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November 2012 - Towns selected for 2013 community visioning program

AMES, Iowa – Seven Iowa communities have been selected to participate in the Iowa's Living Roadways Community Visioning Program in 2013.

The award-winning program integrates technical landscape planning and design techniques with sustainable community action to assist community leaders and volunteers in making sound and meaningful decisions about the local landscape.

The 2013 visioning communities are Fonda, Gilmore City, Keota, Lake City, Mapleton, Ossian and Shellsburg. The seven villages in the Amana Colonies are also participating in the 2013 program.

The program is sponsored by the Iowa Department of Transportation in partnership with Iowa State University Landscape Architecture Extension and Trees Forever, an Iowa-based nonprofit environmental advocacy organization. In addition, professional landscape architects offer expertise in creating conceptual design plans for the communities.

To qualify for the visioning program, a community must have a population of fewer than 10,000, existing transportation-related issues and a committee of volunteers willing to dedicate their time and talent to the visioning process.

Since 1996, 192 Iowa communities have benefited from the Visioning Program.

Download the map of the 2013 communities.

Contacts

Sandra Oberbroeckling, Iowa State University, 515-294-3721, soberbr@iastate.edu

Carole Teator, Trees Forever, 319-373-0650, ext. 15, cteator@treesforever.org

October 2012 - Amana Colonies visioning process assessment under way

On Tuesday, October 9, the Amana Colonies visioning committee will be hosting small-group interviews from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. throughout the colonies as part of an input gathering process under way to identify transportation needs and opportunities for enhancements in the Amanas. The interviews will focus on issues such as accessibility for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic, high traffic roadways and intersections, way-finding, and other factors impacting transportation in the Amanas.

Representatives from Iowa State University and Trees Forever will facilitate the interviews, which will be 30 minutes to an hour long. Each workshop will be tailored to address how specific demographic groups experience the transportation system in the Amana colonies. These demographic groups will include recreationists, school representatives, parents, transportation officials, conservation specialists and residents from each of the seven villages.

Residents, business people, visitors and other stakeholders are welcome to attend one of these interviews. Please click here the complete workshop schedule to find a session that addresses your concerns.

The information collected at the interviews, along with natural, historic and cultural resources assessments, will be the basis for a transportation enhancement plan for the Amana Colonies. To learn more about participating in the transportation assessment workshop or the overall visioning process, please call
Peter Hoehnle at 319-622-3105 or Carole Teator at 319-373-0650, ext. 115.

January 2012 - Towns selected for 2012 community visioning program

AMES, Iowa – Twelve Iowa communities have been selected to participate in the Iowa's Living Roadways Community Visioning Program in 2012.

The 2011 visioning communities are Calmar, Center Point, Chariton, Colo, Dyersville, Manning, Paullina, Perry, Schaller, Tabor, Tripoli and Villisca. The program is sponsored by the Iowa Department of Transportation in partnership with Iowa State University Landscape Architecture Extension and Trees Forever, an Iowa-based nonprofit environmental advocacy organization. In addition, professional landscape architects offer expertise in creating conceptual design plans for the communities.

Since 1996, 182 Iowa communities have benefited from the visioning program.

Click here to view a map of the 2012 visioning communities.

September 2010 - Iowa's Living Roadways Celebration scheduled for October 22 in Ames

AMES, Iowa - Representatives from the 2010 visioning communities will gather at the Gateway Hotel and Conference Center in Ames on Friday, October 22, for the Iowa's Living Roadways Program Annual Celebration. The event, titled "Sharing, Listening and Learning," gives visioning communities the opportunity to share their community enhancement plans with each other and with representatives from Iowa Dept. of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Iowa Dept. of Economic Development, Iowa State University and Trees Forever.

This year's meeting will take place from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and will feature roundtable discussions on transportation enhancement topics and a panel on the ins and outs of creating and placing community signs that effectively tell our stories.

Invitations for the celebration will be sent this month with more details about the agenda, as well as information about making hotel reservations. For more information, kindly contact Ashley Dye at Trees Forever, 319-373-0650, ext. 25.

December 2009 - Towns selected for 2010 community visioning program

AMES, Iowa – Thirteen Iowa communities have been selected to participate in the Iowa's Living Roadways Community Visioning Program in 2010.

The 2010 visioning communities are Carson, Clarksville, Estherville, Gunder and St. Olaf, Hudson, Independence, Knoxville, Rockford, Rolfe, Story City, Walford, and West Liberty. The communities of Gunder and St. Olaf, which are both located on the River Bluffs Scenic Byway, will collaborate during the visioning process.

Since 1996, 159 Iowa communities have benefited from the visioning program.

October, 2009 - Community Visioning Program application deadline extended

The deadline for applications for the 2010 Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program has been extended to Friday, October 30, 2009. Eligible communities are those with populations of fewer than 10,000, existing transportation-related issues and a committee of volunteers willing to dedicate their time and talent to the visioning process.

The Visioning Program integrates technical landscape planning and design techniques with sustainable community action to empower local leaders through a planning process that results in a transportation enhancement plan that reflects the values and identity of the community.

To learn about the visioning process, click here.

June, 2009 - Community Visioning Program reaches out to disaster communities

In response to the storm and flood damage in Iowa last year, the visioning program will also conduct a two-year, long-term planning process in five of the 12 communities: Parkersburg, New Hartford, Clermont, Elgin and Elkader. In May 2008, Parkersburg and New Hartford were devastated by a tornado. Clermont, Elgin and Elkader, which are located in the Turkey River corridor, experienced flooding in summer 2008. While still recovering from tornado damage, New Hartford was also flooded.

"We reserved part of our efforts to assist communities after they come out of planning for basic needs to help them with planning related to things such as buyouts, vegetation and levees that would affect transportation use," said Julia Badenhope, Iowa State University associate professor of landscape architecture and visioning program director.

The seven communities that will participate in the traditional, one-year visioning process are Garner, Glenwood, Lansing, Laurens, Lohrville, Riverside and Robins. Visioning communities complete a process that includes identifying issues, investigating physical and cultural aspects of the town’s landscape, setting goals for change, creating strategies to address issues and meet goals, and developing an implementation plan.

The disaster communities will follow a similar process, but with additional dimensions related to their specific circumstances. For example, in New Hartford, the planning process will build on the town’s long-term recovery plan developed with the Rebuild Iowa Office.

Based on planning already done, New Hartford could look at the pedestrian system that links flood-related property buyouts in the community and look at how buyout affects pedestrian and recreation patterns, Badenhope said. The community is also considering proposals for community growth beyond the floodplain, raising questions about larger-scale connectivity. Issues in Parkersburg include developing a landscape plan for the highway corridor and improving access between residential and recreational areas across the newly restored highway corridor.

Elkader, Elgin and Clermont, all located in the Turkey River corridor, are interested in articulating a regional identity for the river corridor and associated communities, in part to develop community value as a recreational destination and also as a great place to live. To integrate these two objectives, the communities will individually conduct transportation enhancement and local needs planning and concurrently develop a regional identity. In other words, these communities will be “working from the inside out,” said Badenhope.

In addition to the cultural, visual and transportation inventories that each town will perform individually, there will be a mapping workshop with all three communities in early June. This workshop will offer area residents the opportunity to identify and describe places along the whole corridor that are significant to them.

April, 2009 - Extension specialists help program "focus" on transportation planning

A Riverside man assists his wife in completing the online survey on a computer in the school library Iowa State University Extension Community and Economic Development has partnered with the Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program to add a new dimension to the program’s transportation-enhancement planning process. With help from community development specialists Abbie Gaffey and Sandra Scholl, the visioning program is adding focus groups as a data-gathering technique.

One of the primary goals of the visioning program is to assist towns in the process of building liveable communities—that is, creating an environment that meets residents’ basic needs and is aesthetically pleasing.

Since 2005, ISU has been surveying randomly selected samples of residents from visioning communities to better understand the transportation enhancement needs and desires of the community members. ISU analyzes the data and creates summary reports for community steering committees, providing them with a framework within which to set goals for the visioning process. In 2008, the process was streamlined and enhanced through a shift from paper to online surveys. The survey addresses transportation enhancement issues and allows respondents to draw the routes they take when commuting, biking, running and walking on interactive maps.

In order to understand the links between local experience and routes selected, the online survey is being conducted in conjunction with focus groups from five demographic areas: senior citizens, parents, youth, adults who engage in active recreation, and visioning steering committee members. Gaffey and Scholl are facilitating the focus groups, as well as providing training in focus group facilitation to Trees Forever field staff who are working with the visioning communities. In addition, ISU CED Director Tim Borich trained a team of ISU students on the focus group process.

One-day focus group/survey workshops are being held in each community through mid-May, and the results of the sessions will be available to the community committees as they begin to identify and prioritize goals.

"The benefit of having focus groups rather than doing random sample surveys is the richness of the qualitative data collected," said Julia Badenhope, ISU associate professor of landscape architecture and visioning program director.

Roger Hunt, Trees Forever field coordinator, helped facilitate focus groups in the towns of Robins and Riverside. Hunt, who has been with community visioning from its start, said that focus groups add to the overall process because they offer a venue in which participants closely examine transportation issues.

For more information on Extension consulting and facilitation services, visit the Program Builder Web site, www.extension.iastate.edu/programbuilder/, under the topic of leadership and organizational development.

July, 2008 - Community Visioning Program makes route come alive for 2008 RAGBRAI riders

Thanks to the Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program, cyclists enjoyed a more beautiful Iowa during the 2008 Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI). This year’s RAGBRAI route passed through 15 communities that are making Iowa’s roads and towns more visually appealing and environmentally diverse by participating in this unique program.

Since 1996, the Visioning Program has provided 149 small Iowa communities access to professional landscape planning and design assistance. Through a series of planning meetings, a volunteer committee works with a Trees Forever facilitator, a professional landscape architect and a design team from Iowa State University to identify potential landscaping projects and to create images showing how finished projects might look.

The communities along the RAGBRAI route are a mixture of current communities that are still developing concept plans, recent communities, and communities that were some of the first to go through the process. Jefferson, for instance, was one of three communities that went through community visioning when the program was a pilot program through ISU Extension Landscape Architecture.

The visioning communities and their Visioning Program years along the route from west to east are: Missouri Valley, Shelby, Harlan, Kimballton, Exira, Jefferson, Grand Junction, State Center, Le Grand, Toledo, Belle Plaine, North Liberty, Solon, Lisbon and Tipton. Two of these communities, Exira and Kimballton, participated in a corridor enhancement pilot program that applied the visioning program participatory design process to the U.S. Highway 71 corridor in Audubon County.

The types of completed projects that cyclists observed along the route include new entryway signage in Missouri Valley and Solon, roadside plantings in Exira, Jefferson, and Toledo, trail development in State Center, and downtown streetscaping in Lisbon.

Click here to see a map and images of the visioning communities on the RAGBRAI route in PDF format.

September, 2007 – Community Visioning Program Applications Available

The Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program is currently accepting applications for the 2008 program. Eligible communities are those with populations of fewer than 10,000, existing transportation-related issues and a committee of volunteers willing to dedicate their time and talent to the visioning process.

The Visioning Program integrates technical landscape planning and design techniques with sustainable community action to empower local leaders through a planning process that results in an enhancement plan that reflects the values and identity of the community.

To learn about the visioning process, click here.

Communities selected to participate are required to contribute $1,000 toward program implementation. In return, the visioning program provides professional services valued at more than $50,000. Since 1996, 137 communities throughout the state have benefited from the program.

One significant change to the Visioning Program in 2008 is the opportunity for communities that completed the Community Visioning Program more than four years ago to re-apply for additional assistance. This opportunity, titled “Renewing Community Vision,” follows the same application process as Community Visioning. However, past communities will be required to demonstrate a continued need for assistance and provide documentation of a $4,000 cash match.

The program is sponsored by the Iowa Department of Transportation in partnership with Iowa State University Landscape Architecture Extension and Trees Forever, an Iowa-based nonprofit with a mission to plant and care for trees and the environment by empowering people, building community, and promoting stewardship.

Communities interested in applying to the 2008 Community Visioning Program or the Renewing Community Vision Program can download an application at by clicking here.

Applications must be postmarked by October 1. Selections will be announced in early November.

November 17, 2006 – Iowa’s Living Roadways Program Celebrates 10 Years

In 2006 the Iowa’s Living Roadways Program celebrates ten years of landscape enhancement in Iowa’s rural communities. This important milestone was the theme of the program’s annual celebration held at the Gateway Hotel in Ames on November 17. During this event, representatives from the communities of Volga and Ackley, both of which participated in the Community Visioning Program and the Projects Program, told their success stories, and program collaborators shared their experiences with the program. Community participants, landscape architects, student interns, and collaborators from ISU, Trees Forever, the Iowa DOT, and the Federal Highway Administration attended.

October 2006 – New in Print

Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program Process Manual
The Community Visioning Program Process Manual is a tool developed for facilitating community visioning, a participatory process that engages local residents in the development of a transportation enhancement concept plan for their community.

Although the manual specifically outlines the planning process used by the Community Visioning Program, the methods used may be helpful to city and county planners, local officials, design professionals, and others engaged in community development programs. The visioning process was designed with the dynamics of small-town relationships in mind.

The Process Manual is structured as a workbook that can assist facilitators, local officials and volunteers, and other stakeholders in small communities as they negotiate through the public participation process. Readers will learn how participatory processes work and the roles of the various players, such as facilitators, community leaders, stakeholders, and professional designers.

The manual is available through ISU Extension Publications for $20 and can be ordered from the Publications Distribution Web site: www.extension.iastate.edu/store. When requesting the publication please reference PM 2029.

Street Design in Community Contexts: A Literature Review

This literature review is the second of a series of publications created to introduce to an inclusive audience design principles for enhancing roadsides, streets, and communities. The series is targeted to designers, government staff, politicians, and the public—that is, anyone interested in community betterment through design.

Street Design in Community Contexts looks at street design from viewpoints outside the driver’s seat, touching on issues such as economic development, public health and safety, transportation choices, street life and culture, and aesthetics. The publication introduces readers to ten of the essential written works on streets undertaken since 1960 and provides a list of Internet sites and publications.

The first publication in this series, Roadside Design for Communities: Planting Guidelines for Community Beautification, describes how plants can be used to improve community image and introduces readers to the issues and possibilities of planting along community roadsides.

Street Design in Community Contexts (PM 2030, $8) and Roadside Design in Communities (PM 2003, $5) are available through ISU Extension Publications and can be ordered from the Publications Distribution Web site: www.extension.iastate.edu/store.

May 2006 – Badenhope Earns Honor Award from Regional ASLA

Julia Badenhope, program director of the Community Visioning Program, was recognized by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) at the First Annual Central States ASLA Conference. Badenhope received an honor award in the planning category for the planning process used for community visioning. The award recognizes professional activities that lead to, guide, or evaluate landscape architecture design. Recipients of the award demonstrate professional activities that promote quality planning and design that is functional and environmentally responsible, while improving public health and safety.