Page 164 - Littleton, CO Comprehensive Plan

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OVERVIEW

In response to the guidance provided by City Council during their March 2018 retreat, Envision Littleton focused intensely
on public involvement and engagement. The City Council called for a community driven process to determine a unifying
vision and the proactive inputs to move decision making towards being more values-based and data-driven.

Based on this direction, Envision Littleton began as a partnership between the community, the City, and our consultants
in April 2018. To begin, the Envision Littleton Team gathered community input through small group listening sessions,
neighborhood living room sessions, and the City’s civically engaged leaders serving on Boards, Commissions, and
volunteer groups.
The Envision Team maintained this community dialogue throughout 2018-19, with targeted outreach to gather broad
community input from residents, businesses owners, employees, visitors, and various stakeholders in Littleton. The
Team’s goal was to leverage community input from existing community events, City communication outlets, and
community groups, while creating new opportunities and relationships for lasting City engagement.

Envision Littleton created two community engagement plans; one designed to gather community input for the vision
plan and establish long term relationships with community members in 2018 and the second to expand the community
conversation about the look and feel of Littleton through the Comprehensive Plan update and Transportation Master Plan
creation in 2019.

WHY START WITH VISION?

One of the most unique elements of the Envision Littleton project was spending over eight months gathering input from
the community about the unifying vision for 2040. Spending the majority of 2018 focused on collecting input for a unifying
vision and set of guiding principles is unusual. Defining a community’s vision for the future is normally an effort combined
with planning for the future, but Littleton chose to isolate this step and allow the community to truly focus on their shared
values, priorities, and concerns.The only other metro region community to produce a stand-alone vision document is
Castle Rock 2020 developed in 2000.
The unifying vision captured what the community treasures today and what it collectively strives for going forward. The
opportunity to have a broad and inclusive community process allowed the Envision Team to capture not only the hopes
and dreams of the community, but also the extensive list of shared core values. The passion and commitment to the
identified shared core values allowed the Team to develop the five guiding principles of ANCHORED, AUTHENTIC,
CONNECTED, ACTIVE, and ENGAGED.

Once the City of Littleton tackled the creation of a unifying vision and set of five guiding principles, the Team was
positioned to begin the more detailed community conversation about future development, redevelopment, transportation
investments, and community enhancement efforts over the next 20 years.

In many ways, this project set out to understand the connection our residents, businesses, and visitors have with Littleton,
attempting to understand the experiences and impressions of those that live, work, do business in, and visit our City. The
focus of our conversation was to elevate the unifying values and vision and begin the proactive dialogue about the next
20 years. Last year in a unanimous vote, the Littleton City Council adopted the first-ever unifying vision for the city on
December 18, 2018.

envisionlittleton.org