How Does Iowa Great Places Work?
Iowa Great Places is built around two important concepts/processes: 1) community visioning in local areas and regions and 2) collaboration between State agencies and local areas. Community Visioning In order to become an official Iowa Great Place, each neighborhood, community, county, or region (you define the geographic area!) wishing to participate must go through a community visioning process. This process takes time and dedication! It involves inviting a broad and representative group to come together to discuss and plan the future of their Place. It entails revisiting the past to discover important events that impacted the development of their Place. It requires asset mapping and articulation of what makes a particular Place unique and authentic. It produces a common vision for the future of a particular Place and a plan for making that vision a reality. Each Place will conduct their visioning activities in a different way. But the outcome is the same: consensus about where the co
