@CABQCPA on Instagram

Background: As part of the Long Range Planning Team’s efforts to find innovative, engaging methods for getting local residents involved in the long range planning process.  While local governments traditionally use social media as a tool for promoting local initiatives and pushing information out to the public, the City’s Long Range Planning Team decided to use social media as a tool for collecting community input and to get them more involved in the Community Planning Area (CPA) assessment process. Other goals of using this community-sourcing methodology include the following: 

• Using photography as a tool to stimulate civic engagement at the local level
• Using photography as a tool for residents to identify neighborhood assets and opportunities
• Providing a method for visual input to help shape local policy and regulation
• Using photography as a medium for documenting Community Walks held by the Long Range Planning Team and other City staff
• Generating content for Assessment Reports that inform city policies and regulations
• Contributing to the local economy by compensating local photographers with small stipends for contributing their work to be published in City documents

How It Works (For Each CPA)

1. Photographs posted on Instagram with the #cabqcpa hashtag (and other hashtags that identify the neighborhood in which they were taken) are collected and re-posted on a daily basis on the City’s Instagram feed on the website for Community Planning Areas (https://cabq.gov/cpa).    
2. About half way through each Community Planning Area (CPA) assessment, Long Range staff announce local photographers who have used the #cabqcpa hashtag and whose work has been selected to be published in the upcoming Assessment Report for each CPA. (See the schedule of CPA assessments here: https://cpa.abc-zone.com/first-5-year-cycle-cpa-assessments)​ 
3. CPA staff reach out to local photographers whose work has been selected to be published in an Assessment Report. 
4. Selected photographers that sign a contract giving the City permission to publish their work in the Assessment Report receive a $100 stipend.
5. Funding for stipends come from the Long Range Planning Division’s CPA Budget. 

Criteria: Our Long Range Planning Team judged all submitted photographs according to the following criteria:

• Attentiveness to Photo Competition Prompt
• Representative of the Community Planning Area's cultural diversity, ethos, and sense of place
• Thoughtfulness and constructiveness of any recommendations/comments included in the post along with the photograph
• Artistic value
• Documentative value
• Value of the photo in informing public policy
• Commitment/dedication of contributor to the neighborhood/CPA​

Long-Term Goals: Due to the fact that many of the participating photographers continually take photographs of different locations throughout the City and post them using the #cabqcpa hashtag, the Long Range Planning Team is hoping to establish longer term relationships with these photographers to see if they could start supporting the CPA process as an "on-call" photographer.  This might involve delegating "assignments" to local photographers to shoot at particular properties or neighborhoods that are being studied in the long range planning process. Much of this, however, depends on the Long Range Planning Team's ability to reserve funding for these services.  

It should also be noted that the Long Range Planning Team is also hoping to start using the CABQ CPA Instagram account to encourage more local community members to attend community meetings (whether that be via Zoom or in-person).  While the account has proved to be valuable in collecting some written comments in each of the participants' posts on Instagram, it is the hope of the Long Range Planning Team that the account could be used to generate more written comments and/or solicit more in-depth comments by getting participants to attend meetings and establish stronger relationships with the Long Range Planning Team. 

Public Engagement (As of May 2022): Since the CABQ CPA Instagram account was created in February 2021, the Long Range Planning Team has collected over 3700+ photos from community members using the #cabqcpa hashtag in neighborhoods throughout the City.  In mid-May 2021, the Long Range Planning Team assessed all of these posts and on May 31, 2021 the team announced the Top Photograph to be featured on the cover of the Near Heights CPA Assessment Report and 5 Winning Photographers to have their work featured in various sections of the Assessment Report.  Each of the Winning Photographers have their bios featured in this Assessment Report. The same process was completed for the Southwest Mesa CPA in July 2021. As part of this process, 5 local photographers from each photography competition were awarded $100 stipends (for a total of $1000).