Small Communities Planning Assistance

Project goals

1. Develop useful tools to support planning by Minnesota’s communities, with a focus on communities outside the seven-county Twin Cities metro area.
2. Build planning and community leadership capacity supports.
3. Determine on-going model for strategic partnerships with existing networks.

Project Overview

Across the state, Minnesotans engage in civic life—serving in elected and volunteer roles, participating in planning processes, and supporting community advocacy. Their lived experience brings essential knowledge to local planning, reflecting the values, diversity, histories, and aspirations of their towns.

At the same time, many communities – particularly those outside the seven-county metro – face capacity constraints that make it challenging to plan for infrastructure needs and long-term growth. There are opportunities to strengthen this capacity by expanding planning assistance, supporting civic leadership, and creating clearer avenues for planning expertise to help nurture vibrant, resilient communities. This program aims to build on existing partnerships and strengths in Minnesota while adding tools, coordination, and support needed for long-term resilience.

Implementation of this program will be highly collaborative and phased over multiple years. In 2026, the focus will be on exploration, early program development, and initial design of tools and resources.

Anticipated activities may include:

Developing Useful Tools

• Creating an Interactive Mapping Tool: Scope and develop an interactive mapping tool for use in local and regional planning that shows state data layers and planned capital projects to better align future infrastructure, natural resource management, and community development projects.
• Developing Tools and Resources: Build a suite of self-serve online resources and tools to support key capacity building and planning needs informed by past and current models in Minnesota and other states.

Building Planning and Leadership Capacity Supports

• Previewing and Refining Program Design: Outline, develop and pursue an implementation plan for the Planning Assistance for Small Communities program in close collaboration with communities and partners, including a strong emphasis on convening and hearing from local and regional communities and potential partners to understand priorities, needs, and opportunities.
• Learning and Sharing: Identify opportunities to amplify and build planning as a career track, and grow the planning capacity of planning commission members as well as those interested in serving their communities.
• Communicating: Create an online portal of technical assistance and capacity-building resources.

Determining Models for Strategic Partnerships

• Establish external partnership model(s): Explore ongoing partnership opportunities with existing programs with aligned interests and existing work on the ground and in partnership with Minnesota’s small communities.
• Convene interagency workgroup: Identify and convene state agencies providing small communities planning assistance to improve coordination and reduce duplication across state agencies. Initial topics may include the mapping tool (described above) and sharing information about projects and programs in Greater Minnesota.
• Engage with communities on other LRP planning topics: Integrate program design and implementation into other LRP planning efforts through convening and related activities.