The city of Phoenix launched an aggressive campaign Thursday to solicit feedback from community members on the city’s long-term development.
The program, called planPHX, will gather suggestions on what the city should include in its next General Plan and how it should use a federal grant it received last year.
Residents can submit ideas on an interactive website or by attending meetings with the mayor and city council members. The program also includes “spontaneous planPHX events” in which committee members and the mayor meet with residents around the city, including at grocery stores, coffee shops and sporting events, to gather feedback.
Mayor Greg Stanton emphasized at a press conference Thursday how important the program was to getting residents involved in the city’s planning.
“This is … as important an exercise as anything I’m going to be able to do as mayor of the city,” Stanton said.
Mo Stein, chairman of the newly created Plan Phoenix Leadership Committee, will lead a group of 18 community members who will seek feedback and find ways in which the city can take action on people’s ideas.
The project will have an emphasis on development around the light rail. Phoenix received a $2.9 million grant in November 2011 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to promote “transit-oriented development along the light rail line,” according to a city of Phoenix press release.
Stein, who helped create the city’s last General Plan in 2002 as chairman of the city Planning Commission, emphasized that the city will focus more on the big picture of what residents want for Phoenix, rather than simply going through the motions of writing a new General Plan.
“Rather than say, ‘It’s time to update that plan,’ we want to know what’s really important to people, and we want to put the bigger picture on that,” Stein said. “That’s a transformative opportunity.”
The General Plan was supposed to be finished by November 2012, but the city will miss that deadline.
The process began in 2009 but stalled in 2011 for several reasons, including the mayoral elections, according to Joshua Bednarek, a spokesman for the city’s Planning and Development Department. Previously managed by village planning committees, the process should improve now that Stanton and the city council are directly involved, Bednarek said.
The city was essentially starting the process over with the new committee because the city had tried to make progress on the plan in 2009 and 2010 without getting enough input from the community, Stein said
Now, the General Plan will take until 2014 to write and until 2015 to make small adjustments. Phoenix residents will likely vote on the plan in the November 2016 elections, four years after its initial deadline.
Despite the city’s difficulties with this General Plan, Stein wants to improve on the 2002 plan, making it more accessible to the general public.
The last General Plan was 446 pages, much of it text. Stein wants to give the public a condensed, more visually appealing format for communicating the city’s message. That might mean condensing the General Plan itself, or it might mean publishing a separate, concise summary. Either way, Stein wants to include infographics and possibly even cartoons to convey the main points in an engaging way.
“One thing that I can tell you it’s not going to be is another big notebook that’s going to sit on my shelf for 10 years,” Stein said.
The Plan Phoenix Leadership Committee may also open a “storefront,” Stein said, that would allow the public to see what the committee is working on. The space may be located on the first floor of City Hall or another city-owned building.
“If people want to come in and see what we’re doing, they can walk right into the work room and see what’s on the walls, make a comment and talk with the planners and our staff without going through unusual hoops,” Stein said.
Stanton said he expects the new General Plan to be more focused on economic development and sustainability compared to the 2002 plan, which he said was more focused on land development.
Bednarek said the budget for the entire planPHX project is $10,000 per year, partly funded by the federal grant.
The Plan Phoenix Leadership Committee will hold 12 community forums with city council members and the mayor around the city from Sept. 20 to Nov. 14.
Several rewards are available for residents who submit ideas on myplanphx.com, including lunch with Stanton and a tour of the Pueblo Grande Museum.
Contact the reporter at john.l.fitzpatrick@asu.edu
