Implementing A Community-Wide Strategic Plan: Rock Hill’s Empowering the Vision 10 Years Later

Confronted by economic, social, and political change in the 1980s, many cities decided to use community-wide strategic planning as a tool to address their problems. Rock Hill, South Carolina, successfully completed Empowering the Vision (ETV), a two-year community-wide strategic planning process, in 1989 and began implementing the 10-year plan in 1990. Did the implementation of ETV achieve its promise? Is it another example of a well-intentioned but later abandoned use of strategic planning? I argue that Rock Hill achieved five significant results by 2000: (a) managing uncertainty, (b) resolving conflict, (c) continuing citizen participation, (d) achieving tangible and intangible results, and (e) establishing a governance network for the duration of the planning period. Rock Hill achieved these results because of (a) the competent practice of community-wide strategic planning, (b) visionary leadership, and (c) the commitment of public leadership to the process and the plan.