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The Iowa communities of Alta, Clutier, Deloit, Janesville, Manning, Marathon, State Center and Winterset have been selected to participate in Iowa's Living Roadways Community Visioning in 2027.
The program is sponsored by the Iowa Department of Transportation in partnership with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Community and Economic Development and Trees Forever, an Iowa-based nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
Community Visioning integrates technical landscape planning and design techniques with sustainable community action to assist community leaders and volunteers in making sound and meaningful decisions about the local landscape. The program empowers local leaders through a planning process that results in a transportation enhancement plan reflecting the values and identity of the community.
The sustainability and success of the program is evident by the number of communities with which it has collaborated. Since Iowa's Living Roadways was created in 1996, 275 communities have participated in Community Visioning, 46 of which have gone through the process more than once. One of the towns selected for the 2026-27 program year--Manning--will be the first community to participate in the program for a third time, having previously gone through the process in 2012 and 2016.
To qualify for the visioning program, a community must have a population of fewer than 10,000 residents, existing transportation-related issues and a committee of volunteers willing to dedicate time and talent to the visioning process.
A committee of local residents participates in a series of steps toward creating a conceptual design plan, including: Identifying issues; Investigating the physical and cultural dimensions of landscape issues; Setting goals for change; Developing strategies to meet those goals and Creating an implementation plan.
Throughout the process, the committee receives support from the technical experts at Trees Forever, a professional landscape architecture firm and the ISU Department of Landscape Architecture.
On Nov. 5, representatives from each 2027 visioning community kick off the visioning process in Ames at the ILR Annual Celebration, where they will network with program sponsors, representatives from past visioning communities and experts on community engagement and placemaking. This year's celebration will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the program with the theme "Celebrating Our Roots and Our Routes: 30 Years of Community Visioning."
To register for and learn more about this free event, visit the conference website. For more information about Community Visioning, contact Sandra Oberbroeckling, Community Visioning project manager, at soberbr@iastate.edu or visit the Community Visioning program website.