Advancing Sustainability Visioning Practice in Planning—The General Plan Update in Phoenix, Arizona

Abstract

Sustainability visioning—creating descriptions of sustainable and desirable future states—has become a prominent tool in urban planning to guide how cities are structured, how they function, and how they are governed. In this article, we present the application of a sustainability visioning approach (SPARC) in support of the City of Phoenix's General Plan Update. The study strove to overcome deficits in current visioning practices, including sufficiently accounting for systems relationships, conflicting values, sustainability principles and stakeholder input; combining public participation with capacity building; and linking creative with analytical activities. We discuss and draw conclusions from this study on how to improve professional and civic capacity for visioning as well as how to bridge the gap between advanced planning practice and research.

Keywords::

• visions
• visioning
• sustainable futures
• methodology
• participatory research

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our colleague Braden Kay (Arizona State University) for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We also thank and recognize the tremendous efforts of the visioning team in the project ‘The Future of Phoenix – Crafting Sustainable Development Strategies’: staff from the City of Phoenix Planning Department, ASU faculty and students and fellows from the Urban Ecology IGERT.

Notes

^1. A recent example of these conditions is Arizona Senate Bill (SB) 1507 (PROHIBITING THE STATE AND ITS POLITICAL SUB-DIVISIONS FROM ADOPTING OR IMPLEMENTING THE UNITED NATIONS RIO DECLARATION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT), which passed the AZ Senate in March 2012, before it failed in the House in May 2012.

Additional information

Funding

This material is partly based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number 0504248], [grant number SBE-1026865].