Do planners feel a sense of ownership over the neighborhoods they work in?

  • "[As a planner] you're physically in charge of and seeing change in the public realm. And so that creates a sense of ownership. Like, ‘Oh, that's my planter over there.’ It's got to look good. I want it to be nice for the neighborhood. When you're walking up and down the street, you know all the people there, and being in charge of the public way really makes a difference in terms of the ownership that you feel as a staff person.”

    Charlotte (North)

  • “Absolutely. I think, as a planner, our role, in particular, with today's much more modern and appropriate approaches is bringing comparison, whether that's programs, images, infrastructure, just identifying how other communities engage these processes, understanding the policies behind them, policies that could change them.”

    Abigail (North)

  • “I mean, I think you feel a sense of pride or definitely an involvement. You gain an understanding of the community and kind of where they're at and where they're coming from and what their wants are. I think you have to know that if you want to help them get to that spot. I wouldn't say ownership per se, because that feels like that's theirs, but definitely an investment in them and the project being successful. You take pride in, hopefully, bettering people's lives.”

    William (North)

  • “When I think of ownership, I think of decision making, and I don't feel like I need to be the decision maker in every community that I work in…They're hiring me because of my expertise, but I don't need to tell people what to do. I'm there to learn and to help build capacity and share what I know with others so that they can become more self-sufficient, and then they can have ownership over their communities.”

    Sarah (West)

  • “I've always sort of felt privileged in that I can be in that space, even though I don't have a vested stake in it from a personal standpoint. And that's one of the things I really like about this job is that you know, I'm able to, in a sense, be part of the community. I do feel like doing some of the work we do here allows us to participate in community, even though it's not a place that I typically live or may frequent very often. And that goes for any part of the city that we've worked in. So, it's just interesting that you can work in those spaces, but not have any kind of ownership stake in there. For someone in a private sector, not in the planning area, you don't really get that kind of experience, because it's more transactional.”

    Leo (South)

Conclusion

“While a few planners would identify their relationship with the community they work in as one of ownership, most reject the term “ownership” to describe what they deem to be their role as a key decision maker or facilitator of change. They distinguish ownership and what they have with words that they feel more appropriately encompass their relationship, primarily investment, but also responsibility, accountability, and participation. Even among planners who do accept “ownership” as a term appropriate for their profession, these concepts also dominate their descriptions of what that means in a planning context.

These insights reflect that, while change making abilities are significant to the formation of a sense of ownership among residents, they are not the only things that contribute to our understanding of and embodiment of this term. Planners view their investment as a way of contributing to a community that they are not a part of, and thus do not own despite the time and resources they dedicate to the area. This reinforces the notion that belonging to an area, which is tied heavily to temporal investment, is also crucial in cultivating the sense of ownership residents feel.”