Before
starting this one, I spoke with several people, asking each of them
what they thought Quality of Life means for a community. Suffice it
to say that the responses I got exist on a very broad spectrum. The
trick is to take the time to fully assess what people are saying and
look for the common denominators. These common denominators are what
form the basis of Quality of Life for a community.
The
internet is now a great source for information on Quality of Life for
Communities. A lot of people and groups are doing research and a lot
of data has been collected and analyzed. Governments are using those
data sources, as well as their own data, to make decisions about how
a community grows and develops. The phrase Quality of Life is
included in the Comprehensive Plan of the Town of Christiansburg, and
should be a key component of all decisions made by elected and
appointed officials. Unfortunately, it is only the phrase, not the
concept of Quality of Life that is addressed.
Wikipedia
(what a wonderful resource this is) offers definitions of Quality of
Life that I summarize here. “Quality
of life is the degree of well-being felt by an individual or group of
people. ... Furthermore, quality of life consists of two components.
The first is a physical aspect which includes such things as health,
diet, as well as protection against pain and disease. The second
component is psychological in nature. This aspect includes such
things as stress, worry, pleasure and other positive or negative
emotional states. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life
One
of the methods used in the evaluation of Quality of Life of a
Community is Community Indicators. See: MEASURING PROGRESS: COMMUNITY
INDICATORS AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE, David Swain, DPA, Arpil 2002
http://www.jcci.org/measuringprogress.pdf
“If,
as Tip O’Neill, former speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives, recognized, public life ultimately happens at the
local level, people’s quality of life as well is determined, or at
least strongly influenced, at this level. In addition, individuals
have the best opportunity, at the local level, to meet together to
define mutual goals and to take mutual action toward a better
collective future.”
(p2)
This
author offers a diagram for the “community improvement process”
(p6 Fig.1) that includes:
VISION:
essentially how the community perceives itself now and in the
future.
INDICATORS:
clearly defined factors that provide a device by which changes in
“specific aspects of life and wellbeing in the community” (p6)
can be measured and used to determine if progress towards desired
change is being made.
PLANNING:
determining what those things are that influence the indicators, how
those can be modified, and the potential outcomes related to any
changes. This is where decisions are made as to strategies to
approach change and in what order the changes should occur.
OUTCOMES:
evaluating the effect of the changes implemented.
ASSESSMENT:
determining how the results of the OUTCOMES relate to the vision and
goals of the community.
FEEDBACK:
providing the information obtained to the group.
In
case you have not guessed, this is an ongoing process. There is no
'end'. With each change initiated, monitored, and evaluated, the
VISION shifts, new INDICATORS evolve, PLANNING must incorporate new
information and re-evaluate strategies, OUTCOMES measures shift along
with the new strategies, ASSESSMENT must changes to match the new
criteria to be evaluated, and the results must be made available to
the group to evaluate the overall effect. A failure to acknowledge
and work with Quality of Life of a community as a dynamic and
changing entity would be equivalent to evaluating a child age 6 and trying to force that evaluation into a life-long way of
being. There are far too many rapidly changing variables (both
internal and external) affecting communities for the process of
revisioning to be ignored.
On
page 15 this important distinction between Data and Perception
Indicators is made: “...made an early decision that some of the
indicators would be based on citizen opinion polling rather than on
"objective" data sources. The reasoning behind this
decision was that, in some ways, people's perceptions of their
quality of life are as important, or perhaps even more important, to
document than the reality in which they live.”
Why
is any of this important to you? The answer is that this is precisely
what your Comprehensive Planning Process should have done.
Unfortunately, that is not what happened. Citizen involvement in
developing a VISION of Christiansburg that encompassed the citizen's
perceptions of Christiansburg at the time the Plan was written and of
the way citizen's wanted their Town to be in the future did not
occur. In failing to provide that first and most crucial step in
the overall process, Christiansburg became an entity whose destiny is
controlled by the government rather than by its citizens.
Sure,
there were some rather weak attempts to get citizens to come out and
be involved in the two scheduled meetings, but a great deal more
could have been done. Civic groups, churches, schools, and other
organizations could all have been provided with questionnaires
designed to obtain relevant input. Multiple meetings in different
locations and at different times could have been held to allow more
people to participate. Perhaps more importantly, the Town could have
taken the opportunity to educate citizens about the Comprehensive
Planning process and why it is important. (Montgomery County used
these methods in eliciting public participation and had far more
citizen input from Christiansburg residents than the Town did!!!)
What
is needed is to start the process all over and making citizen input
the key component in the process. It is the desires and will of the
people that should be determining how Christiansburg will look in the
future. This process should include more criteria than “will it
make money for the Town”. Or, if in 1998 you felt Police, Fire, and Rescue were adequate.
Quality
of Life of a community is far more than low property taxes and sports
complexes. Quality of Life is about how daily lives are lived. It is
about WHAT PEOPLE SAY THEY NEED AND WANT, NOT WHAT THEY ARE TOLD THEY
NEED AND WANT!!!!
One
way in which the Town could take a proactive approach to applying
true Quality of Life to its decision-making processes and the
Comprehensive Plan specifically, would be to make use of available
community resources to provide a coordinated 'eyes and ears' of the
community approach to information gathering. I have a whole list of
ways in which to accomplish this at little or no expense to the Town,
and I will just bet there are plenty of you readers with ideas of
your own (and I would love to hear them). Mabye the Town Council will decide to take advantage of some of those opportunities.
However,
the foundation upon which all of this MUST BE BUILT is citizens
concerned enough to invest some time in their future, their
children's future, and their town's future. It is so very easy to sit
back, let Government make decisions, and then complain! Whether you
are planning to live here for the next 50 years or only for the few
years you are finishing your degree should not matter. You should
care about the future of your community. You should care about your
neighbors. You should care about the children and the elderly. If you
are one of those who does not plan on staying here that long, you can
hope that, wherever you are planning to move to in the future,
someone there is taking the time to care about the community and
working to make it a better place. Just approach the process as if
you are going to live here forever. If everyone, everywhere did that,
I think we would see some significant changes in the ways communities
are evolving.
I would be willing to bet that more communities have gone into decline due to apathy on the part of citizens than any other issue. In making a choice not to participate, citizens choose to act by not acting and that silence is interpreted as consent to continue going the way the town is going. Is that really what we want?