Vision, Objectives and Strategies Building Block
The purpose of this building block is to develop a shared ‘vision’ for the city and a series of objectives for the CDS. This is the most important building block in shaping the overall ...
The purpose of this building block is to develop a shared ‘vision’ for the city and a series of objectives for the CDS.
This is the most important building block in shaping the overall direction of the CDS; developing a shared vision of where the city wishes to be in 10 or 20 years time and establishing its strategies for how to get there.
What is a vision for the city?
A vision is a description of the ideal, desired future, a statement that captures aspirations in broad and creative terms. While it is ideal, it must also be realistic. A vision for a city is a broad, overarching statement of what people would like the city to be like in the future (usually in a 10–15 year period).
As Cities Alliance (2006) puts it, a vision is important “because it aligns stakeholders’ energies so that [they] work cohesively, facing in the same direction, for the good of the city and its region”. For a city vision to have this positive effect, it needs to be meaningful to a wide range of stakeholders. This means that the development of the vision requires a diverse and representative group of stakeholders to work together, to share their ideas and to reach an agreement about ‘what we want this city to be like in the future’.
What are objectives?
Once the vision is developed, a set of ‘goals’ or objectives will be developed. These are really two names for the same thing. Goals or objectives are more detailed and specific than the vision. They set out the detail of what the vision entails, by describing the results that it is hoped the CDS will achieve.
Devising strategies to reach visions and objectives
Once a vision and objectives have been defined, strategies can be developed. The strategies are the overall plans for how the desired future will be achieved. Once the strategies are in place, more detailed action plans can be developed. (see Action Planning).
A vision statement should be short, straightforward and easily understood; capture the collective aspirations of all inhabitants; and highlight the potential of the city to develop in ways that will secure a better future. It will reflect the ”unique” attributes of the city or region.
A vision should be short (no more than 60 words) and easy to understand. It creates an identity for a city, enabling it to stand out in the world.
Although short, a vision can be a powerful unifying force in a community. Normally, [a vision] should stay the same over the 10-year period; tactics to implement the vision may change regularly as conditions change, but the vision should remain constant, like a lighthouse. (Only in rare cases would the external or internal conditions change so significantly as to make a rewrite of the vision necessary.)
Although oriented for the long term, a vision should motivate short-term action. As the environment facing cities worldwide becomes more uncertain, their visions become more important, providing continuity when tactics change rapidly.
Cities Alliance (2006) Guide to City Development Strategies: improving urban performance, p.49.
A good vision should be:
- Based on and fundamentally consistent with existing plans and decisions for the City and for the Province
- A shared aspiration, developed and supported by a wide cross-section of stakeholders
- Futuristic and visionary
- Attractive and inspirational
- Easy to understand
- Specific to that particular city
- Realistic but challenging
- Long term (10+ years)
- Likely to motivate short term action
- Inclusive of roles for many stakeholders
- Oriented to the outside world, as well as to the city’s own residents.
- Focussed on outcomes, not problems, with a positive tone, saying, for example, “making high-quality housing available to all”, rather than “eliminating slums”.
- A statement that links economic growth, poverty reduction and sustainability.
The process of developing a shared vision is an important part of the CDS. Developing the vision requires people to come together and consider different values and priorities, promoting an increased understanding of different perspectives. It focuses different stakeholders on the things they have in common – their shared aspirations for the future – and encourages a collaborative way of working.
Vision statements can encourage support for the CDS process and provide a focus for the further development of more detailed strategies.
Vision, objectives and strategies: Nam Dinh CDS
The vision statement and objectives for Nam Dinh
By 2020, Nam Dinh City will become the economic, educational and socio-cultural center of the Southern Red River Delta region.
Nam Dinh has a diversified economy, sustained development and is a desirable place to live and work for the people. Nam Dinh is linked with and shares it success in economic, social and cultural development to other cities and rural areas in the region.
Objectives
- Economic strength, growth, diversity and stability
- Good living environment for all
- Developed cultural, social, health care, education systems
- Good government and fiscal management
- Pride in Nam Dinh City
- Develop a participatory vision
- Develop a set of objectives
- Develop a strategy
a) Develop a participatory vision
One way to develop a vision is for the key stakeholders group to create it during brainstorming sessions. They might do this as the first phase of a CDS, or they might do an initial assessment first and use the information gathered to inform the development of the vision. Input from a broader range of people may be come from a survey, or other consultation method, the results of which can be considered by the stakeholder group.
To develop the vision, it is first important to set a timeframe. The purpose is to provide a vision of what the City will be like for future generations so the vision should be for the City in 10 or 20 years time (rather than a shorter period)
A facilitated group process is recommended for vision development. An independent facilitator is extremely valuable and can help make sure that all stakeholders have a say and all perspectives are heard. The facilitator can help to balance different views and assist the group to work towards a consensus about their shared vision. A facilitator can keep participants ‘on track’, helping them to think creatively and positively and generate a vision that has the desired characteristics described above.
Trigger questions can be useful to help stimulate participants’ thinking. Suitable questions include:
- What would you like the city to look like in the future?
- What kind of city would you like the next generation to inherit?
- How would you like others to think of your city? What would you like it to be known for, or have a reputation for?
- How would you like your city to compare to other cities in the future?
- What is the most important economic aspect of the future you desire?
- What is the most important social aspect of the future you desire?
- What is the most important environmental aspect of the future you desire?
- What is different about your vision of the future from what you see today?
Participants can answer such questions individually or in small groups and then discuss their ideas and begin to group similar ideas together. Discussions can focus on areas of agreement and consensus, to generate the main themes for the shared vision.
Vision, objectives and strategies: Hai Phong CDS
The vision for Hai Phong City
By the year 2010, Hai Phong city will be a sea port with complex infrastructure and leading economic development in the North, good living conditions and business environment.
By the year 2020, Hai Phong will become a modern sea port, ecological city and a driver of economic development in the North of Viet Nam.
While there may be a plan for a small group of ‘key stakeholders’ to be involved throughout the CDS process, the visioning stage is a chance to open the CDS process up to a much wider range of people, including local residents. This will help ensure that the vision captures local values. It provides an opportunity for a wide range of stakeholders to participate early in the CDS process without a large time commitment and to keep the local area residents and businesses informed about what is happening. Providing this opportunity for early involvement gives the CDS a greater chance of being widely supported, for it helps avoid a situation later in the CDS process where some people feel surprised by the direction of the CDS, or feel left out of the process.
Many stakeholder groups can independently propose a vision or elements of a vision, and a taskforce can collate this input and consolidate into one draft vision that they circulate to stakeholders for feedback.
Example: Developing a Vision Statement for Ha Long
The Vision Statement for the City was developed in a series of consultative steps. The first draft based on the review of existing plans was discussed at the city consultation workshop in July 2006. A second draft was discussed at consultation meetings with city leaders on key themes and investment priorities in September 2006. At that the City decided to undertake further consultation by putting the draft on its website for comment. The final draft of the Vision Statement was part of the draft CDS presented to the city wide consultation workshop in February 2007 where Chairman Tuan reported that the response to the website based consultation was overwhelmingly in support of the draft.
The vision for the City (as translated literally from the original Vietnamese) is as follows:
In the year 2020, Ha Long will be a city of tourism, sea port industries, and commercial services, playing a core urban area for the Northern region of Vietnam. It will be a place attracting international investment and tourism, with a growing, dynamic, stable economy and a healthy environment. Ha Long City will become the gate and custodian of Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site, an economy in harmony with its environment. The City has international standard technical and social infrastructure, protects ecosystems and cultural heritage and provides a high standard of living for all people.
b) Develop a set of objectives
The city vision is the overarching picture of the desired future for the city. From the vision, a set of goals and more detailed objectives will be developed that lead directly to strategies and action plans. This process demands informed decisions about preferred options, priorities and how resources can best be used.
Once a broad vision has been developed, a series of specific goals or objectives need to be set, to describe in more detail the desired change for each specific important issue. For example, typical objectives might be 'reduce poverty’, ‘increase employment opportunities’, ‘encourage local business development’, or ‘protect local environment’.
One way to develop goals and objectives is to conduct a systematic assessment of the city’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (a ‘SWOT analysis’).
The objectives form the framework of the CDS. They will be the basis for designing the actual activities that will be undertaken – the strategies and actions to be included in the action plans. Setting objectives defines the broad goals that the CDS will work towards.
Objectives should:
- Address identified current problems and opportunities (drawing on information gathered in assessment phase)
- Be linked to the future vision (meeting each objective should bring the city closer to making the vision a reality)
- Form a balanced set that incorporates the interests of diverse stakeholders (for example, the objective of ‘reducing poverty’ may be most directly relevant to poor residents, while ‘encouraging local business development’ might be more relevant to local business owners and investors. Including both will ensure that the CDS has broad support and will avoid alienating particular groups)
- Cover a balance of social, environmental and economic issues
- Be concise, clear, measurable and practical
How to set objectives
- Identify key issues
- Assess the issues – explore issues of cause, effect and outcome, cluster similar issues together
- Restate the issues as objectives
- Organise the objectives - separate means (actions) from ends (objectives)
- Prioritize objectives
c) Develop a strategy
Once a vision and objectives have been defined, the overall CDS strategy can be developed. The strategy development stage comes between visioning and action planning.
The vision defines the desired future for the city and the strategy is an overall plan for how that future will be achieved. Another way of thinking about it is that the vision tells us ‘where we are going’ and the strategy tells us ‘how we will get there’. Once an overall strategy is in place, more detailed action plans for each aspect of the strategy can be developed.
The first step is to take each element of the vision (each objective) and consider the best way to achieve it. The time and resource requirements of implementing different approaches should be taken into consideration in choosing the best approach.
Each objective may not need a separate strategy – one strategy may be effective in achieving a number of objectives. For example, an employment strategy may address the objective ‘increase employment opportunities’ as well as the objective ‘reduce poverty’.
A range of different strategies may be proposed to meet the city’s Vision, Objectives and Strategies. Different stakeholders may have a preference for different approaches. The process of analysing the different strategic options and choosing the final strategies should be a participatory one. It is important that a wide range of stakeholders are involved in this process (see Consultation and Participation Building Block). This would usually occur in a workshop, or series of workshops. This participatory approach will ensure that the chosen strategies are those on on which there is a consensus. It will create a sense of ‘ownership’ of the strategies by various stakeholders. In turn, this means the strategies are more likely to be successful.
When the set of strategies is ready, refer back again to the Vision – asking ‘if all the strategies are done, will the city will reach the Vision?” If something is missing, consider adding that to the strategies.
To choose strategies, each potential strategy should be assessed against the following criteria:
- Use the city’s main strengths
- Correct the city’s main weaknesses
- Exploit opportunities
- Eliminate or reduce external threats
- Support the city’s vision goals and objectives
This assessment is sometimes called a ‘SWOT analysis’ because it considers Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Those strategies that are considered most likely to meet all these criteria (or to best meet the criteria) should be the ones that are finally chosen.
Once the strategies are finalised, the next step is to develop detailed action plans for each (see Action Planning Building Block).
Example: developing strategies for Can Tho
The second phase of the CDS for Can Tho commenced with elaborating and analysing the key issues and themes in a set of “thematic papers” which also developed strategic objectives for each theme. The six themes identified in the assessments of existing plans and priorities for Can Tho and confirmed in the first city wide consultation workshop in June 2006 were
Theme 1: Economic Development
Theme 2: Infrastructure Development and Environmental Management
Theme 3: Poverty Alleviation
Theme 4 Human Resource Development
Theme 5: Financial Resources and Management
Theme 6: Urban Governance
The strategic objectives for each theme were then used as a basis for establishing priorities for Investment. The consultant team prioritized the investment projects as high, medium or low depending on their strategic significance assessed in terms of their potential contribution to the strategic objectives. The consultants estimated the potential costs of the investments for each of three periods up to 2020: 2006-2010, 2011-2015 and 2016-2020. They also identified the possible sources of investment funding for each project: state budget, local budget, ODA, FDI or private funding. The proposed Investment priorities were then discussed in with city leaders as part of the consultation.
Vision, objectives and strategies: Hai Phong CDS
The Hai Phong CDS contained five major development strategies:
- Sea port development strategy
- Infrastructure development strategy
- Economic development strategy matching
- Good living environment development strategy
- Good business environment development strategy
These strategies were discussed and agreed at a stakeholder workshop. The Hai Phong CDS was coordinated by a working group and included substantial stakeholder consultation.
Consultation occurred at each stage of the CDS and involved participants from many social groups including businessmen, associations and unions, NGOs, city officials in different departments and from different levels, scientists, research institutes, universities and retired people.
Nam Dinh CDS
As part of the Nam Dinh CDS, alternative strategies were solicited and developed through direct consultation with Task Force members and individuals representing a wide range of municipal stakeholders. A series of discussion sessions between leaders of the cities and planning experts were organised. The result is a list of City Development Strategies of Nam Dinh City to the year 2020.
The next step was to choose the priority strategies for 2006–2010. This is a difficult task for an economically underdeveloped city like Nam Dinh. Every problem raised seemed to be equally important and pressing, while the budget for implementation is limited. The CDS Task Force faced the challenge of working out a set of selection criteria that must be realistic, objective and conducive to consensus.
After much consideration, the following criteria were selected:
- Urgency: prioritised strategies are those that must be implemented first, in order to pave way for solving other subsequent problems.
- Importance: strategies of particular importance that could influence the implementation of other strategies.
- Feasibility: pertains to the likeliness of achieving the goals of the prioritised strategy, when taking into consideration the resources available and the institutional framework for implementation of the selected strategy, including: legal framework, level of decentralised authority, availability of human, financial and technical resources, among others.
- Contribution to poverty reduction: strategies are selected according to their level of contribution to poverty reduction in the city, especially those that impacts the poor directly: job creation for the poor, credits for the poor to improve their housing conditions, upgrade of infrastructure in poor areas.
As result of applying these prioritisation criteria, 21 strategies were selected for implementation during 2006–2010.
The emphasis on SEA in this building block will depend somewhat on whether this building block is conducted first, or after an initial assessment.
If there has not been an initial assessment prior to the visioning building block, then it will be particularly important to ensure that environmental issues are brought into consideration in the development of a vision and the subsequent goals and objectives. This may require providing information about environmental trends to the group conducting the vision exercise, or explicitly seeking views on environmental issues. In this way an environment element can be asked for and included in the vision.
If there has been an initial assessment conducted before the vision building block, then the environmental objectives and targets and the critical environmental and sustainability factors identified as a part of the initial assessment can be used to check that the vision aligns with these. This will help the CDS visioning process focus on synergies, integration and the links between sectoral dimensions and environmental/sustainability issues and priorities.
Consultation and participation is a separate building block. However, consultation and stakeholder engagement should not be seen as a process that happens only once. Rather, ongoing processes of participation and stakeholder engagement should be incorporated throughout the CDS. This means that participation activities need to be considered in the visioning stage. In fact, visioning is the stage where participation needs to be most extensive, to ensure that as many stakeholders as possible have a say in how they would like to see their city in the future. The vision is the basis for all the steps that follow, so it is critical to ensure that the vision is one that is shared by the broadest possible range of stakeholders.
Like other stages of the CDS, the visioning stage should pay particular attention to involving those people:
- Who are going to be most affected by CDS outcomes, and
- Whose actions or input will be crucial to the implementation of the CDS; this includes not only party officials, but other stakeholders such as city departments, non-government organisations and the private sector.
As the stakeholders often have no experience in either participating in CDS consultation or developing ideas for the city’s future, they may focus on current problems and find it difficult to think about future issues and scenarios. The role of the facilitator is important in helping participants moving beyond today’s problems and think about the future that they would like to see for their city.
Use the following questions as a guide to making the visioning phase a participatory one.
- What steps have been put in place to make the visioning phase a truly participatory one?
- Has the process that is planned for the visioning stage been informed by the principle of participatory ‘bottom up planning’?
- Have there been any previous ‘city visions’ developed during consultation on other projects? Are they still relevant? Can you draw on them to inform the current process?
- Can you be sure that the visioning process will result in a shared vision for the future, that will have wide stakeholder support?
- Have a cross-section of stakeholders been involved in the visioning process for the CDS?
- Have a wide range of views and perspectives been considered in developing the vision?
- What will happen to the vision that is produced as a result of the participatory processes? How will the it be communicated back to those people who participated in the visioning process? Do they understand what the next steps are for the CDS? Will there be an opportunity for stakeholders to have further input into the CDS and if so, how?
| Visioning, objectives and strategies Nam Dinh CDSConsultation to develop a vision for Nam DinhThe Nam Dinh City CDS was characterised by extensive consultation with stakeholders, both inside and outside city government. Nam Dinh used consultation as a “first step” for their CDS, using extensive consultation to help prepare a vision for the city.During the visioning process, the ideas and views of a wide range of stakeholders were solicited, including task force members and participants in 9 city-wide visioning workshops. The facilitation of the workshops asked participants to describe what they expected Nam Dinh to be in 2020, based on criteria for a sustainable city. The extensive consultation with stakeholders in Nam Dinh meant that the CDS vision had broad participation and input, included a range of ideas and had wide support. |
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is a separate building block, however M&E needs to be done for every building block for accountability and learning purposes. Keep records of all activities conducted and make sure that you document the process of carrying out 'Vision, Objectives and Strategies' building block. This means you need to document what happened for each 'key component' of this building block and share this information with appropriate stakeholders.
Also, use the following set of questions to help you learn from doing the Vision, Objectives and Strategies' Building Block and to provide accountability for funds spent on this building block. This is best done either through a workshop, interviews or a survey, and you will need to include the views of all those staff with key responsibilities for this building block. Consult the M&E section in this Guide for further information on monitoring and evaluation.
- What were the key outputs for this building block? Were these outputs of the desired quality?
- How efficient has the process for this building block been? In other words, how do the costs of doing this building block compare with the benefits?
- What worked well and what didn’t work so well in doing this building block? What would you do differently next time and why?
- To what extent was meaningful consultation and participation achieved?
- How were environmental and sustainability issues (through SEA processes) included?
