Drupal 4.7 customization

Message Agency developed a site that is serving as a primary source of information and platform for civic engagement for the City of Philadelphia as it conducts a citywide open space planning project. The project represents a partnership across several cIty offices, such as the Office of Urban Planning, the Mayor’s Office, and the Fairmount Park Commission, and private organizations such as the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. It is a multi-phased project that first engaged residents by planning region in community meetings in local neighborhoods, and then continued the engagement online through each phase of the process: initial discussions, vetting of recommendations, review of the draft plan, and implementation updates for specific projects.

In the first phase, users participated through blog discussions, through targeted polls, and through the review of background materials such as photo galleries, atlases, resources, planning profiles, and HTML newsletters. (These features are now archived on the site.) Users can find their planning areas through an interactive map and form that links zip codes and neighborhoods to regions.

All site content is managed by project staff, indexed by planning area, and automatically displays when a user is viewing the relevant region. In addition to supporting open space planning in Philadelphia, the process outlined on the website is being used as a pilot to determine future approaches to community engagement for public works projects.