Collaboration and community participation is improving walkability in Louisville — and changing the way neighbors participate in city planning. When the ACTIVE Louisville partnership began working with the city’s planning department on the city’s first ever walkability study, they engaged neighborhood residents from the beginning. This engagement gave birth to the idea of developing a mapping tool that could be incorporated into all neighborhood planning in Louisville.

“It seems obvious that the people who walk in a neighborhood know the most about walking in that neighborhood,” says Steve Sizemore, a planner with Louisville Metro Planning and Design. When he began working on the ACTIVE Louisville project—an Active Living by Design community partnership funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — and saw how neighborhoods were brought into the process, he realized the planning department didn’t have a comprehensive program for community engagement — and decided to change that.

“At the time we were doing 2 or 3 neighborhood plans and we'd never had a program to look at planning,” says Sizemore. “We realized we needed a comprehensive process and decided to make neighborhood participation part of that process.” They looked at methods used by other cities, and based theirs on Kansas City’s, adapting it and fine-tuning it for the ACTIVE Louisville project.

To have the neighborhood residents map the pathways, the workshops needed to happen in just a few hours, so it could be done in an evening or on part of a Saturday. Planners begin the sessions by explaining the mapping tool — a system of symbols participants will mark on maps as they evaluate their neighborhood’s conditions and needs.

Determining the key destinations in the neighborhood comes next. The group lists all the places they walk—churches, schools, stores, and parks. Then they pair up into groups of two or three and go walking.  Each group takes the path they think is best, mapping the route and the walkability factors, such as steps, trees growing in sidewalks, or missing curbs. “We want to get the most information in the simplest way possible,” explains Sizemore. “With the tool they’re able to communicate their knowledge — does the intersection have a light? Check. Is there a ramp at the curb? No.” After the walk each group comes back to the starting point, sits down, revisits what they observed, and sets three priorities.

The process not only gives the planning team important information — it gives the neighbors power in the process. Their input helps determine priorities. “People become invested, and take their participation seriously,” says Sizemore. “There was an instance where the consultant left out some of the group’s recommendations. When we presented the draft they stood up and said ‘hey — you’re missing some of our recommendations’. We put them in, and make sure now to be thorough.

Sizemore is excited about moving forward with the process. The ACTIVE Louisville Partnership is now focused on increasing participation to include a broader demographic. They started with neighborhood associations and are now reaching out to people who don’t participate in the associations, people with lower incomes, as well as involving more youths. He says, “Active Living by Design asked how we might apply this if we involve kids.  I’m excited about finding out.

Sizemore is looking forward to improving their methods, and is committed to finding ways to create policy that makes community participation standard in neighborhood planning. “We want to establish a process where neighborhood participation means more than public meetings, where the community is involved from start to finish,” he says. “We could really make a difference here. We’ve had success so far — and this kind of success can be contagious.”

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