5 Ways Data Dashboards Can Improve Comprehensive Planning

After releasing Dashboards as a form of data-driven storytelling last month, our urban planning clients tell us they’re thrilled to finally be able to share project-specific demographic information on the fly — whether to grab charts for a report or to frame an upcoming stakeholder discussion.

What makes this so exciting is that these individuals, while long aware that the demographic profile of a place should strongly influence discussions and decisions about its future, struggled to make it happen due to the time and technical skill required to access and analyze the data.

We love to hear that our tool is simplifying a process that one planner had described to us as “painful” — and it inspired us to imagine more ways the feature could improve the workflow and outcomes of one of the most common projects planners take on: comprehensive planning.

5 Ways Dashboards Can Improve Comprehensive Planning

One. Get everyone talking about the same thing.

“When you discuss a specific subject, you subconsciously reference a large internal map of what you know. Other people can’t see this map. It only exists in your head, and it’s called your mental model.” — How to Make Sense of Any Mess

In comprehensive planning, that subject is a place — sometimes the whole community, sometimes small areas within it — and its people. And we all have mental models about the places and people that matter to us.

When those models collide, the result is debate and stalemate. Both can be healthy when, at their heart, is a difference in perspective or opinion based on the same factual foundation, but they’re dysfunctional otherwise.

Dashboards can expose the reality of a situation, helping people to see the ways their individual mental models do and don’t align — and getting everyone on the same page for the far-reaching discussions and decisions that are core to comprehensive planning.

We have a wide variety of census datasets to build a “community snapshot” Dashboard in minutes; among the most popular are:

• Population: Total Population, Family Size, Age Totals, and Race Totals
• Social: Median Household Income, Educational Attainment, Poverty Level, Employment Status and Industry, Commute Type and Time
• Housing: Median Home Value, Median Home Rent, Owner vs. Renter Occupied Housing, and Homeowner Vacancy Rate

Two. Draw inspiration from communities with similar demographic profiles.

Dashboards let planners look beyond population and proximity to use a more holistic lens in identifying peer cities best-fit for comparison.

Two cities may be 1,500 miles apart, but if the people are a demographic match, one may learn surprising things from the other’s approach to sustainable development or downtown revitalization or walkability that they wouldn’t by focusing on size and location exclusively.

Not a new idea, but suddenly a practical one when this kind of comparison and analysis can be done in minutes instead of months.

Three. Create citizen personas for more effective engagement and empathetic decision-making.

Designing solutions for every resident in every corner of the community isn’t easy. Pulling it off requires both thoroughness and thoughtfulness.

Not only can Dashboards reveal areas of the community under-represented at public meetings, but they can also help planners develop deeper empathy with community members and, as a result, more human-centered designs.

Create a Dashboard for each neighborhood or small area included in the comp plan to discover how the average resident lives, works, and plays.

Then create personas to keep in mind when strategizing outreach tactics, framing issues, and considering solutions for the people in that area.

Traditionally a marketing tool, personas humanize the data, making it easier to identify with the individuals impacted by the decisions being made.

Four. Keep elected officials informed in real-time.

Whereas sometimes planners go into a community with just the facts, lacking any real connection; elected officials have the opposite problem. Particularly in local government, many rely on their first-hand experience of a place to form their impressions, opinions, and decisions.

Balance this out by sharing with each elected official, a Dashboard that aggregates demographic and real-time crime, code, and service data to his or her district. By giving each a full picture of the objective conditions of their districts, they’ll be able to offer more meaningful input and have stronger conversations with their constituents throughout the planning process.

Five. Garner community-wide support with story.

On their own, public data and detailed comp plans will continue to interest the usual suspects — and typically only insofar as their job performance or personal interests are at stake. Mass mobilization requires more.

It requires a story that brings together the larger conceptual ideas of the city’s future with its on-the-ground conditions. Enter Dashboards. Create one for the past, the present, and the future everyone will build together.