Recreation resource planning is a rational systematic decision-making process about the future management of recreation resources and recreation opportunities. Recreation planning applies analytical tools to deter our human tendencies to make decisions based on predisposition, bias, inadequate analysis, group-think, insular perspective, resistance to change, and excessive self-confidence. It results in decisions that are more effective, efficient, fair, reasoned, and defensible.
Recreation resource planners are professionals and should have a university degree in recreation resource planning, urban or regional planning, landscape architecture, or a closely related field. Professional experience and professional certification (e.g., NRPA, AICP) may also fulfill this educational standard.
The standard for decision making in recreation planning is sound professional judgment, defined as a reasonable decision that has given full and fair consideration to all of the appropriate information, that is based on principled and reasoned analysis and the best available science and expertise, and that complies with applicable laws.
A recreation plan is a contract with the recreating public and affected stakeholders that transcends any one person or administration, and as such should be detailed, unambiguous, and provide for accountability.
Recreation resource planning is a collaborative public process that deters the bias of special interests, political intervention, or incremental unplanned decision making.
Recreation resources are those features in a setting that define a person’s experience, such as the natural and cultural resources, special values attached to an area, facilities, infrastructure, personnel, and management regulations and actions.
Recreation planners plan for recreation opportunities, defined as an occasion for a person to participate in a specific recreation activity in a particular outdoor setting in order to enjoy a desired recreation experience and gain the healthy benefits that accrue.
The occasion of a person to participate in a specific recreation activity in a particular outdoor setting in order to enjoy a desired recreation experience and gain the healthy benefits that accrue. (Note---the historic term of “recreation” has largely been replaced by the phrase “recreation opportunity” as defined above).
Recreation resource planning should promote the environmental, human and community wellness benefits that accrue from recreation participation such as improved physical and mental health, family cohesion, civility, social integration, child development, economic stimulation, work productivity, resource stewardship, and conservation ethic.
Because there is no “average” recreationist, it is important to plan for and maintain a spectrum of diverse recreation opportunities.
Recreation resource planners must consider how their resources fit into a larger regional system, how their potential recreation alternatives might contribute to regional recreation diversity, and how their opportunities can be linked to larger systems.
Recreation resource planning helps to ensure that all people have an opportunity to enjoy our great outdoors without prejudice of race, ethnicity, age, wealth, gender, beliefs, or abilities. Planning should also ensure that Treaty rights and the rights of aboriginal publics are fairly considered.
Recreation resource planning requires recreation allocation decisions because not all types and number of people or activities can be accommodated in a particular setting at one time.
Some recreation uses are not compatible with other uses, and recreation planners have the responsibility to determine what, if any, uses should be permitted, and where those activities should be permitted. Strong preferences for specific recreation settings lead to competition for recreation resources among different user types. Conflict is also generated by how each user group perceives the others’ actions and values.
Because not all people can be accommodated in all places, recreation planning helps to focus on the special values and resources of a setting and to define the special niche within the larger spectrum of recreation opportunities.
Visitor capacity is the prescribed number, or supply, of available visitor opportunities that will be accommodated in a specific location and specific time.
Whereas natural and cultural resources define an outdoor recreation setting, it is fundamental that recreation resource planning and plans address how to integrate recreation use so as to harmonize with, protect, enhance, and sustain these important resources.
Recreation planning should proactively consider ways to minimize and mitigate potential social and environmental impacts.
Recreation planning should consider how to best design, manage, and interpret settings so as to foster public appreciation, understanding, respect, behaviors, and partnerships that contribute to the stewardship of an area’s natural and cultural resources, and special values.
Recreation planners also have a responsibility to consider how plans and decisions will affect the kind of resource legacy will be left to the next generation.
While the specific terms and steps in a recreation planning process often vary across institutions, all recreation resource planning in some manner includes:
Identification of public issues, management concerns, opportunities, and threats through collaborative stakeholder involvement.
Establishment of planning and decision criteria for evaluating and selecting the preferred alternative.
Inventory of resources, the current situation, and the best available science and information.
Formulation of alternatives which address the significant issues and concerns.
Evaluation of the consequences, benefits, and effects of each proposed alternative.
Selection of a preferred alternative based upon a full and reasoned analysis.
Implementation and monitoring.
Plan adaptation or revision.
Recreation resource planning is framed by various local, state, and federal laws and regulations, with the most significant and historic direction provided by the National Environmental Policy Act (1969) and its attendant Council on Environmental Quality regulations.
Good recreation planning is based upon the important judicial principles of being principled, reasoned, reasonable, sufficient, full, fair, and preponderance of the information.
An adequate recreation resource planning process and plan must address all of the significant public issues, management concerns, opportunities, and threats that are identified in the early stages of the planning process. Issues, concerns, opportunities and threats that are not deemed significant, do not need to be addressed in the plan.
Recreation resource planning requires the consideration of many inputs such as an inventory of existing plans and policies, current type and amount of recreation use (supply and demand), recreation trends, public issues, management concerns, regional supply of recreation opportunities, visitor and stakeholder preferences, economic impact of recreation participation, best available science, environmental conditions, and available information from recreation and resource monitoring.
Recreation resource planning must try to engage and hear from all the diverse publics who value the recreation resource. The easily recognizable publics are often labeled visitors, local business, land owners and communities, but there may also be equally important publics who vicariously value the resource, some who have been displaced by past unacceptable conditions, some who do not have the ability to attend meetings, or some who live across the country but equally share in the ownership of the public resource.
The meaningful engagement and exchange with the public is essential throughout the planning process. Collaboration results in a clearer definition of public values, more creative alternatives, more reasoned and reasonable decisions, and a constituency that becomes better informed and committed to the plan and its implementation.
It is both a legal requirement and professional imperative to duly consider the best available science and expertise in the planning process and the plan’s implementation.
Recreation planning should consider other significant natural and cultural resources, uses, demands, and values in an integrated and comprehensive fashion. Functional planning, whereby one resource is planned for in a vacuum from other resources, is not appropriate and contrary to comprehensive and integrated planning.
Recreation alternatives must be clear, comprehensive, and provide a reasonable range of choices for public consideration. Each alternative can be contrasted by its proposed objectives, desired future conditions, desired recreation experiences, facilities, management strategies and actions, quality standards, visitor capacities, economic value, projected budget requirements, and monitoring program.
The analytical stage in a planning process is the evaluation of alternatives whereby the alternatives should be sharply contrasted, and the pros and cons are rigorously evaluated so the reasons for and against each alternative become clear.
The effectiveness and utility of a plan is in part a function of its clarity, brevity, layout, and design. Materials used in the planning process should be retained in the administrative record, but the final approved document should be a valuable desktop working document.
The output of a recreation resource planning process is a management prescription for an area that includes such information as goals, objectives, desired future conditions, desired recreation experiences, facilities, management strategies and actions, quality standards, visitor capacities, a monitoring program, and budgetary needs.
An effective recreation plan should include the projected budgetary needs to implement the plan. In this way the plan is a tool to prepare and justify annual budgets, for allocating budgets, and to guide annual work priorities, and facilitate the scheduling and sequencing of projects.
The successful implementation of a plan should involve collaboration with stakeholders, government agencies, partnerships, and alliances with communities, special interest groups, and the private sector.
The responsible official charged with implementing the plan should periodically evaluate and report to the public on progress and accomplishments to date, factors affecting the plan’s implementation, and changes pending or made to the approved plan.
A recreation resource plan should be adaptive to new science, information, uses, technology, trends, conditions, and other circumstances of importance. Any proposed change should be subject to the same level of deliberate analysis and public collaboration as went into the original decision.
Given the significant and ongoing changes in our society and the recreation industry, it would be reasonable that recreation plans be formally reviewed and updated every 5–10 years.
These principles were developed by the Board of Directors of the National Association of Recreation Resource Planners, with input solicited from more than 1000 recreation planning professionals, and approved by the Board for distribution in April 2009.
Risk management is the identification, evaluation, and prioritization of risks, followed by the minimization, monitoring, and control of the impact or probability of those risks occurring. Risks can come from various sources including uncertainty in international markets, political instability, dangers of project failures, legal liabilities, credit risk, accidents, natural causes and disasters, deliberate attack from an adversary, or events of uncertain or unpredictable root-cause.
In common usage, evaluation is a systematic determination and assessment of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards. It can assist an organization, program, design, project or any other intervention or initiative to assess any aim, realizable concept/proposal, or any alternative, to help in decision-making; or to generate the degree of achievement or value in regard to the aim and objectives and results of any such action that has been completed.
Transportation planning is the process of defining future policies, goals, investments, and spatial planning designs to prepare for future needs to move people and goods to destinations. As practiced today, it is a collaborative process that incorporates the input of many stakeholders including various government agencies, the public and private businesses. Transportation planners apply a multi-modal and/or comprehensive approach to analyzing the wide range of alternatives and impacts on the transportation system to influence beneficial outcomes.
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to attain strategic goals.
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
The National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) is a system of protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), an agency within the Department of the Interior. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the system of public lands and waters set aside to conserve America's fish, wildlife, and plants. Since President Theodore Roosevelt designated Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge as the first wildlife refuge in 1903, the system has grown to over 568 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts encompassing about 859,000,000 acres (3,476,200 km2).
Business analysis is a professional discipline focused on identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. Solutions may include a software-systems development component, process improvements, or organizational changes, and may involve extensive analysis, strategic planning and policy development. A person dedicated to carrying out these tasks within an organization is called a business analyst or BA.
Neighborhood planning is a form of urban planning through which professional urban planners and communities seek to shape new and existing neighborhoods. It can denote the process of creating a physical neighborhood plan, for example via participatory planning, or an ongoing process through which neighborhood affairs are decided.
The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 is a United States federal law that is the primary statute governing the administration of national forests and was an amendment to the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, which called for the management of renewable resources on national forest lands. The law was a response to lawsuits involving various practices in the national forest, including timber harvesting., Zieske v Butz was the lawsuit brought by members of the Pt Baker Association on Prince of Wales Island against the US Forest Service's first environmental impact statement. The suit halted logging on the NW tip of the island which consisted of 400,000 acres and resulted in a call by the timber industry for Congressional action to undo the lawsuit. Representative Foley noted on the floor that six other suits were blocking logging with holdings similar to Zieske v Butz.
Human resource policies are continuing guidelines on the approach of which an organization intends to adopt in managing its people. They represent specific guidelines to HR managers on various matters concerning employment and state the intent of the organization on different aspects of Human Resource management such as recruitment, promotion, compensation, training, selections etc. They therefore serve as a reference point when human resources management practices are being developed or when decisions are being made about an organization's workforce.
Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance processes. Internal auditing might achieve this goal by providing insight and recommendations based on analyses and assessments of data and business processes. With commitment to integrity and accountability, internal auditing provides value to governing bodies and senior management as an objective source of independent advice. Professionals called internal auditors are employed by organizations to perform the internal auditing activity.
Context-sensitive solutions (CSS) is a theoretical and practical approach to transportation decision-making and design that takes into consideration the communities and lands through which streets, roads, and highways pass. The term is closely related to but distinguishable from context-sensitive design in that it asserts that all decisions in transportation planning, project development, operations, and maintenance should be responsive to the context in which these activities occur, not simply the design process. CSS seeks to balance the need to move vehicles efficiently and safely with other desirable outcomes, including historic preservation, environmental sustainability, and the creation of vital public spaces. In transit projects, CSS generally refers to context sensitive planning, design, and development around transit stations, also known as transit-oriented development.
The rational planning model is a model of the planning process involving a number of rational actions or steps. Taylor (1998) outlines five steps, as follows:
Natural resource management (NRM) is the management of natural resources such as land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generations (stewardship).
Comprehensive planning is an ordered process that determines community goals and aspirations in terms of community development. The end product is called a comprehensive plan, also known as a general plan, or master plan. This resulting document expresses and regulates public policies on transportation, utilities, land use, recreation, and housing. Comprehensive plans typically encompass large geographical areas, a broad range of topics, and cover a long-term time horizon. The term comprehensive plan is most often used by urban planners in the United States.
Tourism carrying capacity (TCC) is an imperfect but useful approach to managing visitors in vulnerable areas. The TCC concept evolved out of the fields of range, habitat and wildlife management. In these fields, managers attempted to determine the largest population of a particular species that could be supported by a habitat over a long period of time.
Ecosystem-based management is an environmental management approach that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem, including humans, rather than considering single issues, species, or ecosystem services in isolation. It can be applied to studies in the terrestrial and aquatic environments with challenges being attributed to both. In the marine realm, they are highly challenging to quantify due to highly migratory species as well as rapidly changing environmental and anthropogenic factors that can alter the habitat rather quickly. To be able to manage fisheries efficiently and effectively it has become increasingly more pertinent to understand not only the biological aspects of the species being studied, but also the environmental variables they are experiencing. Population abundance and structure, life history traits, competition with other species, where the stock is in the local food web, tidal fluctuations, salinity patterns and anthropogenic influences are among the variables that must be taken into account to fully understand the implementation of a "ecosystem-based management" approach. Interest in ecosystem-based management in the marine realm has developed more recently, in response to increasing recognition of the declining state of fisheries and ocean ecosystems. However, due to a lack of a clear definition and the diversity involved with the environment, the implementation has been lagging. In freshwater lake ecosystems, it has been shown that ecosystem-based habitat management is more effective for enhancing fish populations than management alternatives.
Interactive planning is a concept developed by Russell L. Ackoff, an American theorist, early proponent of the field of operations research and recognized as the pioneer in systems thinking. Interactive planning forwards the idea that in order to arrive at a desirable future, one has to create a desirable present and create ways and means to resemble it. One of its unique features is that development should be ideal-oriented. Interactive planning is unlike other types of planning such as reactive planning, inactive planning, and preactive planning.
Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches implicitly for millennia, ecosystem management emerged explicitly as a formal concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems and of humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.
Opportunity management (OM) has been defined as "a process to identify business and community development opportunities that could be implemented to sustain or improve the local economy".
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