The affluent City of Sedona, Arizona, long revered for its amenities, beauty and scenic surroundings, has experienced rapid growth over the last twenty-five years. This has caused conflicts and controversies among the area's diverse population, in particular, traffic congestion and the need for improvements to its main access road, State Route 179. In 1998, the Arizona Department of Transportation's (ADOT) recommendation to build a four-lane facility led to activism and public demand for a new, more inclusive process to design the road and the framework for the surrounding corridor. The work that follows is a case study of Sedona's search for a Context Sensitive Design (CSD) for State Route 179, the Needs Based Implementation Plan or NBIP.;This research explores the democratic process at the community level, employing a theoretical framework that includes the concepts of governance, collaborative communities and leadership, as well as a sense of place and the context sensitive design of highways. The work highlights the importance of citizen involvement and trust in building workable problem-solving models for communities. The case study utilizes in-depth interviewing and participant observation as primary data collection methods, in keeping with the interpretivist/constructivist traditions and the notion that there will necessarily be many viewpoints in such a diverse group of people.;This work presents the Public Participation Continuum Model, which considers participants from their own viewpoints as Expert Model supporters, Collaborators or Activists. While the Expert and Activist positions can lead to conflict and controversy, the Collaborative model is shown to build consensus and lead to an outcome that is generally acceptable to the community. The work also presents a model for Collaborative Communities, with seven elements including (1) foundation and process; (2) stakeholders and inclusion; (3) diversity, respect, and trust; (4) communication; (5) decision making and "task;" (6) sustainability; and (7) perhaps the most critical, leadership. When compared to this model, the context-sensitive NBIP process was found to exemplify the description, weaving together all of the elements of the model as the community worked successfully to seek a consensus-based solution to their longstanding controversy.
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