Rather than waste your resources with an overly expansive community outreach program, you need to diagnose your primary community relations needs at the outset of the project development process. Four Causes of Opposition Let's assume that you need to reduce the level of community opposition to your project. Given that many outreach tactics can actually generate greater community opposition than might already exist, you want your community relations program to be as sharply focused as possible. There are four different reasons why citizens oppose land use projects, and each requires a different community outreach response. Misinformation A tremendous amount of opposition to land use projects is based on misperceptions or exaggerated fears of project impacts.
Opposition based on misinformation is the easiest type of resistance to overcome.
Even though public agencies often insist on large community meetings or other multiparty forums, such gatherings are rarely effective informational events. Usually, a project raises more issues than can be adequately discussed at a large meeting. Further, many people are embarrassed to admit in front of others that they don't understand your proposal, while people with language difficulties may be especially reluctant to speak up in front of a large crowd. Community meetings often do little more than introduce potential opponents to each other, allow them to hear and adopt each others' agendas, and permit activists to stake out public positions in front of their constituents. It is important to note that if opposition isn't caused by a lack of information, then disgorging endless data will simply stir up people who were otherwise disinterested.