Summit County is seeking applicants for its annual Community Planning Lab, an 11-week program designed to teach residents about local land use decisions while fostering community engagement.
“It’s going to go through everything from the history of planning to housing affordability, recreation, open space and transportation, which includes cars, walking trails and all of those things,” said Elizabeth Williams, the county planner organizing this year’s classes. “We’re also talking about how to have more meaningful engagement in our public hearings.”
The group will meet for an hour and a half every Monday from Feb. 23 to May 4. Guest speakers, such as Park City Planning Director Rebecca Ward and Summit County Community Planning Development Director Peter Barnes, will lead classes and facilitate conversations with participants for the first nine weeks.
The tenth scheduled meeting is a panel discussion, and the final day of the program is dedicated to students’ project presentations.
“All of the participants of the Planning Lab will be presenting their own projects of what they’ve learned and what changes they would like to make,” Williams said. “Some of these projects in the past have actually become code changes, so it is a chance to have an impact on our community.”
Williams said the classes will cover a variety of land use topics, including the history of planning and zoning, sustainable development, private-public partnerships and affordable housing.
“Hopefully, we’ll give people tools to then become more involved, whether they want to run for public office or just want a greater understanding when they come to public hearings,” she said.
The program is beneficial for all Summit County residents, though, even if they don’t have time to be civically engaged in their typical day-to-day life, Williams said. Planning and zoning laws affect everyone in the county, determining where grocery stores are located, whether an area has sidewalks or the proximity of parks to residential neighborhoods.
“These are all issues that impact us individually,” Williams said. “It’s worth getting involved in because that’s how you change things. That’s how we can get more affordable places to live or create spaces where you actually want to spend time on your day off. We can help people see that they have the power to be able to create a better life for themselves by becoming involved in planning.”
The application to join this year’s Community Planning Lab is available online and closes on Feb. 4. Williams said the questions largely focus on the applicant’s interests rather than prior qualifications or experience.
“We’re trying to get a sense of why people want to take the class because we can tailor it more if we know their reasoning,” Williams said. “We’re trying to get to know the applicants through this process. What is it that’s driving your interest in planning? Then we can find out if there are things we can focus our classes on a little bit more.”
Williams said the program is also helpful for county staff because it increases the community’s understanding of land use decisions, which leads to more productive conversations during public hearings.
“Transparency makes things better, and it makes me better as a planner when people understand my job,” she said. “I don’t want it to be like we’re behind the curtain orchestrating things that don’t make sense to people. I want it to be a transparent process where they can be engaged and ask insightful questions that might make me look at an issue from a different point of view.”
Information on the Community Planning Lab, including the syllabus and examples of reading assignments, is available online by visiting summitcountyutah.gov/2329/Community-Planning-Lab-Classroom.