Planner Perspectives: Ben Smith

Planning Professionals work collaboratively with communities and local governments to develop pathways for improving and sustaining the places where people live, work and play. Their knowledge of land use, critical infrastructure and the needs and values of the communities they serve, allow them to help cities and towns proactively and responsibly shape their futures. In this edition of Planner Perspectives, we talk with Ben Smith the founder of North Star Planning in New Gloucester, Maine, about his role as an experienced community planner and how his firm’s work is helping New England communities balance growth and resiliency in a changing world.

What was your path to becoming a Community Planner?

I have a planning degree from the University of Southern Maine and really got into planning after college when I moved to the Boston area.  I was interested in some prominent dam removal projects that were happening at that time, as well as issues around land divestment in the paper industry in northern Maine. I wasn’t a biologist. I wasn’t an economist. I wasn’t an environmental scientist. I thought, how can I get involved in these things that I’m really interested in? And that led me to planning and policy work.

Can you tell us a little about North Star Planning and how it came about?

I worked for the Town of Windham, Maine, for about 11 years, and the last five years I was the town’s Planning Director. After a long run there, I was ready for the next challenge. Essentially that is what led to North Star Planning. I started doing planning consulting work as a side gig and did that for almost a year in addition to my municipal duties and ended up going full time with North Star.

What expertise does North Star bring to your clients?

We are essentially an outsourced municipal planning department, and we focus on long range planning work,  ordinance and policy development, direct planning, board support, and development review. We work with towns and cities that don’t have staff or don’t have full-time staff. We also do more project-based work which is what our long-range planning engagements tend to be. Towns and cities put projects out to bid, and we respond to those RFPs.

What do you see as some of the biggest challenges facing planners and the industry these days?

I think from a general standpoint, things have changed a lot since COVID. [The pandemic] itself was a big change in how we did business, and I think going forward communities are going to need to not rely solely on federal dollars to do a lot of the work that needs to happen locally. I think for local communities, really being strategic and really thinking about local resources is going to become more and more important. And to that end, being efficient with planning and thinking about what issues you need to be planning for.

What about environmental issues?

[Climate change] impacts all the communities we work in. For example, the planning work that Maine communities were doing 10 years ago looks very different from the work they’re doing today in large part because of climate change and resilience planning.

In Maine, the coast gets a lot of attention from a sea level rise, storm surge and working waterfront infrastructure standpoint. Plus, we were all really impacted by some big storms a couple of winters ago and that led to a lot of state level resilience planning.

Interior and northern communities are impacted by the changing ecosystem in our working forests, and the winter economy is also changing – think skiing and snowmobiling. So, the future of those communities is really tied to planning for a changing climate as well.

Community engagement is certainly important in planning. How do you handle competing interests within local government and among residents and bring everyone together to reach a consensus on a project?

Public participation, public input, hearing from the community that you’re planning for is essential in long range planning work. Planning is about managing change. It can be really exciting for some communities. But it’s also pretty scary for others.

I imagine some of the discussions can get lively…

Sometimes the more contentious discussions are really based on values of the community and often they’re competing values that are set up against each other. So, you have to address what are the core values, and what’s really going on in this community. When there’s such strong feelings about the future, it can be really hard sometimes. But I think it’s also very rewarding when you can get to the end of a process and have some good consensus on the big things.

Do your engagement methods differ based on the project?

The techniques that you use and the range of people you talk to are different depending on the scope of the project. When you’re doing a big community-wide comprehensive plan or master plan, you want to talk with and hear from everybody. And then you’re just talking at a high level about values, vision — the things that are core to the community. What does it mean to live in that place and work in that place?

When you get down to specific policies and ordinance drafting, your focus is a lot sharper and sometimes you’re only engaging with the people who are in a particular geographic region of the town or in certain interest groups depending on the ordinance. You are developing something that’s a little closer to the ground as opposed to that big high level vision plan.

Let’s talk a little about technology. A lot of planners are dipping their toes into AI – is that something North Star is also exploring?

I think we’re trying to understand the advantages of using AI. It’s a double-edged sword like so many things. There’s time savings, there’s efficiency. It is a valuable tool in helping you analyze data, but at the same time we want to be careful with that. You can’t rely solely on AI to do the work. For example, if you ask AI to draft a vision statement for a coastal Maine community or a small town in the mountains or something like that, it’ll scan the Web and bring back everything it can and come up with something that sounds pretty. That’s good, but it’s really lacking that connection to place. And often, anything AI comes back with is just too generic without being connected to the people and those values. You might get something like “we love America and apple pie,” but it just isn’t as meaningful as something built on connections and input from the community.

I think that AI is an interesting way to take a first cut at data and help start to make sense of it. But without a professional planner really driving the process, doing the quality control, and reading the survey results, it’s going to be limited. And I think that it would be a mistake to lean too much on AI in that respect.

What is the best piece of advice that you have received as a planner?

Don’t get ahead of your town council or the people you are planning for. You need to work with the community and let them lead the process. Even though you are a trained technical resource and planning expert, you are not an expert in the community. The people you work for are the real experts in their community.

What piece of advice would you give a new planner?

Communication is key. Be present both in person and online. Getting your message out there is very important. So, whether your message is “hey we need to hear from you about this plan,” or “we’ve developed a new Airbnb licensing ordinance,” you need to let people know what is happening and keep them in the loop at every stage of a project.

What is a project that you worked on that you are particularly proud of?

Just last year, we worked on a homeless services study for Cumberland County outside of Portland. It is a suburban and rural area, and since we are land use planners, we took that knowledge and experience and combined it with the expertise of the social services folks. And it was interesting because it gets back again to core values as I mentioned earlier. We do a lot with data, we do a lot with maps but understanding what it actually means to be homeless in a rural area, to sleep in your car, sheds light on an invisible problem. It was a good reminder of why we do what we do. It’s not just about maps and spreadsheets; it’s about helping to make people’s lives better.

What would be your dream project to work on?

I guess if I had to pick one dream project, I would say it would be to create a regional recreation and economic development plan for an area that is looking for ways to tie downtown areas to a recreational economy.

Founded in 2017, North Star Planning helps communities create and sustain the places that make New England a special place to live, work, and play. The North Star team has extensive experience in master planning, ordinance development and zoning, community revitalization, land use analysis, natural resources planning, and development review. The company works with municipalities, state and county governments, nonprofits, and private developers across Maine and New England, from small rural communities to large urban areas. North Star Planning is a professional partner of General Code, a member of the ICC Family of Solutions.