weighedagainstitscost.Anundertsandingofhowthesetoolsfitintoa
largersocialecosystemmayhelpplannersdecidebetweenfree-to-usesoftwareandsoftware
requiringacontract.

Austin, Texas' "Imagine Austin" MeetUp group
helped support the planning process through the
organization of social capital building events.
MEETUP

SpeakUp, here used in the City of Scottsdale, Arizona provides
opportunities for dialogue between government officials and the
public. Here, a city staffer responds to questions about bringing the
Google Fiber service to Scottsdale.
SPEAKUP

Within a recent Open Town Hall post, the City of Aspen
solicited comments about a specific connectivity issue in
the Castle Creek/Hallam Street area.
OPEN TOWN HALL

The Kansas City, Missouri MindMixer page was branded as "KC
Momentum," and included links to videos and other sources of
information. Users were given the option to login with a Facebook
account, or create a MindMixer profile.
MINDMIXER

LIKES
1500
TWO-WAY
STREET."
"It has to be a

11
CONSIDERATIONS
RESOURCES
Respondents indicated two important categories of resources: the first being staff knowledge, or
level of familiarity with the tools and how to use them. Second were monetary resources, in the
form of budget to spend on different tools and the capacity to assign significant staff hours to
them. Both were significant hurdles in refining citizen engagement approaches to even
experimenting with social media in the planning process.
In Kansas City, staff has already made use
of social media within the planning
process. Recent staff turnover lead to
diminished capacity in terms of knowledge
resources. “We did have a staff person who
was assigned to manage our Twitter feed,
but that person is gone, and hasn’t been
replaced,” the planner from Kansas City
said. Similarly, staff experience and interest
in community engagement may dictate their willingness to try new things in this arena. “I think
there are some planners who really love public engagement, and some who don’t. I really love
public engagement. I’m always going to those sessions and trying to learn the new thing,” said
the planner from Aspen, Colorado. This respondent in particular, like many of those
interviewed in this study, were directly responsible for posting content and managing different
platforms. In Philadelphia, a recent planning initiative included a blogging component that,
according to the respondent, helped generate interest in the initiative and provided a platform
for more long-form communication about planning issues. Importantly, the “voice” of the blog
did not belong to any one writer with the department, but rather represented the department as
a whole. While the blog remains operational at PhiladelphiaPlaneto.com (a play on
“Philadelphia Maneto”), at the time of interview it had not been updated in almost a year.
“[U]nfortunately the one staffer who was really into it left, and we haven’t been able to find

12
another staffer who has the same passion, and it’s not something you want to just assign to
somebody, it has to be somebody who’s really interested in doing it,” she said. According to the
respondent, a senior staffer with her division, they are looking to hire an additional staffer just to
manage her department’s public relations. Diminished capacity may be a result of losing staff
with experience in these tools. Additionally, planning departments may consider staff level of
interest and willingness to participate within social media platforms. “[W]ith Facebook and
twitter, one of the biggest things about it is you have to have somebody who’s assigned to it,”
said the planner from Cincinnati.
Interviews with planning professionals also revealed the importance of financial resources. One
of the most common references was in direct contributions or allocations for public engagement
in general and social media in particular. In Philadelphia, the respondent indicated that her city
was the subject of a pilot project for two different tools. The first was Textizen, a community
engagement platform developed through a Code for America project around text (SMS)
messaging—leveraging the power of communication software across mobile phones as part of
survey-based data collection campaigns. The second was Community PlanIt, a gaming platform
created by the Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College in Boston. Both were provided free
of charge to the municipality, and the interviewee indicated they were beneficial to the planning
process. “We got considerable participation—we had over 500 people participate in that game
that we put together for that plan,” she said. The interviewee indicated that, given sufficient
resources, in future planning projects they would make a game similar to Community PlanIt as
part of their community engagement approach. However, she said the cost of such an approach
would exceed $10,000—well beyond budget restrictions for the planning department. Real costs
of building, maintaining and utilizing platforms represent one significant barrier, as do
operations costs in the form of staff hours. According to the same interviewee, as many as 100-
120 staff hours were put into the Community PlanIt project within the setup phase alone. While
the platform was provided free of charge due to the nature of the pilot project, its use remained
costly in terms of staffing and professional resources. Textizen, as well, required significant staff
hours—in the neighborhood of 25-30 hours, according to the interviewee. “If we had the
money to do Community PlanIt again, we would probably scrimp and save to find the staff time
to do it, but the staff size is definitely something that hinders us as well,” she said.
Financial resources were problematic in other cities, according to respondents. Free-to-use
platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were highlighted as important considerations in
using social media within community engagement processes. The cost of staff time
commitments remained a constant with these tools, as well. Creating robust engagement, even
with these inherently social platforms, required significant time commitments—though the time
commitment necessary to become actively engaged tends to vary, according to respondents.
Twitter was perceived as requiring excessive amounts of time to remain “active” in the
community, and to regularly “engage” with users. Facebook’s barriers to entry were perceived
as smaller, and the platform easier to maintain for the use of a planning department, or within a
particular planning initiative. This perception may stem from the wide scale use of Facebook for
personal use, providing a level of familiarity and comfort with the platform and how it works.

PLANNERS:
LEARN
BY
DOING
Reach a younger demographic - Be more connected
- Expand beyond public meetings - Embrace new
ways to communicate information - Engage a
broader section of the public - Solicit greater
response from the citizenry - Collect data -
Collaborate
Why be social?
No matter your reason, bringing planning into the
digital world requires thoughtful consideration.

WHERE TO START:
2. RESOURCES
1. STRUCTURE
3. TOOLS
4. APPROACH
Consider how department responsibilities and decision-making are
currently organized. Can social media be wrapped into the internal
process?
Determine what resources exist to support your effort. Experiment.
Where can planning intervene that's free, or low cost?
Fit the right platform to the job at hand. Community engagement
may be difficult to manage via free tools. Does a more robust tool
make sense, given staff time and organizational capacity?
Reporting and measurement are important. How can planners make
social media matter long term?

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Twitter, by contrast, is much less common and requires knowledge of the methods of interaction
(“retweeting,” “hashtags,” etc.).
One respondent referred to Facebook interactions with the public as less formal, more ad hoc,
and more genial. Twitter, on the other hand, according to the same respondent, was more
focused and often more hostile. Within Twitter, the public tended to talk about or “mention”
the particular planning initiative—but not submit comments directly to the planners. Mentions
on Twitter refer to including the “handle” (name) of an individual’s account within a message.
In this individual’s experience, Twitter was commonly used as a platform for individuals
associated with planning issues, and specifically invested in discussing issues relevant to her
municipality’s initiative. By comparison Facebook tended to generate more on-subject
responses, with specific questions and comments, according to the respondent.
STRUCTURE
Use of online tools, in particular social media, remains a new consideration in urban planning at
the city government level. A few years ago, the Kansas City planning department had a much
less developed approached to using social media as part of their approach. “We had no idea of
how to use a Facebook page—we knew Facebook was there and a lot of people were on it, and
we threw a Facebook page up there for our [plan].” According to the respondent, in those early
days there was little activity on the project page. Planners had not yet solicited a level of
sustained engagement from those interested in the project. “[I]t was just sitting out there with no
real mining going on,” he said. Kansas City’s structure for incorporating social media has
evolved significantly since then. Los Angeles’ planning department today highlights a much
more expansive use of social media within existing processes:
“[Social media has] been one of the main communication lines when we have a big
event coming up, or when we’re releasing a new document, or a new draft of
something. We’ve used it for every major milestone of our project, from when we
released our first draft, from when we needed to ask for additional comments of the
public, and had open public comment periods. But we’ve also used it for kind of
idea, crowdsourcing—that was mainly in the beginning phases, “What do you
think of this?” or “What do you think a street should be used for?” Open-ended
questions like that. And we’ve used our blog site as really more of, kind of an
informational look into the reasoning behind our projects, and the transportation
policy we’re setting forth, and what are the best current practices out there? The
blog has been really kind of an informational line for the public to get insight into
what this project is about.”
—Respondent from Los Angeles
Just as various governments approach the structure of their planning departments differently,
the agencies represented in this study approached the structure of communication with the
public, through social media in particular, in different ways. In the case of Boulder, a

14
communications staffer was employed directly within the planning department. “Individual
communications specialists are assigned to specific departments so we develop close
relationships with the context experts and planners,” he said. While not a planner, it was this
staffer’s job to work closely with planners throughout the planning process, and to craft
messaging via social media and engagement approaches to fit the needs of the project. In Seattle
the author interviewed both a communications staffer and a planner. At this municipality, the
communications team worked with planners to craft their messaging for individual projects. As
a project manager, the planning staffer indicated that the use of two social media pages for a
recent plan update was used primarily in an informational role. Both platforms were used to
promote events—and in order to craft those messages for disseminating to the public, planners
are required to work with the separate communications department. “I think because the
planners aren’t doing it [social media] directly, we’re less inclined to use it as an ongoing kind of
community dialogue tool. Because it’s not something we’re doing personally, it’s not like
we’re—we could pick up the phone, or we could send out an email—but doing social media,
there’s another step involved,” she said.
Within planning in Kansas City, the
planner interviewed felt strongly tools like
Facebook and Twitter served primarily as a
tool to inform the public.
“It’s an informational thing—we have a
number of Twitter followers who just
follow our Department in general, and so
we’ll shoot out a Tweet about a meeting
we’re having, or something like that. So it’s much more about just what’s going on. The
Facebook page, it has been a little more static, and honestly not all that productive. It’s just hard
to get people—and maybe it’s a marketing issue on our end—but we’ve typically just used it for
meeting announcements and project info,” he said.
In the Midwest, use of social media at the City of Minneapolis was wrapped into government
quite differently. “[W]e have a communications department that’s kind of an umbrella
department for the whole city. They maintain a Facebook page for the city, and a Twitter
account for the city. But departments are also authorized to create their own social media
accounts with the permission—they have to have the permission of the communication
department,” the respondent said. All messages from planning staff were vetted through this
separate communications department and communications staff prior to posting, and were
distributed through a channel branded as “City of Minneapolis”, not a specific channel
dedicated to planning issues. While the city’s planning department had an individual Twitter
account dedicated to specific planning initiatives, staffers had not set up a Facebook page. In
this setup, planners were insulated from using platforms for informational purposes, and the use
of these tools for community engagement were, according to the respondent, very limited or
nonexistent. According to the respondent, some of this may stem from evolutionary decisions—
when Minneapolis’ communications team began creating social media accounts for the

15
municipal government, they actively discouraged the creation of project pages, in a page for a
comprehensive plan update, or a specific area plan. This may change in the near future—
according to the planner the department is considering how to incorporate social media more
thoroughly into an upcoming comprehensive plan update. Currently, however, comments
received via social media aren’t easily incorporated into the process. “If [a comment] came in
unsolicited right now, I honestly don’t know what we would do with it,” he said.
In other communities, the capacity for social media use in planning appears to have developed
more organically. A communications staffer at the City of Boulder indicated that the
community demanded a certain level of involvement in planning, and that social media had
become one of the outlets for that to take
place. “As a whole, Boulder is a very tech-
savvy, and digitally connected community.
Social media provide us with another
means of connecting with more people
than we would be able to reach using
traditional communications tactics and
community engagement and outreach
alone,” he said. In some municipalities, it
may not be planning staff that takes the
lead in retooling citizen engagement, but
the public themselves.
In two city governments in the Western United States, Los Angeles and San Diego, staff was
tasked with creating content, disseminating messages and soliciting public feedback online.
Respondents in Austin, Los Angeles and San Diego indicated they were given a great deal of
latitude in designing the process, crafting the messaging and reporting the results. This was in
contrast to Seattle, Boulder and Aspen, each of which had a more structured, bureaucratic
protocol for disseminating messages via social media. These three cities (Seattle, Boulder and
Aspen) range in size, from approximately 7,000 people to approximately 600,000.
Concentrating social media management and planning within one position suggested a lack of
sophistication with the approach, as indicated by conversations with respondents. Individuals
working for municipalities with very structured community engagement approaches, with
specific online participation and commentary protocols, indicated a greater degree of comfort
with utilizing tools like Facebook and Twitter. Those respondents suggested that social media
can indeed fulfill some of the lofty goals of greater participation and inclusion.
In Aspen, the planner interviewed indicated that the city had been using social media since
2011. However, after the completion of a specific planning initiative around that time, the city
went through a change regarding its approach to tools like Facebook and Twitter. According to
the respondent, the plan included its own project website, its own blog and a social media
platform. At the time, many different departments within Aspen used the same approach—
creating new channels for individual projects, building followers and disseminating information.
“The city said we need to have one repository for this thing,” according to

16
the planner from Aspen. “I think it was just
there was so much out there, people when
they were engaging with one of them, they
were confused about what they were
engaging with.” The result was a
consolidation lead in part by the city’s
communications staff, part of “quality
control,” in her words, for maintaining a
government social media presence.

Process may be a critical component of successful public engagement via social media. After
creating an account, building a following and contributing to the conversation, planners have to
be prepared to show results from those dialogues. Managers of different communication tools
need to show understanding and responsiveness to citizen concerns, according to the respondent
from Cincinnati. “You pose these questions, and try to have people respond to you… You have
to be ready to follow up on it. When you put it out there, we have to be ready to do it,” said the
planner from Cincinnati. At the same time, comments may not relate to specific planning
responsibilities. The respondent used citizen complaints about, for example, lamppost design
and potholes, as an example. While not the particular purview of the planning department,
comments about these and other issues may end up on planning accounts and pages.
Developing a process for routing these comments to the appropriate department, and relating
that information to the original commenter may help mitigate issues related to off-topic
conversations.
Planners in Philadelphia opted to formalize their approach to social media through the use of a
social media task force, where, according to the respondent, representatives from each
department came together to discuss issues experienced in each, and events taking place in the
near future. “The city government as a whole is starting to figure out how to take advantage of
social media,” she said. In Kansas City, comments received from the public in any forum during
a planning process—online or face-to-face—were included in summaries submitted to a steering
committee. “We’ll put these comments directly in the plan to show the connection. So we really
do try to reinforce the idea that the input we’re receiving has been considered and is being
integrated where it’s appropriate,” said the respondent. The approach to collecting and
reviewing public commentary varied from city to city—with important considerations for
planners and project managers, particularly as they relate to legally required public comment
periods. In San Diego, for example, official public comment periods for planning projects take
place at key milestones in the process. According to the respondent, comments received about
that particular issue via social media would not be factored into the process. “[W]e don’t accept
comments via social media during those periods—so it doesn’t play into that. So if we have a
document or a project that’s in a public comment period, we may receive comments, but they
aren’t logged as official comments,” she said.

Financial resources
Staff time
Staff knowledge base
Technical skill
barrier to implementing new
approaches to communication
and community engagement.
Hiring planning staff with
these skills may be beneficial.
However, planners may not
come equipped with these
skills fresh from University.
Capacity building may be
important.
According to the planners
interviewed, structure helped
social media managers build
and maintain a digital presence
in the community--a crucial
step when asking members of
the community for feedback.
Creating a posting schedule,
and assigning responsibility
were cited as important.
set of opportunities and
limitations. Platforms like
MindMixer and Speakup have
an associated cost, but free-to-
use tools like Facebook and
Twitter were also referenced
often. Consider resources, staff
capacity and community needs
when determining which tool
makes the most sense.
Applications and associated
outcomes vary. Trying a mix
of engagement approaches
may be a valuable first step.
Asking the community about
their preferences for
interacting with government,
digitally or otherwise, will
help inform how these new
tools are used.
Staff knowledge
base in particular
was cited as a major
Developing a
process for social
media is important.
Each tool mentioned
in this study
provided a different
How does your
department intend
to use social media?
Refine process
Schedule engagement
Build audience
Catalogue comments
Social vs. informational
Goal setting
Measuring success
Maintaining a presence
Level of engagement
Starting dialogue
Soliciting feedback
Posing questions
CONSIDERATIONS
START WITH...
RESOURCES STRUCTURE TOOLS
Across 11 interviews with city planning departments, these issues stood out as
valuable to consider when implementing new communication approaches.
APPROACH

INFORM ENGAGE OTHER?
possible scenarios by which planners may introduce
social media into community engagement.
[YOUR
APPROACH
HERE]
Building on insights from practicing planners, the above graphic presents two
PATHWAYS
TO IMPLEMENTATION
1 Determine goal(s) Determine where
dialogue takes place
Analyze what's said within
the planning context
Determine approach
Measure outcome, evaluate
Determine how/if to
engage directly in dialogue
Choose tool/platform
Structure approach
Collect information through
process
Measure outcome, evaluate
- Establish timeline
- Plan milestones
- Establish measurement
- Build rapport with groups
- Develop new ways to reach the
department
2
3
4
5
1
2
3
4
5

17
In Seattle, at the time of interview, a forthcoming phase of a major plan update called “Seattle
2035” included a public comment period per federal regulations. As staff approached that
comment period, part of a complex environmental analysis process, planners were tasked with
determining the best way to approach comments received by social media within the window
for public commentary. According to the planner from Seattle, the federal guidelines in no way
spelled out social media specifically as a vehicle for public comment. “[I]t’s our intention to sort
of gather all of the comments that are received during that comment period and then it’s up to
us to sort them out. Which ones are...legal comments, and then there’s probably going to be a
basket of other comments that, ‘Gee these aren’t really a part of [the process], this mandated
environmental process, but these are great comments and we’re going to take those into account
as we move toward the next stage of the planning process.’ So we’re just going to be open to
accepting comments, and then we’ll have to sort them into buckets after we get them,” she said.
Additionally, she indicated it would be important to provide a variety of different structured
methods of response to the plan during the comment period, as the sophistication and
familiarity of citizens will vary. Some members of the public have no problem with submitting a
formal letter with specific comments, edits and suggestions, while others feel more comfortable
responding to survey questions.
APPROACH
According to respondents, use of social media within the planning process was a relatively new
phenomenon. Motivations for creating these accounts represented an effort to reach a broader
section of the population with the planning process. In Seattle, the decision the wrap social
media into a comprehensive plan update process, dubbed “Seattle 2035,” was a relatively recent
development. “[It’s] not something that we do for every project,” said a planner interviewed
during the research. “At the beginning of the process we had a consultant work with us to think
about a public engagement strategy, and that was something that they strongly recommended.”
Within Cincinnati, new social media profiles were created in 2009 as part of the planning
department’s first comprehensive plan update in 32 years. Surprisingly, the planning
department represents a thought leader of sorts within the larger City of Cincinnati

18
government. “[W]e had a social media for [the comprehensive plan update] before anyone else
in the city,” said the respondent. “I think we were first in the city to have a presence on social
media. This is this hot new technology, and because our business is engaging the public, we’ll
sort of try anything. That’s sort of what planners do—that’s kind of the planner’s role in a city.”
Social media was integrated into the city’s planning process, alongside traditional public
meetings and smaller focus groups. According to the interviewee, some members of the public
didn’t feel as comfortable participating in large group meetings, or in topic-specific focus groups.
Use of Facebook and Twitter was an attempt to acknowledge this. “That’s kind of what we had
in mind, to meet people where we saw them most engaged in the process,” she said. “That’s
where social media fit in.”
Boulder has also maintained social media accounts starting in 2009. “[T]his is really just a
means of helping give our...community members more convenient access to their local
government, providing information, resources and web-based services,” said the interviewee
from the City of Boulder. Respondents commonly referred to social media as part of a larger
community engagement approach—an important finding for planners examining their own
organizations and how new tools may fit into the process.
In the City of Aspen, a suite of techniques is employed before any effort. “Any time we do
engagement on a major policy issue, we do some kind of traditional open house, we do an
online survey, and we do open city hall. And then we pull all of the comments we’ve gotten
together into a summary,” said the City of Aspen planner. In Kansas City, the planner indicated
a more data-driven approach to taking the temperature of the community’s thoughts on a given
project.
“At the beginning of every process we do a
community survey, and that’s a mail and
phone survey. We know going into the
process what the majority of the community,
what their opinion is about certain ideas.
And so we kind of use that as a base. And so
if somebody comes in with a comment that’s
way, way different than that, you know,
we’re able to show that that’s not really in
line with the community’s—at least based
on what we heard in the survey—that that’s
not really in line with the community’s
vision for this area. We aren’t drifting
about—we are kind of anchored somewhat in that survey that we do initially,” he said.
Most respondents indicated social media served primarily an informational role. Across the
numerous municipalities included in this study, Facebook and Twitter were always used to share
information with the public, in some capacity. Posts ranged from articles published by local or

19
regional sources, information about public meetings, updates about the status of plan updates
and planning initiatives, and status updates about the progress of plan adoption.
Other respondents indicated a desire to reach specific demographics. Respondents from
Philadelphia and Cincinnati mentioned an interest in involving a younger demographic of
citizens, specifically a millennial generation described as “not really much for going out to
meetings.” As a planner from Los Angeles summarized, social media provides an opportunity to
solicit input from a variety of different demographics, without some of the constraints of in-face
public meetings. “I think it’s great that this is a new tool for us, as planners, that never existed
before. Before, we would have traditional in-person meetings, but we wouldn’t actually get a
variety of people coming to those meetings…[H]aving an online presence connects you to
thousands of more people. People can access whatever they want at any time,” she said.
While planners often highlighted the power of social media and online tools to deliver
information to the public, some in particular highlighted the opportunity for two-way
communication. While the planner from Philadelphia described social media as a way to
“reach” members of the population, the respondent in San Diego used a different vernacular to
describe the opportunity. “I think the social media gives people, the public, another way to
contact us and to receive information from us. So I think that’s another role, too. I mean they
can call us up, or email—some people still come in to see us. I think it just plays another, it’s
another way for us to communicate back and forth, with the public,” she said. While social
media may provide this opportunity, currently its applications in San Diego (within SANDAG)
are as “more of a public information tool, right now.”
In Austin, the role of social media
expanded beyond a tool for providing
information to, or soliciting feedback from
the public. The respondent from the City
of Austin detailed her use of the social
organizing platform MeetUp, which
played a major role in a citywide initiative
known as “Imagine Austin,” encompassing
land use and transportation planning, as
well as public health and other government
programs. The city worked to organize this
MeetUp group to discuss topics related to the initiative. According to the interviewee the group
was successful at involving individuals typically outside the planning process. This represents an
area where government may move beyond using online social platforms merely to disseminate
information, but to sourcing ideas from the public, building planning capacity and creating
avenues for robust participation. The interviewee indicated that the MeetUp approach had
helped to engage new members in the planning process around public gatherings. “I feel that
our MeetUp group is very successful in that it’s gotten a group of individuals together who may
not have ever gotten together before, in a room, to talk about some of the issues that relate to

20
[the larger planning initiative]…” she said. In April, the author found opportunities for residents
to participate in a hike with fellow residents, organized by the planner interviewed. Another
group conversation concerned taking action to combat climate change, and included numerous
respondents.
Austin’s MeetUp group stood out from other initiatives detailed in this process. Unlike other
social media platforms, the group’s purpose appears to have evolved beyond merely serving as a
vehicle to provide information to the public, or to soliciting their feedback on specific planning
initiatives. Instead, the group helped loosely connect individuals who normally would not have
met, with the option to discuss planning issues more broadly. “[A]s we roll along—that group’s
been going on for about a year now—we get more and more and more people, new people to
Austin who don’t know anything, who never knew anything about [the planning initiative], who
find it through the MeetUp platform, or who find it from our Facebook page, or who find it
from our newsletter, or from our website,” she said. The experience in Austin suggests planner
may be able to make an impact beyond disseminating information to the public, or soliciting
comments for inclusion in the process.
Importantly, comments received via social media were catalogued in a variety of different ways,
according to respondents. In Philadelphia, the department maintains a protocol for including
comments in the process. “For all of the outreach that we do, whether it’s a public meeting, or
its a platform like Community PlanIt, or just ESRI, after we close the period for comments we
always write a summary for the comments that we receive. We use the results that are put into
that summary, folded into all the other comments that we’ve gotten from public meetings and
such, and that folds into recommendations that we put out there. So it’s been very helpful and
it’s been rather easy for us to incorporate the comments that we receive,” said the planner. As
the respondent noted, creating a record for those comments is important for accountability.
“And so by creating these summaries, and posting these summaries, it’s our way of being able to
say to the public, ‘Hey, you did this work for us, we heard you, and this is what we heard’” she
said.
In the City of Boulder, staff had moved beyond experimenting with social tools to formulating
extensive communications plans with social media weaved into the process. Key milestones in
the communication plan included soliciting feedback via social media, and using Twitter and
Facebook channels to direct the public to comment via MindMixer. Those comments are then,
according to the respondent, factored into the planning process—included in documents
detailing the plan’s public outreach component, and ultimately delivered to decision-makers in
elected office. “MindMixer has a pretty robust reporting program,” he said. “Those comments
are aggregated and then shared with planning staff and project managers.” This may represent
a possible future for planners looking to engage in social media as part of traditional planning
approaches. Selling the value of this approach to elected officials may help build support for its
use. Put another way, the digital nature of these outlets presents opportunities for analysis and
data collection, providing a layer of accountability for public outreach investments.

21
“Before even getting community feedback on any of the options being considered for the plan,
we’re first just getting their perspectives on whether the communications and community
engagement plan meets their needs and will do a good job of reaching them where they are at.”
Opportunities
Motivations for incorporating social media into the planning process varied among the cities
included in this research. “In my experience, [social media] has really provided a broader range
of opinions that [the City Council] can consider in their process. It makes the process feel more
inclusive, and more democratic,” according to the interviewee from Aspen. One of the
respondents from Seattle suggested a similar added benefit in attracting additional members of
the public to meetings, in particular:
“I think the social media’s effective in bringing some new audiences to some of our
events, where they can learn about the comprehensive plan. I think it’s also been
successful when we’ve partnered on events with other organizations who kind of
have a much broader reach in social media. It’s been successful when we’ve tapped
into the Mayor’s social media…[W]hen our social media is being more social,
we’re more successful. If we’re just kind of talking, like putting just kind of random
information out there, it doesn’t really go very far.”
—Respondent from Seattle
While opportunities and applications may vary from place to place, there are important
challenges to consider no matter how these communication platforms are wrapped into the
planning process.
Challenges
The experience of using social media as a form of two-way communication and within
community engagement met with mixed results. According to the respondent, efforts in the City
of Cincinnati to solicit public commentary and input through a variety of different platforms
was unsuccessful for their goals. “I don’t think it’s about engagement,” she said. “I don’t know
that it works for engagement, truly. When we’re working at citizen engagement—there’s no
magic bullet when it comes to engagement. You’ve got to be doing a whole bunch of stuff, and
it’s got to be at different levels.” With a staff of 10, the department has to make decisions about
how to maximize their community engagement budget, according to the respondent. Within
community engagement, some groups work best in small meetings, but limited staffing means
the number of meetings hosted by the Cincinnati planning department remain finite. Initially,
social media had appeared to be a strong opportunity, but in Cincinnati the experience has not
been one of robust back and forth dialogue, according to the interviewee. “When it comes down
to it, people do engage better face-to-face. There’s no replacement for face-to-face
engagement.”

22
Respondents in other cities echoed this sentiment. The respondent from Los Angeles stated
emphatically that social media could not replace the “one-on-one, in person” approach. Using
slightly different language, the planner from Aspen indicated traditional outreach methods
could not be replaced. Respondents recognized that in their current form web-based
approaches, in particular social media could not provide all the important public feedback and
input necessary to the planning process.
Beyond the limitations of the tools themselves, some of those interviewed indicated the potential
for off-topic or off-color comments to undermine the possible benefits of social media use. In the
City of Seattle, a communications staffer interviewed indicated that comments may be beyond
the scope of the planning process.
“A lot of times we’ll get some that are just kind of basic complaints about parking,
or rents going too high—not very many that are specific that we can use as we’re
working on the plan. And I don’t know if it’s just because the amount of space
people have on Twitter doesn’t give them as much, as like on our blog. We’ll get a
lot more detailed comments on our blog, on a certain topic than we do on Twitter
or Facebook. They may have more space to kind of talk about it.”
—Respondent from Seattle
Within the City of Austin, the interviewee indicated that she had to some degree stepped away
from Twitter in particular. Direct engagement, she said, was largely absent on Twitter. Instead,
two groups, “detractors” and “supporters” tended to mention the City of Austin without directly
interacting with its posts. The respondent went on to describe lengthy conversations between
detractors and supporters, but indicated that she generally tends not to get involved. “[I]
generally kind of take a back seat and let it just play out. Because it’s not something we put out
there, it’s something that they start, that they initiate the conversation about. So I just sort of
observe, and watch it unfold,” she said. Asked further about the individuals involved in these
conversations, the respondent indicated it was a group of “highly engaged” individuals sparking
dialogue on their own forms of communication (blogs) and through social media channels.

23
Another important consideration is the pace of government, and how that impacts planners’
ability to consistently engage with the public. Traditional planning efforts are organized into
phases, with public engagement as a significant phase, or key components within phases.
Maintaining a presence on social media, however, is a consistent job—requiring regular
updates, and a need for regular content, according to interviewees. According to the
communications person from the City of Seattle, during those periods staff shared more
perennial types of content, like articles from sources relevant to urban planning and/or urban
issues. “Where things really slow down... What we have to share are the outside [news] articles
that are just, other sorts of vague information. During those periods, it’s hard to sort of use
social media when we don’t have much to offer people. It’s hard to keep people engaged,” he
said.
More dire consequences may arise from the use of social media, as well. The respondent from
the City of Minneapolis pointed out there may be legal issues associated with experimenting in
this arena. “There are legal issues—I’m sure you’ve encountered this in your research, but what
constitutes the public record? Especially in matters of an actual decision that’s coming before
City Council. Is something that somebody says in reply to something I say on Twitter, is that
something that needs to be included in the public record and brought forward to the City
Council when they’re making a decision? Those are important questions that kind of need to be
figured out,” he said.
LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE
Planners are already using social media as part of the planning process. The power to
disseminate information remains a key allure of tools like Facebook and Twitter, both of which
provide a significant audience and easy-to-measure engagement. Both platforms represent the
low-hanging fruit in web-based planning communication. Agencies often have some presence
on both or either platform, and it was not uncommon for specific initiatives or projects to have
their own pages or accounts. In some municipalities, management responsibilities were
concentrated in the hands of experienced professionals—in others communication took place
more informally, subject to the discretion of an individual planner or communications person.
Considering the right approach for your municipality or organization should be one of the first
steps toward establishing a meaningful presence on social media, and certainly well before
leveraging these tools to engage the public or impact the planning conversation.
Yet social media is still a relatively new frontier. Much like the industry that created it, time will
tell how impactful web-based communication will eventually become, and the roles it will take
in shaping our lives. In 2004, when Facebook was first founded, Twitter was just an idea and
would not be launched for another two years. Within a decade, the number of users on both
sites has grown exponentially, as has the role these tools play in the national identity and
zeitgeist.

24
Conversations about social media within the planning process should include, in some way,
dialogue about the following:
1. Does social media fit within existing community engagement approach?
2. Determine which tools make the most sense for municipality, considering time,
resources, level of sophistication and structure
3. Plan a strategy for tools, making decisions about how to use social media within an
informational role or as more of a participatory venue.
4. Develop milestones to reach within strategy.
5. Determine how comments and other information will be collected, catalogued and
wrapped into the process.
6. Determine how to measure success—is it level of engagement, number of comments,
or quality of participation?
BACKGROUND
This research project began in January during the Spring 2015 semester at Boise State
University. Institutional Review Board materials were approved and data collection began in
late March, lead by principal investigator Dr. Amanda Ashley, faculty liaison for the project,
and co-principal investigator Andrew Crisp, a Community and Regional Planning graduate
student and designer of the study.
A semi-structured interview approach was employed in an effort to collect common responses
across respondents, and to provide flexibility in gathering further information about each
municipality’s social media approach. With most respondents, follow-up questions were
necessary to suss out details about their projects, and the structure of each approach.
Additionally, clarifying questions helped respondents better engage with and respond to the
questions and provide more rich data for the study.

25
A full list of the baseline questions asked in each interview is available below:
Interview Questions — Semi-Structured
§ Which online social media tools/platforms does the City use?
§ How has the City used social media? - In what ways have you used them?
§ What has been your experience with social media as a planner for the City?
§ Which efforts have been successful? Which have been less successful?
§ As a planner, when using social media, what roles would you say you play?
§ What role do you see social media playing in the work you do?
§ What role does comment from individuals received via social media play in the
planning process?
§ Are social media comments factored into planning documents/processes?
§ Are comments from social media reported and catalogued in any way?
§ Does the city planning department have a specific protocol or structure for social
media use?
§ How are messages/posts scheduled?
Each interview was approximately 20 to 30 minutes long, depending on the depth and breadth
of the respondent’s answers. Interviews were conducted by phone, with the use of a digital
recorder, with planners in 12 different locations. A preliminary interview was conducted with a
former planning graduate student at an influential Ivy League University for the purpose of
refining the questions used in this methodology. This individual helped launch a blog-based
planning communication platform, and had conducted research at the intersection of online
communication tools, planning, and public engagement. Her responses were used to help the
author further clarify his approach, and as such have not been included in this report. The other
11 interviews took place with planners at the local government level. In the case of two different
cities, the author spoke with two different staffers to provide further context to the project under
consideration. One interview with two different participants was conducted with a planner and
a former mayoral staffer turned communications professional working in Lafayette. In Seattle a
staffer and communications person conducted a conference call with the author. In the 9 other
examples, the author interviewed a single planner speaking for their municipality’s planning
department.
Anonymity for interview participants was preserved in accordance with Boise State University
IRB requirements. Comments from respondents were kept anonymous throughout the results of
this study to protect them from possible retribution, and in the interest of their individual
privacy.

26
CREDITS
Tools used to create this report in part provided by Canva.com, the free-to-use online software
engineered to make design accessible. Additional support for this product was made available
courtesy the talented photographers on Flickr. The photos featured in this report were made
available with a Creative Commons license, allowing the author to share, remix and reprint
photos from photographers.
Photo credits include (by order of inclusion):
• “Texting…” by Giuseppe Milo.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/giuseppemilo/13908545259/
• “Give Me a Ring” by Kat N.L.M.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/orangegreenblue/10284643356/
• “Untitled” by Nicolas DECOOPMAN.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/koopsdk/15998186595/
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dr. Amanda Ashley was an indispensable resource through the extent of this project. The
author credits Boise State University’s Community and Regional Planning program for the skills
and support necessary to refine and reformat this document to fit the needs of practicing
planners. Special thanks to Dr. Jacobus “Jaap” Vos, as well as my peer CRP students, and to all
the individuals who graciously volunteered their time to participate in this study.
Cody Butler, a gifted student and friend, provided ample guidance and countless hours of his
time through the planning and execution of the research approach, and through formatting of
this report. Without his help, this would not have been possible.

Communication in the City: Planning and Social Media, May 2015

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