Engaged Research: Inviting Residents into the Scientific Process (original) (raw)

Journal of Planning Education and Research

In a time of rapid environmental change, it is increasingly necessary that scientists and planners engage with communities both to speed the coproduction of knowledge and to identify problems that are relevant and meaningful to those communities. While peerreviewed journal publications like JPER continue to be relevant to academic scholars seeking tenure and promotion, the urgency of environmental change demands alternatives to these traditional, detached methods. We now see major funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health designing programs that require physical scientists, social scientists, and communities to work together, through programs like Smart and Connected Communities and the CIVIC Challenge. These programs are ripe for planning researchers, who are trained both to work across disciplines and to work with communities.