The event will be followed by three additional regional events and more than 30 community conversations. Citizens across the seve-county region will have an opportunity to participate. For details, please check the myregion.org web site or download a print version of the following article published by the Orlando Sentinel.

Regional project tries to envision a future that works

Jay Hamburg

Sentinel Staff Writer

February 20, 2006

Central Florida leaders will spend nearly $1 million during the next 15 months to come up with a dream.

They'll imagine where new high-rise condos will be built, where roads will be paved, where rail lines could whisk people around the region and where environmentally sensitive lands should be preserved.

Then they will try to make that dream a reality.

The region has won an $850,000 "visioning" grant -- the first of its kind in Florida -- to come up with a road map for how the seven-county area should look in 2050.

The idea is to solicit suggestions from politicians, businesses, developers, citizens, environmentalists and community groups, and then build consensus.

The effort, which kicks off March 29, will be overseen by myregion.org, a nonprofit, community-planning group. It will schedule dozens of community forums -- with a goal of reaching as many as 10,000 people -- to figure out what people think and to find common ground. The forums will allow people to debate scenarios for where and how development should proceed. And leaders will survey participants along the way to gauge their reactions to ideas that develop.

By June 2007, the group plans to issue recommendations. Those suggestions won't have the force of law, but they could act as guidelines for community leaders in their land and transportation plans. If politicians see a broad community consensus about an issue, that could influence their decisions, said Shelley Lauten, project director of myregion.org.

"This isn't about one group versus another," Lauten said. "Let's bring everybody in and see . . . if we can find what we can agree on. Then we can build trust."

The effort comes at a critical time. The 3.5 million population in Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Lake, Polk, Volusia and Brevard counties is predicted to at least double to 7 million by 2050.

"The critical window of time is closing," said Linda Chapin, director of the Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies at the University of Central Florida.

"Decisions made in the next five or 10 years will determine the next 50. If we don't get it right in the next five or 10 years, it may be too late."

The visioning grant comes from several sources, including the Florida Department of Transportation, the state Department of Community Affairs, myregion.org, the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council and the Central Florida Metropolitan Planning Organization Alliance, the transportation planning agency that includes MetroPlan Orlando.

The money will pay for staff, meetings and consultants, Lauten said.

Central Florida was chosen for the state's first regional visioning grant, in part, because of the work already conducted by myregion.org, said Kathy Neill of the FDOT's office of policy planning.

Founded about four years ago, myregion.org is a public-private partnership with a goal of encouraging a regional perspective among residents and elected officials.

It has organized, funded or participated in several studies so far that have analyzed things such as which environmental land areas need preservation and examining how people feel about growth, development and the region's problems. Now, Lauten says, it is time to take the work to the next level and come up with a plan.

"We're a safe place to come together to talk about tough issues," Lauten said. In the early 1980s, Chattanooga, Tenn., became one of the first to try to find a collective vision of the future to guide growth.

Faced with a rotting riverfront, smothered by air pollution and suffering from economic decline, Chattanooga knew something had to change.

Finding a vision was difficult. There were many factions and considerable doubt about the process. But nearly all sides celebrated when the first part of the old waterfront turned into an attractive park.

James Bowen, who was a city planner at the time and has since become executive director of RiverCity Company -- a downtown-development group in Chattanooga -- said the first tangible evidence of change empowered residents to push for more.

After that, the city eventually gained national recognition for its turnaround.

"At the end of the day, what makes it work -- or not -- is the quality of the project," Bowen said.

That raises the question of how Central Florida will find a consensus when the problem is not lack of growth but the possibility of too much.

"People have this fear that this planning is stopping something," said Jennifer Lindbom, senior planner for ACP, a New York firm that has overseen visioning projects in several communities, including Manatee County in Southwest Florida. "It doesn't mean you stop growth. It just means you grow in a way that the community values."

The idea has also caught on in some larger, faster-growing areas.

In 1997, Envision Utah took on the task of pulling together 10 booming counties around Salt Lake City that contained 90 cities and a public divided over light rail and commuter rail.

However, after many public forums, a consensus slowly built for both forms of rail, said Robert Grow, who was the founding chairman of Envision Utah and now an officer with Alliance for Regional Stewardship. He will be lending a hand in the Central Florida process as well.

Today, the area around Salt Lake has light rail and 44 miles of commuter rail expected by 2008. Some of the smaller cities are competing to get their extensions built next.

Rail remains a rancorous issue in parts of Central Florida. There is a plan for commuter rail running from Volusia to Osceola, but extending the project remains controversial.

But Grow said visioning groups should expect and accept differences of opinion.

"It's not a coalition of those who think the same," he said.

Chapin, a former Orange County chairman, said turning consensus into political action won't be easy.

"Whether we can get the politicians to buy-in in the same way, I don't know," Chapin said. "I understand that politicians feel responsible for their constituencies. But if the people can begin to see the big picture, they can get the politicians to see it, too."

"Believe me, I'm not an optimist in this," Chapin said. "But nobody can afford to give up."

Jay Hamburg can be reached at jhamburg@orlandosentinel.com or 407-898-7825.