In an era of increasing complexity, the majority of local land-use decisions in the United States are made by volunteer citizen planners. Often these elected or appointed volunteers enter their positions with a passion for their communities but without appropriate background training. The Michigan Citizen Planner Program was developed to address…

This article reports on an analysis of the effects of a quasinatural experiment in which 16 rural communities participated in public discussion, leadership training, and community visioning as part of an Extension program at Montana State University. Difference-in-differences methods reveal that key U.S. Census socioeconomic indicators either…

SWAT (Student Weekend Arborist Team) is a program affiliated with Cornell University and Extension founded to conduct street tree inventories in New York State communities with 10,000 residents or fewer, a group of communities underserved in community forestry planning. Between 2002 and 2010, SWAT conducted 40 inventories, and data from these…

A discussion of seven considerations for the development of a land-use policy statement and the role of extension in developing an effective strategy for state land-use planning. (EM)

Using natural resources data from a system developed by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, an Extension program to educate public officials who make land use decisions was conducted in a series of workshops over three years. Program effectiveness is evaluated and positive and negative results are noted. (MF)