Aspen Area Community Plan

Aspen, Colorado

Creating a community vision–one that is inspired from a broad base of citizens values and is inclusive of often underrepresented groups–was the purpose of this planning process. Over 1,200 people engaged in a community survey, focus groups, or large group meetings, exceeding the expectations of the City of Aspen and Pitkin County officials. Feedback was solicited from additional participants through creative outreach methods such as “meeting-in-a box,” web-based meetings, blogs, personal interviews, public television programing, a project website and branding, radio spots, a series of newspaper articles, a Speakers Series, and Facebook updates.

The previous Aspen Area Community Plan had been updated nearly ten-years previously and was the work of task-forces. This update process strove to re-assess the vision of the previous plan and to be updated by the agenda of citizens. The process created many opportunities for the community to discuss topics of increasing concern including transportation, historic preservation, affordable housing, managing growth, economics, public services, the Aspen Idea, environmental quality, parks and open space, the airport business and residential center and the trade-offs and interconnectedness of these topics.

The process specifically reached out to such groups which are often underrepresented in governmental processes in this community such as the workforce residing in neighboring bedroom communities, youth, transient workers, the Latino population, individuals with little free-time and second-homeowners.

The public engagement through document adoption process was completed within eight-months and was viewed as an enjoyable, engaging, and useful process by the community and local officials. When asked at the end of a three-hour keypad polling session if they liked the method of public engagement 91 percent of participants agreed.