Creating alternative community futures: A community futures tragedy

The central intent of enquiry in this thesis is “Can local governments empower their communities with the opportunity and capacity to create alternative futures?”. Local governments in their role of managing issues and planning for the future have more recently embraced the concepts of community engagement and sustainabledevelopment. They have done so with a view to being inclusive and transparent in planning for a sustainable future. By undertaking such approaches, local governmentsare faced with a rise in community expectation for local government to implement results from the consultation. Community engagement is a cornerstone to empowering communities to be sustainable, however empowerment methods support the rise of other emerging forms of democracy. This can be seen as a direct challenge to our existing representative system of government, specifically in how politicians enact their office and processes for decision making. Local government planning and foresight aims to move power back to citizens and local bureaucracies. Consequently, this has given rise to a litany of emergent issues and concerns in some elected representatives as to the value of community engagement, planning and foresight practices for local bureaucracies. Furthermore, from a critical perspective, some local government efforts with foresight are seen as creating the one and only ‘official version’ of a community’s future rather than considering alternative views expressed by their communities. The question then becomes “who is advantaged and/or disadvantaged by such official versions of the future?”. This research compares and contrasts the results of a community visioning case study called the Maroochy 2025 Community Visioning project. This project was unique due in its extensive use of applied futures studies concepts and methods in real world contexts. Between 2002 and 2005, Maroochy Shire Council, a local government in Queensland, Australia, undertook a community visioning project to establish a community developed vision statement, six vision focus areas and an action plan. The driver for the visioning project was the recognition by the local council of the increasing effects of rapid population growth, urban sprawl and community concerns regarding a sustainable future. Based on a desire by the local bureaucracy to adopt strategies to manage uncertainties for Maroochy Shire’s future, the then Maroochy Shire Council sought to engage the community in a new dialogue in order to co-create a preferred image and vision for Maroochy Shire’s future. This research traces the development of the Maroochy 2025 strategy. It highlights the consequences, contradictions and implications that arose from the Maroochy 2025 Community Visioning project. It further highlights the key issues and learnings that can arise from undertaking community engagement, planning and applied futures studies approaches. The main findings of the thesis firstly present the key learnings from the Maroochy 2025 Community Visioning project. Secondly, they highlight the consequences and dangers for local government of a failed implementation. Thirdly, the findings challenge local government planning assumptions that community visioning and town planning could be one and the same. Nevertheless, this thesis also demonstrates the successes of using anticipatory democracy approaches and applied futures studies and the value of empowering a community with a sense of agency regarding their future. Finally, the findings demonstrate the benefits from community visioning and the use of futures studies methods, highlighting that when communities are engaged and empowered, they can become a key driver of social change, redefine the meaning of community and create new processes by which communities choose sustainable and alternative community futures.Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Arts, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2008