Lincoln – A vision for our future: A community-participation based envisioning project for the future Lincoln village

Abstract

The extent to which local communities want, or even can, take responsibility for their future direction is a commonly asked question. Certainly in New Zealand the response to central government devolution, through a variety of policy and legislative initiatives, has been the proliferation of community based resource management projects. Such projects are frequently established in response to an environmental crisis, e.g., rabbit control. There have also been a number of "mainstreet" re-development projects (e.g. Rangiora, Timaru). Few projects have taken holistic or strategically forward thinking perspectives including the whole settlement area.

Communities should be able to actively participate in decision-making processes affecting them. Public participation is not just a matter of re-acting to externally-derived proposals. Local initiative, local knowledge and local energy allows communities to manage and plan for themselves.

In "Lincoln – a Vision for our Future", we have encouraged the Lincoln community to participate in such a planning and implementation process. The community includes staff at the Crown Research Institutes, staff and students at the University, and local landowners as well as the residents of Lincoln. The aim of the process is to gain a clear understanding of what the community sees the issues and opportunities to be, how they might be addressed, and to facilitate the formation of a set of visions for Lincoln's future.

This report embodies these visions and strategies to achieve them, based on consultation with the community and information gathering over a 17 month period. The visions and strategies are intended to be an independent guide and reference for on-going environmental management and future development affecting the Lincoln community.