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Topics:
Community
The
Phoenix Futures Forum
Creating Vision, Implanting Community
In Phoenix,
Arizona, the pressures of unprecedented population growth—and
the catalytic effect of a highly critical outside assessment of
the community's response to growing size and diversity—led
to a multi-year, ongoing effort to shape neighborhood attitudes
and aspirations into a comprehensive plan for the future. Case
study plus.
John
Stuart Hall and Louis F. Weschler
John
Stuart Hall is Research Professor of Public Affairs and former
Director of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University.
He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National
Civic League. Louis Weschler is Professor of Public Affairs and
former Dean of the College of Public Programs at Arizona State
University. He was the University's first Loaned Executive to
the City of Phoenix. Both authors have been active participates
in the Phoenix Futures Forum since its inception.
Reprinted with permission from the National Civic Review, Spring
1991, pp. 135-157. Copyright © 1991 by the National Civic
Review. All rights reserved.
In
Phoenix, Arizona, the pressures of unprecedented population growth—and
the catalytic effect of a highly critical outside assessment of
the community's response to growing size and diversity—led
to a multi-year, ongoing effort to shape neighborhood attitudes
and aspirations into a comprehensive plan for the future.
"Valley of the
Sun" is the most common descriptor of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
When asked what they like most about living in the Phoenix area,
most people say something like "the climate is terrific," or "love
those dear blue skies." On the average, there are almost 250 days
of sunshine for area boosters to brag about, and close to five months
of 100 degree-plus temperatures for residents to commiserate over.
"Valley of the Sun" is a truly appropriate metaphor.
But the Phoenix area is not all sunshine. In
fact, when it comes to some dimensions, such as civic affairs
and collaborative public policy, the Valley has been in a "deep
blue funk" for some time. The Phoenix Futures Forum is one approach
to reversing this civic malaise. Launched in the summer of 1988,
the Futures Forum was designed to focus on the future; to forge
a destiny-changing vision for Phoenix through diverse, wide-spread,
early, informed, and facilitated citizen participation. The Forum's
philosophy of proactive community collaboration in pursuit of
a better long-term community future contrasts sharply with its
civic past and many of the recent images and realities that lie
behind Arizona's current political inferiority complex, such as:
- The Martin
Luther King Day controversy;
- The Evan
Mecham (former Arizona Governor) impeachment;
- The Keating
Five affair (Lincoln Savings Bank S&L/U.S. Senate scandal);
and
- AZSCAM—the
police sting operation that found six state legislators accepting
illegal campaign contributions alleged to be bribes to obtain
their vote for legalized gambling.
Nurturing
Community Governance in a Private City
Some of these
current events may seem less surprising when viewed in context.
Phoenix is what it is because of growth. "Growth to this area is
like cars to Detroit," said one local official recently. [1]
The importance of population and new construction growth combined
with the relative small size of its manufacturing sector led one
recent outside observer to describe Phoenix as "A city whose biggest
business is itself." [2] The
pattern leading to this conclusion extends to the entire metropolitan
area and is rooted in post-World War II technological advances in
air conditioning and water supply. People started moving in big
numbers to Phoenix when it became possible to use sunshine as a
selling point.
In 1940, Phoenix was little more than a desert
outpost of 9.6 square miles containing 65,000 residents. By 1990
the city's population had increased to 996,904 residents occupying
426.2 square miles. The Phoenix metropolitan area had one of the
highest net migration rates in the nation during the 1980s, resulting
in a current population of 2.1 million, projected by the Census
Bureau to grow at double the national average in the 1990s. [3]
Combined with a conservative political culture
this phenomenal demographic, economic, and geographic expansion
of post-air conditioned Phoenix, led to a limited and ad hoc public
policy agenda often involving the smallest possible number of
participants in important public decisions. Phoenix seemed to
some observers the quintessential "private city," which Lester
Salamon, in his classic typology of cities portrayed as having
a tradition of 'privatism' that confines
city government to a largely passive role as the facilitator of
private economic activity. What distinguishes the private city
is the ad hoc character of government actions and the extent to
which government power is put at the disposal of business elements
in their private pursuit of wealth. [4]
Since its kick-off meeting in October 1988, the
Phoenix Futures Forum has involved some 3,500 citizens and has been
the focal point for a one-year visioning and strategic planning
process intended to chart the community's course through the year
2015. That process was shepherded by a 95-member policy committee,
and molded by the involvement of 250 people on nine task forces.
In its second and current implementation phase, an Action Committee
composed of 114 citizens is divided into six action groups. There
are many products and accomplishments from this activity that will
be enumerated below. For now, it is important to say only that the
Futures Forum is alive, well, and successful in a place known for
just the opposite approach to public policy.
Why did the Phoenix Futures Forum emerge at this time? How and
how well is the process working? What are the consequences of
Futures Forum development for the community? What are the lessons
from Phoenix that might apply to other communities and to ideas
about democracy? These are the questions that concerned us as
we thought about the Phoenix Futures Forum experience.
Birth
of the Forum Idea
Often, originators
of ideas do not give sufficient attention to the perils of implementation,
just as those who act frequently fail to give due credit to the
process and people who conceive it. It is difficult, but very desirable
for public policy, for the same people to try to do both. [5]
As indicated in the time line of Figure 1,
planning for the Phoenix Futures Forum began in the Spring of 1988,
and the first actual major Forum event was held in October of 1988.
But in 1988, Phoenix had a civic "void" that
needed to be filled. Terry Goddard, at that time the city's second
term Mayor, saw that void, articulated the need to fill it, and
initiated a process to do that. When asked where the idea came
from, the Mayor jokingly said, "It seems like I always had it."
And in a way, that rings true. Goddard's political career—which
was only a few thousand votes short in the last gubernatorial
election of being perfect—has always been based on the ability
to bring "potential partisans" out of their neighborhoods and
particular comfort zones and into the political process. Many
of the principles that lie behind the Futures Forum follow Goddard's
approach to politics and his view of the pragmatic as well as
philosophical importance of broad-based collaborative, informed
citizen participation.
For a complete picture of the origins of the
Phoenix Futures Forum, we must look beyond Goddard. The former
mayor remembers parts of the idea coming from interactions with
representatives of the National Civic League and the National
League of Cities. Another part of the recipe was supplied by early
discussions with Janice Perlman of the Ford Foundation. This was
a case of learning from what had not worked well. A ten-year Ford
Foundation sponsored project to stimulate citizen involvement
in New York had, in Goddard's mind, failed because it was "top-down,
and had no real constituency." Goddard was a successful mayor
so political calculation was not absent. But he, and some of those
around him, became convinced that if public policy in Phoenix
were to cope with critical issues, it needed to be broad-based
and fueled from the bottom up, but directed by enough framework
and structure to be productive. There was a delicate balance between
leadership and citizen input that needed to be bridged.
Another major part in the birth of the Futures
Forum was the recruitment of key people to provide needed leadership.
These included Rod Engelen, a top assistant for the mayor who
eventually was assigned full-time as staff director of the Forum;
Christopher T. Gates, vice president for the National Civic League,
who facilitated all major forum meetings and provided general
guidance to the process; and Herb Ely, a prominent local attorney,
long active in civic affairs as chair of the planning committee,
and eventually as chair of the policy committee. The Forum's first-phase
organizational chart containing the names of other key leaders
from the community is presented in Figure 2 [not available online].
So the Phoenix Futures Forum was the idea
of the city's mayor, reinforced and crafted by thoughtful community
leaders and "expert" professionals. All had given substantial
thought to the workings of community power-sharing, collaboration,
and citizen participation. Although this is getting ahead of the
story, the Phoenix Futures Forum is in some measure successful
because, 36 months following its initiation, it has been the beneficiary
of strong leadership from local politics and the community, and
at the same time has been the focus of genuine citizen involvement.
Timing
and Setting
Why did the idea emerge as it did at this time?
Why did these experienced and well-connected community leaders pick
1988 to launch the Futures Forum experiment? First, there were several
reasons to worry about the future of Phoenix by 1988. A most prominent
one was growth and transiency. In one of the nation's most rapidly
changing environments, it was becoming increasingly apparent that
few were planning for the future in ways that would deal systematically
with such nagging and increasingly serious public issues as the
environment, education, behavioral health, government, etc. Reports
expressing concerns had been written and conferences were held,
but reports articulating an optimistic future were also written
and cited. [6]
Some amount of collective self-deception and selective denial
played a part in receiving this information. Through the mid-1980s,
many clung to a rosy picture of the economic future of the region
based on 30-plus years of generally exceptional growth and economic
development. This picture tended to overshadow those nagging concerns
and questions that would not go away surrounding regional problems,
such as air and water quality, transportation, hazardous waste,
education, and human services for those left in the wake of the
community's rapid expansion. Most importantly, even those concerned
with such issues dared not raise the question of what would happen
if someday the economy took a dip; what if someday land values
did not continue to appreciate? What was the area's "Plan B"?
[7]
"The
Peirce Report"
These questions and similar ones concerned then publisher of
the Phoenix newspapers, Pat Murphy. Because of that concern, in
the fall of 1987, he commissioned a team led by national columnist
Neal Peirce to write a series on the community that would:
. . . bring to this area professionals experienced
in the dynamics of urban America whose lack of political and economic
biases would provide a fresh and untinted view of our problems
and opportunities.
Important in the context of the Phoenix Futures Forum, Murphy
also wanted a document that would ". . . stir the community to write
an agenda for action." [8]
The Peirce Report appeared in the city's two major newspapers—the
Ariizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette—on Sunday, February
8, 1987. Although parts of this critique had been made before
in other ways, The Peirce Report had a powerful impact on the
community.
Recommendations in such areas as county home rule; approval
of a large river bottom development project called Rio Salado;
improvements in public education; philanthropy; behavioral health
and human services; a proactive activity to enhance and build
a sense of community; had all been made before. But this time
they were presented precisely in the Sunday morning newspaper
that lay in the sunshine-covered driveways of over 500,000 homes.
The debate was now out of the closet and on to the doorsteps of
the community. The Peirce Report left no doubt these issues required
immediate action to avoid a predictable mess in the future; public
officials and the community had no choice but to respond.
The Peirce Report was followed almost immediately by a series
of leadership meetings and discussions. Mayors of the Valley's
cities met and responded within a few weeks. Within three months,
a "Valley United Town Hall" was held at a Tucson retreat. At that
three-day meeting in June, 1987, over 100 civic leaders, including
Mayor Goddard and other elected officials, deliberated over an
expanded research report to try to plot a vision for the future.
[9]
The meeting generated good ideas including development of
a Valley-wide citizen's organization, The Valley Citizens League,
modeled after the wellknown Minneapolis-Saint Paul Citizens League.
But the time and invitation list limited discussion and development
of action plans. As local columnist John Kolbe put it, the meeting
had the important effect of getting people to ". . . put aside
their everyday concerns to think about the larger community. But
we might get that done a lot more efficaciously with a keg in
the Mayor's backyard on a May weekend . . ." [10]
Mayor Goddard did not follow that precise blueprint, but
in announcing the need for a Phoenix Futures Forum in his State
of the City address that year, he initiated a process that was
in keeping with this spirit of openness and celebration.
Phase
I: Many Forums and Miniforums
What the
Mayor did do was create a planning committee and leveraged $100,000
of public funding from the Phoenix City Council to begin the Forum
for the fiscal year starting July 1, 1988. [11]
An ingenious part of that early leverage was the Mayor's pledge
of $28,450 from his personal pension fund, and an unsolicited grant
of $50,000 from Honeywell Corporation.
The planning committee made good progress
in the summer of 1988. It prepared a work plan for the year; a
budget for the Forum; recommended a series of objectives, expectations,
and products for the Forum, all in keeping with their charge from
thecity council.
The planning committee established a budget
of close to $400,000 for Forum activities including four major
Forums starting October, 1988, through the summer of 1989.
Perhaps most importantly, the committee hired
Chris Gates, vice president of the National Civic League, as a
consultant to help plan the Forum. Although the Mayor, some members
of the council, and the planning committee had a good general
idea of the scope of this activity, Gates provided the intellectual
glue to make the project go forward and continued to advise project
leaders and facilitate key meetings throughout the project. Essentially,
early in the summer of 1988, Gates helped the group articulate
a basic strategic planning framework to superimpose on and guide
the deliberations of large numbers of stakeholders who would be
diverse and at times conflictive. The basic framework included
the familiar GAP analysis questions of
Based on
the National Civic League's previous community visioning work, Gates
also recommended a subcommittee structure (see Figure 2—not
available online) and pushed the committee to think carefully about
an ultimate goal of developing alternative visions. [12]
Major
Forums. Four major community
Forums were held during 1988-1989. These events had several functions,
including:
Forum
I. Forum I was a smashing success, which did a lot for
the overall success of the year's events. This Forum was carefully
planned; it included general and break-out sessions led by national
and local experts, including Neal Peirce as a principal keynote
speaker. Over 700 persons registered for the event, which ran from
Friday evening through the evening on Saturday. For the "where are
we now" discussions, a comprehensive report merging baseline information
from several local entities was developed. It would serve as a prototype
for compiling community information. Experts from within and outside
the community were used to lead workshops on topics such as the
Environment, Human Impacts and Needs, Technology, Transportation
and Urban Form,and Paying for the Future. [13]
The event resulted in more specific planning
for the remainder of the Forum, including the development of a
series of "miniforums" dealing with topics identified in Forum
I. Several other events were planned at the first Forum, and eventually
carried out.
It is difficult to adequately describe the
high level of enthusiasm that resulted from this first-of-its-kind
for Phoenix venture into genuine, facilitated, citizen participation.
A lesson for other communities is that careful planning and maximum
resources applied to the initial event of a process of this sort
is likely to pay high dividends. Forum leaders had wisely "struck
while the iron was hot."
The
Remaining Major Forums. Forums II, III and IV, which
followed during the year (for dates, see the time line supplied
in Figure 1) were modeled after the same format of large general
sessions combined with well-facilitated small group break-out
activities. Whereas the first Forum had attended to the strategic
planning issue of "Where are we?" and "Where are we going?" subsequent
forums beginning with Forum II, pushed ahead to examine the questions
of "Where do we want to go?" and "What would you like to see in
your ideal Phoenix in 25 years?"
Forum
II identified four values that seem to underlay participants'
sense of division, which became a "preamble" to the ultimate vision
statement.
Major
Forums III and IV involved responding to the draft vision statement
that had been constructed by a drafting committee and approved
by a policy committee in the summer and early fall of 1989. Although
more mechanical, even these sessions were facilitated and handled
creatively. At the final session, a local radio announcer and
talk show host used his roving microphone to work among the break-out
groups and help communicate their concerns and enthusiasms with
regard to the final draft.
The
Hard Work of Visioning. As important as these major
formal sessions and the smaller mini-sessions were in pushing
the community toward its first-year goal of creating an implementable
vision, they represent only a part of the story. A small, but
extremely dedicated and competent staff was almost overwhelmed
many times by the simple need to collate and disseminate information
being generated by all this motion. In addition, the process was
being pushed daily by enthusiastic and energetic policy committee
members, particularly the committee's very able chair, Herb Ely,
who virtually devoted 15 months to the project.
It is
impossible in this short space to chronicle the effort that was
required to hammer out community goals and vision elements from
this kind of collaborative process. Simply drafting the final
vision statement, which is only one page long, required numerous
and at times quite tedious meetings of the drafting and policy
committee, and took most of the last six months of 1989.
Here
is another lesson for other communities. To successfully link
genuine citizen participation with concrete and implementable
strategic planning required nonstop work on parallel tracks. Without
proper staffing and leadership superimposed by the committee structure,
large groups from the community would probably still be working
on the vision statement. On the other hand, if the identical vision
had been created by the policy committee without the larger forum
process, its successful implementation would be much less likely.
Phase
I Outcomes. After 15 months of effort, the Phoenix
Futures Forum had answered all of its initial strategic planning
questions. Written answers were contained in the Forum's formal
Vision Statement (How do we get there?) and in two official reports.
[14]
In a successful effort to make its final report readable and maximize
interest in it, Phoenix 2015 was written as science fiction. It
moves the reader into the future.
Perhaps
the most important product of Futures Forum, Phase I, was the
energy and interest in civic matters that had been created. Information
had been absorbed, battles fought, and questions answered. It
was now time to apply this new found civic muscle; to act.
Phase
II—Organization and Implementation
Moving
Toward Implementation. During
their November 1989 Forum meeting, members agreed to continue the
Futures Forum process and to enter a two-year implementation phase.
Members were committed to nurturing adoption and implementation
of as many of their hundreds of recommendations as possible. They
had a strong sense of ownership and a desire to see the process
through to final implementation of key recommendations.
The Futures Forum Policy Committee, with the
backing of the full membership, made three key recommendations
to the Phoenix City Council on January 30, 1990:
The Council
unanimously accepted all three recommendations. Their action began
the formal implementation of Futures Forum recommendations.
Preliminary
Action Plan. The Report
of the Futures Forum (Phoenix 2015: The Report of the Phoenix
Futures Forum and Technical Supplement to the Report) divided
its many recommendations into three groups. "Easy As" are actions
such as naming neighborhoods and expanding curbside recycling
that could be taken with only minor adjustments or changes in
policies, regulations or activities of the city and other jurisdictions.
"Can Do Bs" are actions compatible with current activities of
the city, other agencies or private groups, such as updating the
city general plan to include an environmental dimension or reduction
of visual pollution, but which would need Futures Forum effort
and support to be readily accomplished. "Major Initiative Cs,"
summarized in the "21 Initiatives for the 21st Century" section
of the Forum Report, are the major new initiatives, such as continuing
the Futures Forum itself and coordination, integration and decentralization
of community services. This last group of recommendations requires
considerable change in policies and activities and may take many
years to accomplish.
The general
Action Plan approved by the city council included the following
steps:
Action
Committee. The Futures Forum Policy Committee, after
receiving approval and support of the Mayor and Council, began organizing
the Forum for a two-year implementation effort. In close consulta tion
with the Mayor and members of the Council, the Futures Forum developed
a strategy for implementation based upon a large Action Committee.
Committee
Size and Membership. The Action Committee has had between
90 and 124 members. To avoid being called the "Committee of 100,"
which some Forum participants took to have negative connotations,
membership is kept below or above 100. Currently it has 112 members.
Members
of the Action Committee are appointed by the mayor with approval
of the council for two-year terms. Appointment by the mayor was
chosen as a mode of selection for several reasons. The members
of nearly all of the city's boards and commissions are appointed
by the mayor. Appointment by the mayor is honorific. Such appointment
also expresses the continuing interest and support of the Forum
by the mayor.
All but
15 or the original 93 appointees to the Action Committee had some
involvement in the planning efforts of the Forum. Members have
found activities of the Action Committee demanding and some of
the original members have been replaced either because they were
never active or decided to drop out of the Action Committee. Mayor
Johnson (Goddard's successor) appointed some 24 replacement and
additional members in January 1991.
Members
are drawn from the past active participants in the Futures Forum
as well as from a body of nominees by members of the council and
the community at large. Table I presents the basic demographic
characteristics and organizational ties of its members. The committee
is a fair cross section of organizations and groups active in
neighborhood , volunteer, private business, and service organizations.
Action
Groups and Work Plans. Members of the Futures Forum
understand that they alone cannot hope to implement the hundreds
of recommendations they have made. Instead, from the beginning
of the implementation efforts, the Futures Forum has reached out
to the major components of the Valley's governance system—governments,
businesses, voluntary groups and associations, neighborhoods and
citizens—to gain sponsorship and support for the many recommended
changes. The Futures Forum tries to mobilize the entire community
and to spin off ownership of its various recommendations.
The heart
of the implementation effort are the six Action Groups formed
to carry out specific items of the 21 Initiatives and to work
on implementation of other recommendations within their areas
of interest. The six committees are: Arts, culture and recreation;
Basic economic resources, Citizenship and governance; Environment
and resources; Neighborhoods, services and community; Transportation
and urban form.
Mayor
Paul Johnson wanted these action groups to remain in close communication
with the City Council. To this end, an existing or newly created
subcommittee of the Council was matched to each of these six action
groups. Each group relates to a specific council subcommittee
as well as to a member of the senior staff of the City Manager's
office, usually one of the deputy city managers. In addition,
members of the Action groups are charged to communicate regularly
with appropriate City boards, commissions and advisory groups.
A detailed
work plan was developed by the members of the six Action groups.
The plans laid out the top priorities and strategies for the Groups
of the succeeding 18-month period. Table 2 lists the 51 major
projects selected by the Action groups for implementation efforts
during the period. Currently, the Action groups use several approaches
to work toward implementation, including:
Resources
for Implementation The Futures Forum depends upon three sources
of resources:
- In-kind
contributions, largely the labor of hundreds of volunteers.
This includes individuals and organizations. Examples include
the 114 people on the six Action Groups and hundreds more working
on task forces, more than a dozen action partners, members of
the city staff, and a "loaned executive" from Arizona State
University who works full-time in the Strategic Issues Department
of the city, largely on Futures Forum concerns.
- Contributions
from individuals, groups, associations, and private firms to
the Futures Forum trust fund. The current balance is more than
$45,000. A major fund-raising effort is in progress.
- Funding,
$115,000 for 1990-91, in the City of Phoenix's budget to provide
full-time strategic planning staff support and consultant services
for the Futures Forum.
In addition
to these existing resources, Futures Forum staff, task forces, and
action partners are preparing proposals for submission to foundation
and governmental sponsors. These proposals are tailored to one or
more specific Forum initiatives, goals or programs. For example,
the "Learning Research Enterprise," a proposed major center for
conducting and disseminating research about learning and teaching,
has its own Futures Forum sponsored task force and its own resource
development efforts.
In-kind contributions, usually human labor,
are the backbone of the resources. These people are living evidence
of the potential for public-private volunteer-citizen collaboration.
Coupled with the significant dollar contributions of the city
these human resources provide an active base for continued action.
Participation
and Support of the City Government
The funds
provided from the municipa1 budget are important, but on1y indicate
a small part of the total city contribution and participation. Not
all city departments, boards and commissions, and employees are
committed supporters of the Futures forum. In fact, some resist
its efforts. By and large, however, support and participation of
the council, staff and members of boards and commissions has been
good.
In a democracy of competing groups and interests,
no one group or faction, including the Futures Forum, can have
its way. Nonetheless, there have been significant successes. One
example (work on an environmental ordinance) can illustrate both
the opportunities for and limits of Futures Forum initiatives.
Initiative Six of the 21 Initiatives for the
21st Century states:
Design a comprehensive model municipal
environmental ordinance. Target recycling, littering, hazardous
waste disposal, landscape materials, allergenic plants, visual
and noise pollution, and develop sensitive and practical regulations
which can be used by Phoenix and other communities.
This goal was slightly modified during the early
weeks of the implementation phase to focus on the development and
adoption of an environmental ordinance for the City of Phoenix.
Participants choose this strategy for two reasons. First, the city's
Environmental Quality Commission was in the preliminary stages of
such consideration. Second, if Phoenix were to adopt a strong environmental
ordinance, as the state's largest city, it would set a strong example
for other cities in the Valley.
Staff of the city's Environmental Program and members of
the Environmental Quality Commission joined with a task force
of the Futures Forum Environmental and Resources Action Group
to work on this proposal. City staff were active in developing
the work plan for this Action Group. The Commission expressed
early support for the Group's efforts. The task force working
on the draft ordinance came to include not only members of the
Futures Forum Action Committee, but also individuals from the
University, law firms and environmental groups. The task force
stays in close communication with the Environmental Quality Commission,
staff of the city Environmental Program, members of the council
subcommittee, and the appropriate deputy city manager. Their interactions
are a working model of how to integrate diverse and numerous participants.
These efforts are also an excellent illustration of how municipal
democracy really works. True to Initiative Six, the Futures Forum
sponsored task force began work on a "hard" regulatory ordinance.
Senior city staff and some members of the council subcommittee
preferred a "soft" environmental policy.
At first, it appeared there was an impasse. The mayor, however,
made it clear that it was important for the groups to work together
to produce useful legislation for the city. The task force, with
support form the mayor's and manager's offices—but now with
a better understanding of the need for a policy to set the foundation
for regulations—is currently working on an environmental
policy for the city as a step toward the ordinance.
This ongoing experience demonstrates three important lessons:
Major
Benefits
The Futures
Forum is good governance. It has involved the energy, effort, and
commitment of thousands of citizens and hundreds of organizations.
It has systematically brought citizens closer to their governments
and governments closer to citizens. It has melded private, public,
volunteer, and neighborhood groups together in focused efforts.
It comes close to realizing its current motto, "Creating a Community
of Good Neighbors," in which all sectors are neighborly and work
together to achieve share goals and objectives.
Success in governance is always hard to measure
in the short term. Many of the Forum proposals reach across traditional
cleavage lines and far into the future. Nonetheless, early results
are impressive.
- Several
Forum recommendations are being incorporated in the city's Genral
and Corporate Strategic Plans. Additional emphasis on recycling
is evidence of coordination of city efforts with Forum recommendations.
Further, achievement of Futures Forum recommendations is now
one of the criteria by which the performance of key administrators
is measured.
- Action
groups, task forces and action partners of the Futures Forum
provide city departments, top administrators and council members
with alternative information and knowledge. Collectively, they
inform key decision makers about community needs, plans and
actions. They are another layer of the local governance system.
They complement the more traditional business dominated interest
group structures and enrich political communication.
- The
Futures Forum, through its development and training efforts
as well as through its own practices, has made many people and
organizations more proficient in planning, decision making,
and the mobilization of community resources. There is an expanding
cadre of persons skilled in facilitation, preparation of proposals,
network development and action planning among the city staff,
neighborhood associations and action partners.
- The
Peirce Report of 1987 noted the need to develop, mobilize and
capitalize on new leadership in Phoenix. The Futures Forum is
providing a platform for emerging, community-oriented leaders.
New people are being drawn into community and city leadership
roles via the Futures Forum processes. These range from positions
as the head of neighborhood associations and membership on boards
and commissions to a seat on the city council.
Lessons
from the Futures Forum Experience
Political
innovation seldom is fully successful. The Futures Forum has produced
major benefits and considerable change. Governance in Phoenix is
better because of the Forum. There are, however, limits and continuing
challenges. Successes and failures abound. What are some practical
lessons from this mixed blessing?
- The
Futures Forum is expensive.
The total amount of time and resources devoted to planning
and implementation of Futures Forum recommendations is staggering.
So far, more than $265,000 in city funds and $250,000 in private
contributions have been expended over the three years. Arizona
State University has made in-kind contributions of more than
$110,000 during 1990-91. Thousands of individual and organized
volunteers have contributed in excess of a minimum (estimated)
of 10,000 hours to the planning and 20,000 hours to the implementation
phases of the Futures Forum. Further, as Futures Forum participants
and recommendations became part of the activities of the city
and other local and state governments, additional time and effort
were added to the "Futures Forum bill".
- The
vision and strategic planning processes worked well.
The hundreds of persons and groups who participated in the planning
process produced a long, but well-stated vision that stresses
the sense of community so vital to Phoenix and the Futures Forum
process. It was adopted by the City Council as the statement
to guide the city into the next century.
- Managing
volunteers is difficult. The
Forum struggled with development of effective organization for
implementation. The linkage with the City Council subcommittees
is a good idea that worked modestly well. On the plus side,
it provided regular access and communication. On the negative
side, Action Group chairs did not fully cultivate and use the
linkage.
Individual task forces proved effective.
Mostly self-selected by interest, members were able to focus
on specific programs and tasks. Some of the most impressive
accomplishments—the Learning Research Enterprise, the
Model Environmental Ordinance, and the Neighborhood/Community
Festival—resulted from very focused, semi-independent
task force groups.
Supporting, coordinating, and monitoring
the fifty task forces, work groups, and action partners is
difficult. The Futures Forum Action Committee and its Management
Group have worked hard to restructure their formal organization
to accommodate the loose coalition of groups which do most
of the implementation work.
A continuing challenge is providing staff,
outreach, marketing and training support for the various work
groups. The formal staff of the Futures Forum is limited to
one full-time director/planner, a full-time consultant, a
loaned executive, and one-half a clerical person. Even with
the assistance of city staff these resources are stretched
thin.
- Translating
the enthusiasm of visioning into action is demanding.
Preparation of the work plans by the six Action Groups was more
difficult and took more time than imagined at the beginning
of the implementation period. Some tactical errors contributed
to the problem. The leadership had one sense of direction and
the members had another. Leadership did not clarify the issues,
but tried to "force" the members of the Action Groups through
a top-down process. Members were not oriented to or trained
well in the activities of preparing work plans. After some false
starts, facilitators were hired to provide a structured environment
for work plan activities. Productivity improved, but completing
the plans became an end itself.
After the work plans were presented to
the city council and adopted, it was difficult to re-mobilize
members of the Action Group. The Groups decomposed to their
most viable units, task force groups. Much of the actual implementation
effort is being conducted by semi-detached task forces with
minimal linkage to the Action Groups and the Action Committee
A kind of decentralized, task-defined organization evolved.
- The
task orientation of implementation moved the Futures Forum away
from an alternative futures/strategic mode toward a more instrumental,
tactical action mode. Specific projects and programs,
however visionary, became the focus of Futures Forum efforts.
As might be expected, the pressure to produce—from the
city council, city staff, constituent groups and task forces—moved
participants into the conventional manner of incremental change.
Success began to be measured by marginal adjustments made, rather
than by chunks of the vision accomplished.
- Outside
assistance can be helpful. Throughout
the Phoenix Futures Forum process, the National Civic League
provided general guidance and assistance. Because they had conducted
similar projects in other communities, they were able to help
Phoenix avoid some common pitfalls and mistakes. They also provided
positive models of how other communities had successfully dealt
with similar challenges. The neutrality of the organization
permitted them to successfully facilitate meetings in which
highly divergent interests and perspectives were represented.
Conclusion:
Implications for Community Collaboration
The Phoenix
Futures Forum process is complex, multi-faceted and ongoing. It
is a moving target and therefore impossible to evaluate finally.
On the other hand, it should be clear from this discussion that
the Futures Forum has forced many diverse individuals and groups
in the community to think about their community and its future.
It has responded to the early challenge of The Peirce Report which
was to develop "a shared civic vision, . . . a vision of what this
buoyant civilization at its finest might become." Simply working
together to create that plan for the future seemed like an elusive
goal when the challenge was issued. But the vision is now implanted,
and the Futures Forum is hard at work making the vision a reality.
The speed and power of this process speaks
to the need to further investigate this and similar innovations
in community collaboration and democratic process. But if these
processes could work this well in Phoenix—particularly under
the conditions of the mid-1980s described earlier—they can
work anywhere. What is needed is skilled and tolerant leadership
that understands the need and opportunity for well-facilitated,
genuine citizen involvement in public affairs and a commitment
of the required amount of energy and resources. Local democratic
futures may be in better shape than we sometimes think.
Figure
1:
Major Events in the Evolution of the Phoenix Futures Forum
February 6 & 8, 1987:
The Pierce Report published
June
4-7, 1987: Valley-wide Town Hall held.
May,
1988: Mayor Goddard proposes Futures Forum idea in
his State of the City message.
July 8, 1988: Futures Forum Planning
Committee appointed by Phoenix City Council.
October
7-8, 1988: Forum I
February
24-29, 1989: Forum II
June
10, 1989: Forum III
November
18, 1989: Forum IV
January
30, 1990:Policy Committee presents recommendations
to city council; council unanimously adopts them.
Summer,
1990: Action Committee prepares work plan. Civic Summit
held. Strategic Issues Department of city government is created
and given responsibility for staffing Forum.
Spring,
1991: Implementation continues.
Table
1:
Futures Forum Action Committee Analyses
by Ethnicity, Sex, District, and Out of the City Profession Abbreviated
online.
Gender:
Male—55%, Female—45%
Ethnicity:
Black—6% (50% Male, 50% Female)
Hispanic—10% (78% Male, 22% Female)
White—84% (58% Male, 42% Female)
Profession:
Principal/Business Owner—17%
Schools/Colleges/Universities—12%
Government—13%
Business Employees—34%
Attorneys—2%
Architect—3%
Student—2%
Volunteer—10%
Church/Nonprofit—6%
Of the total 93 membership, 28% are CEO/Director/Manager/Vice
President.
Source:
Phoenix Management and Budget Department, June 4, 1990.
Table
2:
Forum Projects Underway, April 1,1991
Multi-Purpose
Projects:
Arts,
Culture, Recreation, Sports and Historic Preservation:
Basic
Economic and Resource Development:
Citizenship
and Governance:
Community,
Neighborhoods, Education and Services:
Environment
and Natural Resources:
Transportation
and Urban Form:
Notes
1.
Wayne Balmer, Mesa Community Development Manager, as quoted in Rob
Melnick, Ed., Urban Growth In Arizona: A Policy Analysis (Tempe,
Ariz.: Arizona State University, Morrison Institute For Public Policy,
1988).
2.
Economist, 311 (May 13, 1989).
3.
Tom R. Rex, "Metropolitan Phoenix Dominates Arizona's Population
Growth," Arizona Business, 35 (May 1988); and Jonathan Peterson,
"Valley Image Shines," Los Angeles Times, May 16,1991.
4.
Lester M. Salamon, "Urban Politics, Urban Policy, Case Studies,
and Political Theory," Public Administration Review, 37, (1977),
p. 422.
5.
There are many examples of this general point in U.S. intergovernmental
affairs and public policy. The issue is best developed by Walter
Williams. See, for example, his classic The Implementation Perspective
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
6.
For example, see the following reports which raised many of these
issues and were discussed in various community forums, normally
Arizona Town Halls: Albert Karnig and John Stuart Hall, Eds.,
County Governmentin Arizona: Challenges of the 1980s (Tempe: Arizona
State University, School of Public Affairs,1984); John Stuart
Hall and Lawrence Mankin, Eds., Our Cultural Values: Past, Present,
and Futures (Arizona State University, School of Public Affairs,1989);
John Stuart Hall, et al., Government Spending and the Nonprofit
Sector in Two Arizona Communities: Phoenix/Maricopa County and
Pinal County (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 1985); John
Stuart Hall, Ed., Growth Management and Land Use Planning in Arizona
(Tempe: Arizona State University, School of Public Affairs, 1985);
and John Stuart Hall, Ed., Phoenix: Working Toward a Quality Future
(Tempe: Arizona State University, School of Public Affairs, 1986).
Although these reports were at times critical of the area's direction,
and were frankly designed to stimulate debate, others maintained
a consistent optimistic posture. Most notable was the Hudson Institute
project on Phoenix (referred to as "Visions of the Future") during
the early 1980s, under the direction of Herman Kahn. For an undestanding
of this perspective, see Kahn's The Coming Boom (New York: Simon
& Schuster, Inc., 1983).
7.
It became apparent after interviewing many community leaders for
The Peirce Report that not a lot of thought had been given to
the Plan B question. Curtis Johnson first raised the issue. Ironically,
in the recession that reached Phoenix two years later, some of
those interviewed lost pesonal fortunes because they lacked a
"Plan B."
8.
Quotes are from Pat Murphy's foreword to the reprint of The Peirce
Report in Neal Peirce, et al., Urban Challenges: A Vision for
the Future (Phoenix: Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., 1987). The report
was the result of interviews and research conducted in Phoenix
during November and December, 1986. The research team was made
up of Neal Peirce, Christopher T. Gates, John S. Hall, and Curtis
W. Johnson. The report, with accompanying news articles, first
appeared in The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette on Sunday,
February 8, 1987.
9.
John Stuart Hall, Ed., Valley Growth: United or Fragmented (Tempe:
Arizona State University, School of Public Affairs, 1987).
10.
John Kolbe, "The Town Hall: Splendid in Concept, Flawed in Execution,"
The Phoenix Gazette, June 8, 1987.
11.
For a thorough discussion of the nuts and bolts of this process,
see Rod Engelen, "Community Goal Setting: The Phoenix Experience"
in Bruce McClenden, Ed., Practical Planning: New Theories For
Effective Community Plans (Washington, D.C.: American Planning
Association Press, 1991). Mr. Engelen's chapter was very useful
in preparing this article, as were his insights in a lengthy interview,
conducted May, 1991.
12.
Engelen, page 4.
13.
Engelen, pp. 5-6.
14.
Phoenix 2015: Phoenix Futures Forum Report and Technical Supplement
to the Report.
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