Advancing Community Engagement, Intentionally
In early 2025, APA members launched the APA Community Engagement Community Interest Group to elevate the role of public participation in planning. This reflects a growing recognition that not only is community engagement foundational to urban planning, equitable planning depends on it. Despite the importance of community engagement, it often lacks consistency in how it's applied across projects. While some planners integrate robust, ongoing engagement strategies, others may treat it as a checkbox activity, leading to uneven outcomes and missed opportunities for meaningful collaboration. The interest group is committed to enhancing community engagement’s position within planning processes and its impact in the planning field.
San Diego Engagement Highlights
Across the San Diego region, inspiring examples of community engagement are emerging and we are excited to showcase them here in the months ahead. From innovative strategies led by local jurisdictions to adaptations of proven practices from organizations like the International Association for Public Participation, we'll highlight how our region is building more inclusive, transparent and effective ways to connect with our communities.
Why Intentionality Matters
Intentionality is the cornerstone of meaningful community engagement. It’s what transforms outreach from a checklist item into a strategic, values-driven component of urban planning. While other aspects of planning such as land use analysis, transportation modeling, and environmental review are supported by well-established standards and methodologies, awareness and adherence to established core values, ethics and promises behind community engagement is inconsistent. This absence can lead to inconsistent outcomes, missed opportunities, and community frustration.
Intentional engagement begins with clarity of purpose. Before any outreach is planned, it’s essential to think through a project’s milestones and for each milestone ask: Why are we engaging? The answer might be to inform the public, to gather input, to build support, or to co-create solutions. Each purpose requires a different approach and being clear about this from the outset helps ensure that engagement activities are aligned with project goals and community needs.
Being transparent about the level of influence the engagement will have and abiding by the promise that runs with it helps build trust and avoids the disappointment that can arise when communities feel their voices were solicited but not heard. Will community input shape the design of a park, the alignment of a transit route, or the priorities of a housing strategy? Or is the engagement primarily about sharing information and building awareness?
Intentionality also means being deliberate about who is included in the engagement. Too often, engagement efforts rely on familiar methods that reach the same audiences, those with time, access, and familiarity with planning processes. But equitable engagement requires expanding beyond these circles. It means identifying who is most impacted by a project and least often heard and ensuring they have meaningful opportunities to participate. This might involve multilingual materials, culturally relevant outreach strategies, and partnerships with trusted community organizations.
As the planning field evolves, planners should continue to adapt and design engagement practices that are purposeful, inclusive, and impactful. These practices could offer tools for defining engagement goals, evaluating success, and documenting lessons learned. They could also help planners navigate the complexities of engagement in diverse communities, where trust must be earned and sustained.
When engagement is intentional, it becomes a powerful tool for building more just and resilient communities that are shaped by the communities’ perspectives and lived experiences.