The Community Voices series seeks to share community perspectives on housing and climate issues as we embark on the next City of Davis General Plan Amendment.
Download the full report here:
From Voices to Vision: Insights for Davis’ General Plan Update from the Community Voices Series
Dear Davis Community,
The Davis Community Action Network (DCAN) is excited to submit this final report of its Community Voices Series for your review and consideration. It represents the culmination of a months-long learning process with community members about their concerns, priorities, and vision for creating a sustainable and livable city. The effort brought together over 225 participants in a series of community conversations to discuss priorities related to housing and climate. Using a rigorous qualitative research approach, volunteer facilitators conducted thirteen events during which participants shared insights about housing, climate-smart design, and community resilience. The participants’ priorities include creating denser, more affordable housing while promoting climate-smart designs and community building.
Participants were clear: They want City leadership to provide a vision and plan for addressing housing deficits, which will better equip our community to address the impacts of climate change.
As we embark on a long-overdue update to the City’s General Plan, we offer this report as guiding input. “Community participation” is a critical element in nearly all the city's major decisions. Too often, lip-service is paid to garnering citizen input, and it is done in a perfunctory, “box-checking” way. We understand why this is a persistent issue- gathering citizen input is a challenging, time-consuming effort requiring deliberate and structured processes. But this work reaps benefits for the whole community. We offer the Community Voices Series project as a model to support meaningful community engagement as we pursue this update. We do not claim that the results represent the entire Davis population. But as you will see, our neighbors that generously shared their time by participating are knowledgeable and engaged in our community. They care deeply about Davis and our region and critically consider what it will take to achieve a just and sustainable future.
We hope the City of Davis will expand and deepen outreach in the upcoming general plan process to ensure traditionally underrepresented voices are considered in this process. DCAN stands ready to assist and we look forward to your feedback and questions.
In Community,
Robb Davis, Chair of the DCAN Board