In my International Transportation Planning class, we had a guest speaker from the Florida Department of Transportation. One of his main duties was facilitating conversations with stakeholder who would be navigating or investing in Florida's various schemes of transport. This included the public and private sectors as well as incorporating interested nongovernmental organizations. When Hodgson mentioned the importance of educating different stakeholders to appeal to a variety of needs, I realized how crucial this is to planning in general. If you do not assess the perspectives of the people you are trying to cater to, you could easily make poor policy decisions that would result in a negative push-back from those people. When it comes to agriculture, I would see community leaders, local and related nonprofits, nutrition or dietary figures, environmental and public health officials, as well as interested planners working well collaboratively in affected positive change. Besides the stakeholders, the report also pointed out issues that we have discussed in class that need to be evaluated such as household food security, culturally appropriate food, the number and location of food sources, etc.
It also responded with what assessments could best hone in on the greatest issues of the community:
- Community Food Assessments
- Comprehensive Urban-Agriculture Studies
- Studies of Land Resources
As someone trying to understand the different technicalities of the planning world, it was quite effective to read about the different levels of comprehensive plans in comparison with climate change policy action. Hodgson also examined ways these goals could be accomplished on these different levels. Local level has the capacity to create tax incentives for urban agriculture, while regional level has the ability to identify working agriculture land to understand the flow of produce better. Relating specifically to climate change action, environmental threats caused by green house gases and global warming lead to municipalities including urban and periurban agriculture as a shadow recommended strategy in planning docs.
My only questions for this reading would be:
How do we identify these stakeholders well? How can we make these comprehensive plans more than an ambiguous ideal by creating a call to action? In an area where there is not a strong food justice movement, do planners have the right to try to instigate that effort without much community involvement?
My only questions for this reading would be:
How do we identify these stakeholders well? How can we make these comprehensive plans more than an ambiguous ideal by creating a call to action? In an area where there is not a strong food justice movement, do planners have the right to try to instigate that effort without much community involvement?
Concerning your very last question Alex, I think the urban planners job becomes even harder when there is not a strong food justice movement. I feel as though planners have a duty to not only involve the general community in the process, but to educate them as to why the planners are proposing food system changes in the first place. So planners should start and spearhead the food initiative, but also push the community to get behind them in the planning process. And with such an important issue that impacts everyone in the community, I don't think it would be as difficult to get them involved as it is with other planning problems.
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