Posted 3 October, 2025
The Iowa communities of Albion, Dumont, Farmington, Kalona, Lake Mills, Murray, Sioux Rapids and Volga have been selected to participate in Iowa’s Living Roadways Community Visioning in 2026, which marks this award-winning program’s 30th anniversary.
The program is sponsored by the Iowa Department of Transportation in partnership with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Community and Economic Development and Trees Forever, an Iowa-based nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
Community Visioning integrates technical landscape planning and design techniques with sustainable community action to assist community leaders and volunteers in making sound and meaningful decisions about the local landscape. The program empowers local leaders through a planning process that results in a transportation enhancement plan reflecting the values and identity of the community.
“To qualify for the visioning program, a community must have a population of fewer than 10,000 residents, existing transportation-related issues and a committee of volunteers willing to dedicate their time and talent to the visioning process,” said Sandra Oberbroeckling, Community Visioning project manager and ISU Extension and Outreach program specialist.
A committee of local residents participates in a series of steps toward creating a conceptual design plan, including:
- Identifying issues
- Investigating the physical and cultural dimensions of landscape issues
- Setting goals for change
- Developing strategies to meet those goals
- Creating an implementation plan
Throughout the process, the committee receives support from the technical experts at Trees Forever, a professional landscape architecture firm, and the ISU Department of Landscape Architecture.
On Nov. 7, representatives from each 2025 visioning community kick off the visioning process in Ames at the Iowa's Living Roadways Annual Celebration, where they will network with program sponsors, representatives from past visioning communities and experts on community engagement and placemaking.
The sustainability and success of the program is evident by the number of communities with which it has collaborated. Since Iowa’s Living Roadways was created in 1996, 269 communities have participated in Community Visioning, 42 of which have gone through the process more than once. Two 2026 communities — Kalona and Volga — were visioning communities in 2016 and 2004, respectively.