Visionaries, designers, planners, policymakers, and project managers abound. Strategists are rare.
As a result, regenerative efforts most often fail due to 1) bad strategy, and 2) no strategy.
Let’s start by clarifying strategy’s role in the scheme of things:
- Visions guide actions to the desired outcomes;
- Strategies adaptively guide actions to success;
- Policies enable strategic actions;
- Plans organize actions
- Projects are actions;
- Programs perpetuate actions.
Of those six action elements, the plan—which often takes longest to produce and approve—will likely be obsolete the soonest. Complex systems (e.g. cities, ecosystems) resist rigid, imposed order.
All of these action elements are essential, but one is usually missing: strategy. That’s why so many urban revitalization and landscape-scale environmental restoration programs are unsuccessful.
Read the full article on the Revitalization News website here.
BAD Buildings Program Provides Momentum for Eight W.Va. Communities
The Northern West Virginia Brownfields Assistance Center at West Virginia University has awarded eight West Virginia communities with technical assistance grants. The grants, valued at $10,000 each, are made ...
Read More
Communities uniting to revitalize the UKV
Officials and concerned residents from three Fayette County communities turned out Thursday afternoon for a meeting to discuss revitalization efforts for the Upper Kanawha Valley. Representatives from Smithers, Montgomery ...
Read MoreA Step Toward Renewal
West Virginia towns take the steps toward renewal by addressing vacant properties “They stopped thinking about it as me and started thinking about it as we.” Two years ago, ...
Read More