AMES, Iowa -- As Iowans seek ways to make their communities more attractive, Iowa State University Extension is helping local elected officials and volunteers better understand how to use planning to create great places, cities and neighborhoods where people want to live.

According to ISU Extension specialists Gary Taylor and Alan Vandehaar, planning allows communities to make efficient decisions about where and when to build streets, parks and other public works and to invest tax dollars wisely.

“Planning gives a community a way to set up some strategies for how it’s going to grow,” said Taylor, who also is an assistant professor in community and regional planning at Iowa State. “It also allows communities an opportunity to minimize conflict between landowners. If you have a land use plan that designates where different types of land uses should be located in the future, then it gives the individual private landowner an opportunity to make investments that make sense.”

Extension offers training programs in planning for local elected officials and “citizen planners,” such as the volunteers on the planning and zoning commission or the board of adjustment, Vandehaar said. “We’re interested in working with more people around the state in community planning. That’s our role.”

A three-hour workshop provides an introduction to planning and zoning, while the 12-hour Planning Officials Academy covers the development review process from start to finish, including common planning, zoning and subdivision processes, reading and reviewing site plans, running effective board meetings and the ethical considerations in zoning cases. The ISU Extension specialists also will provide specific training for a community.

“Since 2005 we’ve done roughly 35 to 40 workshops around the state and reached about 1,800 people,” Taylor said.

With education in planning, today’s local leaders and citizen planners aren’t settling for the cookie cutter approach to planning prevalent in the 1970s, when many communities generated comprehensive plans with federal funds.

“The plans all looked like their neighbors’ plans. There never really was any local flavor to it; there wasn’t any local buy-in by citizens,” Taylor said.

Today citizens are taking a more active approach to planning, he said. “When you have citizens actively involved in planning, then you also have a strong group of advocates in your community that are making sure the provisions of the plan are being carried out.”

With active citizens, local vision, public leadership and a combination of private and public development, communities can become great places to live, Vandehaar added.

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