Data-driven plans for the future

Useful comprehensive plans sit on a three-legged stool. One support is a deep and strategic conversation with the community. A second support is a thorough understanding and response to the legal context in which the plan is written. The third support is knowledge and integration of staff and budgetary capacity into the future plans. Dr. Nesse’s experience in these areas has made her a leader in long range planning.

Community conversations are two-way. People who participate in the conversation must get something from the interaction that will better their lives in both the short and long term. The local government must use the conversation to shape plans in a meaningful way. This concept of two-way interaction was the guide Dr. Nesse used in designing town-gown projects that brought planning students together with local governments and community groups in mutually beneficial arrangements. As a consultant, she has done outreach with community groups for Center for Urban and Regional Affairs and the Technical Assistance to Brownfields, a project of the EPA housed at Kansas State University.

The legal context of comprehensive plans is vitally important to their acceptance and implementation. Dr. Nesse has a broad knowledge of regional planning and growth management through her education at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Urban and Regional Planning Department. She also has experience with growth management in the Puget Sound area as a planner for the City of Bellevue and as a member of the Citizen Advisory Board for Snohomish County Tomorrow, the countywide structure for implementing the state’s Growth Management Act.

Long range plans are a combination of far-reaching vision and incremental steps. Those steps are specific to the resources available to the planning agency. Dr. Nesse has guided the creation and written several plans including the Thomas-Dale Small Area Plan, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for the Flint Hills Regional Council, and the  Flint Hills Fair Housing Equity Assessment and Regional Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing, in addition to participating in several other comprehensive planning efforts.

With her background in research and teaching, Dr. Nesse brings a spirit of innovation and a data-driven ethic to planning activities.