Glenwood One Of 10 Iowa Communities Selected For Living Roadways Community Visioning Program

Glenwood is one of 10 Iowa communities selected to participate in the Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning Program in 2023.

“This (grant) is something a citizen (Joe George) had applied for. They had done it in Malvern and did some really great things with it,” Glenwood City Administrator Amber Farnan said. “He was hoping also that the city (Glenwood) would be able to do some really great things with it.”

According to press release from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, “the program integrates technical landscape planning and design techniques with sustainable community action to assist community leaders and volunteers in making sound and meaningful decisions about the local landscape.”

The 10 Iowa communities selected for the program in 2023 are Denison, Dysart, Gilmore City, Glenwood, Independence, Marquette, McGregor, Slater, Vinton and West Burlington. Seven of the communities had participated in the program previously: Dysart and Slater (1997-98), Vinton (1999-2000), Glenwood (2008-09), Independence (2009-10), McGregor (2010-11) and Gilmore City (2012-13). The program is sponsored by the Iowa Department of Transportation in partnership with Iowa State University Landscape Architecture Extension and Trees Forever, an Iowa-based nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.

“We have a virtual kickoff meeting in October and then we have a meeting in Ames in November,” Farnan said. “We’ll start to discuss what Glenwood needs and ways they can help us.”

To qualify for the visioning program, a community must have a population of fewer than 10,000 residents, existing transportation-related issues, and a committee of volunteers willing to dedicate their time and talent to the visioning process.

“I definitely think there will be a focus on sidewalks and the walkability of our town,” Farnan noted.

The Community Visioning Program is designed to empower local leaders through a planning process that results in a transportation enhancement plan “reflecting the values and identity of the community.”

A committee of local residents participates in a series of steps toward creating a conceptual design plan, including:
• Identifying issues.
•    Investigating the physical and cultural dimensions of landscape issues.
•    Setting goals for change.
•    Developing strategies to meet those goals.
•    Creating an implementation plan.

Throughout the process, the committee receives support from the technical experts at Trees Forever, a professional landscape architecture firm, and the ISU Department of Landscape Architecture.

Since Iowa’s Living Roadways was created in 1996, more than 250 communities have participated in Community Visioning, more than two dozen of which have gone through the process more than once.