Neighborhood Planning Program
In response to a desire for more equitable delivery of services and to provide a grassroots response to neighborhoods' concerns, the Tacoma City Council provided funding for a Pilot Neighborhood Planning Program (NPP) in 2022. Through the 2023-2024 Biennium Budget Adoption, City Council made the Neighborhood Planning Program permanent! The goal of the NPP is to support neighborhood identity and vitality. For the first year, City Council identified McKinley Hill and Proctor as the pilot neighborhoods representing different locations on the spectrum of neighborhood development between growth creation and growth management.
Click on the below images to access the project pages.
McKinley Hill Proctor
City Council allocated resources to support the implementation of short-term goals in the selected neighborhoods such as:
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Art installations
- Physical improvements
- Cleanup efforts
- Community identity/history
- Recognition/protection of cultural/historic resources
- Sustainability/Health
- Some elements of streetscape and public amenities
- Determining the use of specific sites or properties
Why Neighborhood Planning?
This program provides enhanced planning and development support to help communities create strong, vibrant, and diverse neighborhoods. Led by residents from the neighborhood and informed by community engagement processes, the Neighborhood Planning Program will consider immediate ways to make your surroundings more livable. The goal of a neighborhood planning process is not just creating and implementing a plan, the process itself is also a tool to help improve
communities through building community capacity, constituent energy, relationships/partnerships, and co-creation opportunities for residents to shape their own neighborhoods.
Begin with what’s in front of you, what’s really there. If there is a there there, that’s where it is.--Ron Silliman.
How It Works
Step 1: Internal & External Coordination
Neighborhood planning staff connect and coordinate with external partners (organizations and agencies) and internal Tacoma staff to identify existing programs and available resources to implement projects.
Step 2: Launch Engagement
Neighborhood Planning staff complete extensive community engagement and outreach to collect initial input on key neighborhood issues, form the steering group, and identify interested residents, business and property owners, and other neighborhood stakeholders.
Step 3: Project Idea Generation
Steering group and community events, online survey, and targeted outreach generate broad categories of potential projects and actions.
Step 4: Project Specific Prioritization
Tacoma staff lead topic-specific community events (online and in person) to prioritize actions based on the initial projects identified by the community. The steering group works to combine community ideas and identify the most important projects and began to form project committees to implement specific actions.
Step 5: Plan Vetting & Adoption
Tacoma staff bring draft plan recommendations back to the community and internal partners to ensure the plan reflected what we heard and included projects that could feasibly be implemented
Staff evaluate existing conditions including:
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Historic Resources
- Property Inventory
- Equity Index
- Mapping
- Infrastructure/Transportation
- Land Use/Zoning (in a limited context)
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Implementation of existing policy frameworks from PSRC: Vision 2050; Tacoma 2025; and the One Tacoma Plan.
Step 6: Implementation
Staff and City Council identify funding and strategies for “quick win” projects and work with community-led project committees to begin implementation.
For more information about the City’s Long-Term Zoning, Land-Use and Planning strategy, please visit
Planning and Development Services.
Become a Neighborhood Planning Partner
Neighborhood Planning starts with the neighbors. You are the expert on what works, what doesn’t work, what’s missing, and how it could work better in your neighborhood. Your involvement with your neighborhood plan is our main goal. The Stakeholder 
Committee--composed of residents (homeowners and renters), students, property owners, business operators and employees, and those who live, work, or spend significant time in the neighborhood--will determine the plan’s priorities and recommendations. You can be involved in the process by:
- Joining the Stakeholder Committee in your neighborhood
- Volunteering to assist with surveys, leading outreach, hosting an event, or helping build connections with community members who prefer Spanish, Russian, Khmer, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, ASL or other languages.
- Responding to surveys
- Helping to create art or greenspaces
Stipends will be provided for contributions.