2018 Conference

Individual Paper Presentation

The North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) has required comprehensive land use planning in the state’s 20 coastal counties since 1972, as well as the towns and cities located within these counties. Until 2016, grant funding from the NC Division of Coastal Management mandated public participation in the creation of the CAMA land use plans. The planning grant program was repealed in 2016 and along with it, the signal from the state that public engagement was expected as local governments developed their CAMA plans. The paper presents the empirical research results from a comparison of plans adopted before and after the 2016 change in regulation. The 2016 regulatory change created a natural experiment as local governments adopted new plans over the past year without a mandate for participatory planning. The paper explores the impact of mandating public participation on both the planning process and the resulting plans through a comparative case study. It asks if a mandate encourages or discourages innovation in public participation and whether its impact remains when the mandate is removed. The paper considers the specific participatory mechanisms selected by local governments, the breadth and depth of public engagement, the extent of engagement across the planning to implementation continuum, and the impact of public participation on the policies included in individual CAMA plans. The data for the study includes the CAMA plans from the 20 coastal NC counties and the towns and cities within these counties and interviews with planners, elected officials, and residents from the local governments that have updated their plans since the regulatory changes were announced. The findings of this paper have are relevant to federal, state, and regional governments that set mandates for planning processes conducted by lower levels of government.