Using Visioning in a Comprehensive Planning Process

A visioning exercise can bring a community together as people recognize their shared values and purposes, and articulate a shared vision of their community. The vision serves to lay out what the community should look like physically, socially and environmentally in 5, 10 or 20 years. A visioning exercise creates a sense of ownership in community residents to the extent that they want to see their vision come to fruition over a period of years. A consensus-building technique Within a comprehensive planning process, visioning can be used as a consensus-building technique. Visioning facilitates the development of an effective comprehensive plan by focusing attention,“on how to organize collective thought and action within an inter-organizational network in which no one person, group, organization or institution is fully in charge”.