Community Visioning: Facilitating Informed Citizen Participation in Local Area Planning on the Gold Coast

Much contemporary planning literature places emphasis on involving people, who have an interest in or may be affected by planning outcomes, in the planning process. This move towards participatory planning has been enthusiastically embraced and implemented in many places both in Australia and overseas. However, there has been little reporting of the practical aspects of implementing such an approach. This article describes a community visioning process that forms the basis of the Mermaid Beach Local Area Planning project on the Gold Coast. Successful operational initiatives and constraints identified through the implementation of this visioning process are discussed.