Becoming a place where anyone—single, married, black, white, young, old and all variations in between—can become a part of our community and remain a part of our community requires a wide variety of choices that reflect a wide variety of folks. Simply put, needs vary. Not just among different people but across each person’s lifetime. Is Decatur such a place? If not, what can be done? Those are the issues participants will take on Monday night, October 25, from 7-9pm...

Despite a too-beautiful-to-be-inside evening, some 60 Decaturites gathered on October 5 at the Holiday Inn Convention Center to take Decatur's getting-around discussion to the next level. Conversations can move faster now, because so many folks are veterans of the Round Table discussions over the last year. The “Going Mobile” meeting kicked off a string of four Community Academy sessions, designed to focus broad ideas from the Round Tables into the to-do list that will shape Decatur’s update of its 10-year Strategic Plan...

Wondering what happens next with Decatur's strategic planning process? It's time to get schooled. Introducing Community Academy, four 2-hour sessions where residents, city staff and members of our consultant team will examine some of our big round table goals with an eye towards implementation. That means stepping outside the comfort of open-ended brainstorming and into the slightly harsher glare of the real world...

The opening video at the Decatur Next Celebration at Decatur High School Aug. 24 said it all: 700-plus Round Table participants; 245 public meetings; 6,000 hours invested; 7,894 ideas presented; and 14,032 website visits. The August 24 event was an opportunity, first of all, to enjoy the moment. Since April, more than 700 Decatur residents have been meeting together in small groups – Round Tables – to identify key concerns and pose crucial questions...

Round Table discussions involving some 700 Decaturites, meeting three times between April and June, helped us identify key topics to address for our update of the city’s 10-year Strategic Plan. Starting on Tuesday, Aug. 24, when we welcome participants back for a Round Table Wrap-Up Celebration (6:30 p.m. at the Decatur High School Auditorium), we’ll use that consensus-based to-do list as a foundation for drafting development and redevelopment strategies for the next decade...

Missed the Decatur Round Tables? Only have 15 minutes, but still want to contribute to the City’s plans for the next ten years? If your schedule is as packed as the list of ideas we’ve been collecting during the Decatur Next process, here’s your quick and easy opportunity to still get your two cents in...

Now that we’ve completed our second of three community Round Table discussions, we can flesh out categories that have come up over and over. In our last post, we invited comments about integrating the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and car drivers (and parkers). Now let’s explore the implications of a word we’re saying and hearing a lot: “sustainability...”

In the post preceding this one, we summarized broader topics that bubbled to the surface during the initial Round Tables. At or near the top of just about everybody’s list was mobility. How can we make it easier to get around Decatur whether we’re in a car, on a bicycle, riding transit, or walking?...

Other communities should be so lucky to have this problem: Teasing gripes out of mostly satisfied citizens. That was part of the task of citizen facilitators at our first week of Round Table meetings to set the stage for the update of Decatur’s 10-year Strategic Plan...