Senior Project Advisor

Laninga, Tamara Jean

Document Type

Project

Publication Date

Spring 2019

Keywords

public meetings, public participation, public involvement

Abstract

Public meetings and hearings are some of the most common avenues of interaction between government officials and the public. In many circumstances, they are a legally required element of the public involvement process. However, elected officials, government staff, and residents often find public meetings to be frustrating, unrepresentative, and ineffective (Hajnal and Trounstine, 2016; McComas et al, 2007; Walters et al, 2000). This has prompted many planners to employ other, more nontraditional methods of public participation in order to gain meaningful feedback and build relationships with residents. Though these newer methods, which include workshops, tours, and charrettes, are often more effective than traditional public meetings (King, Feltey, and Susel, 1998), they have not completely replaced meetings as the default participation technique. This means that it is still important to understand the role and effectiveness of public meetings and to work to make them as useful as possible within the existing public involvement framework. This report uses existing research and interviews with local government staff to analyze the role and effectiveness of public meetings and provide recommendations to planners.

Department

Environmental Studies

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Public meetings; Local government-United States--Citizen participation

Geographic Coverage

United States

Genre/Form

student projects; term papers

Type

Text

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Rights Statement

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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