Sioux City, Iowa
Sioux City Vision 2020 Strategic/Comprehensive Plan

Camiros, Ltd. was retained by the City of Sioux City, Iowa to guide the community through the process of developing a plan that combined elements of both strategic and comprehensive planning. The project, entitled "Sioux City Vision 2020," created a clear, fresh image for this older industrial city and mapped pathways for an old, but "new" Sioux City. The assignment contained many of the traditional elements of a comprehensive plan, particularly with regard to land use and transportation issues. However, the community's housing crisis - a vacancy rate of less than two percent - and the structural shift in the economy, from a union wage-scale labor force to one where real wages had significantly declined, called for a less than traditional planning approach. Camiros worked with Sioux City to enable the various community interests to join together to develop a vision for their mutual future and breed a self-sustaining and propulsive support for that vision

The keystone of the planning process was the participatory effort. Nearly 5,000 citizens were actively involved in preparing the plan in a number of ways: service on the Vision 2020 Task Force; completion of a survey; or participation in one of the plan-making activities. These activities included:

• A nominal-group workshop to identify issues and opportunities.
• Man-on-the-street interviews.
• Stakeholder interviews.
• A cable TV broadcast with viewer call-in participation.
• Topical focus groups.
• A modified Delphi outreach conducted by the Task Force.
• Structured responses to newspaper commentaries.
• A three-day planning charette.

The result was a community vision and action agenda that gained such broad-based public support that implementation began even before the plan was officially adopted.