Urban Alternatives

Urban Alternatives (UA) provides strategic planning and public involvement consulting services to governmental agencies and private-sector clients. The firm is comprised of full-time professionals and roster consultants in a variety of fields including urban planning, social science, economics, housing, law and survey research. Most public agencies and private organizations assume that effectively managing the technical aspects of project development (i.e., the studies and plans which support a solution) is all that is needed to assure timely project implementation. UA’s approach emphasizes that these same organizations must also devote comparable effort to developing enough agreement with their public to ensure successful project implementation. During its more than two decades of serving public and private-sector clients, and successfully completing nearly 500 projects, UA has used and evolved a learnable public involvement strategy — "consent building" — which has been instrumental in helping obtain the public acceptance necessary to implement important projects.