01 Choosing the right geographic scale

What it is and why it matters 

A shared understanding of the project objectives and scope can make or break a community resilience collaboration, and misunderstandings are commonplace. Defining an appropriate geographic scale (e.g., neighborhood, city, or state) helps focus your project and get collaborators on the same page. This, in turn, has many other benefits for the project, including: more efficient use of resources; easier stakeholder identification; better management of expectations and risk; streamlining decision making; and, ultimately, a greater likelihood of achieving the desired impact. 

Keep reading if... If you are doing place-based collaborative work that is intended to have real-world impact, you must jointly specify the geographic scale the project is tailored toward. 

Definition and purpose 

For projects addressing complex resilience challenges, an essential step toward successful collaboration is agreement on a project’s objectives and scope. To achieve this, choosing an appropriate geographic scale (“scaling” your project) — whether it is at the level of a neighborhood, city, state, or other geographic boundary — makes projects more tangible and, in turn, results in a focused project scope that is shared and understood by project collaborators. Furthermore, it is a myth that projects can run a pilot which is then scaled up — this rarely occurs. We believe many pilot projects fail because they are designed for a small-scale approach, but discover things work differently at larger scales. Collaborators should design for the geographic scale at which they want to have an impact. There are many choices, too. Larger scale is not somehow better than smaller scale or vice versa, where sometimes an intermediate scale might be a better fit. 

For example, urban climate research often experiences both spatial and temporal issues of incongruence. Spatially, area-based attributes — like using the size, shape, and average temperature within a 7m grid — may be insufficient for point-based (human-or touch-scale) temperature exposure. The concern arises when using the research to link science with policy and health. The next step for moving from research to practice is to provide the new evidence base to park or urban designers, as well as city officials and urban planners, with suggested actions to take and benefits of the actions. This includes raising awareness of the spatial incongruence in their decision process. You can transfer findings from data at different geographic scales, but problems arise when the attempt is made to scale up (or down) a single project to a new scale. Project design must match the scale of the original challenge. 

Making your project tangible and focused through defining the geographic scale results in numerous benefits for the quality of the collaborative process. 

Benefits of clear geographic scale include: 

• Less conflict among collaborators 
• Enhanced coordination 
• Efficient use of energy and resources 
• Greater ease identifying appropriate stakeholders and actors; 
• Clearer definitions of resilience 
• Streamlined, perhaps even more impactful, decision making. 

As a consequence of better upstream processes, more alignment, and a better project design, the project is more likely to fulfill project objectives downstream. 

Time and timing 

Geographic scaling of your project must take place early during the initiation phase of a potential collaboration, before detailed project planning. The time it takes depends on the project. Some projects may already have a predetermined scale (e.g., in the call for proposals), in which case it is a short discussion. Other projects may require deliberation among potential collaborators to agree upon a scale. 

Applicable Conditions 

If you are doing collaborative, place-based work that is intended to have real-world impact, this procedure is indispensable for creating a sharply-defined, collective understanding of the project scope. Any collaborative project that fails to create a shared understanding of the project scope runs the risk of inefficiency, dysfunction, and conflict as members pulling different directions without understanding why.

Procedure 

Scaling your project entails deliberation, decision-making, and conflict management; all collaborators should be involved. 

Deliberation. Deliberation on a project scale is a nonlinear and iterative process. However, the following topics may be discussed in roughly the following order. 

1. Share the goals, expectations and constraints of team members. 

On an individual level, collaborators must share their: 

• Goals, such as publications or community impact; 
• Expectations (e.g. of other partners in the collaboration); 
• Assumptions (e.g., whose role is what), and 
• Constraints, such as time, resources, and availability for the project. 
• Transparency is crucial, especially about constraints. 

2. Discuss the impact you want the project to have. 

Is the team trying to influence policy? The state scale may be appropriate. Is the team trying to reduce heat burden on households? A smaller scale may be more appropriate. What is going to happen with the results after the collaboration? If you want to scale up, you will need to consider what that exactly means, what is the end-scale, and the implications for designing the project at hand. 

3. Conduct a team-level SWOT analysis. 

The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats at the team-level also have bearing on the project scale and scope. Your team may desire to do work at one scale, but have better resources, relationships, and opportunities to make an impact at another scale. 

4. List and discuss the pros and cons of different project scales. 

Where is the biggest impact going to be? How do different scales meet the goals and expectations of collaborators? Is the proposed scale attainable within the constraints, strengths, and weaknesses of the project team? Is there a willingness among those involved to take commit to the proposed project? 

Sometimes “scale” can be congruent, or it can be a set of smaller locations, aggregated to summarize findings across a broader scale. All of these require careful attention to how to generalize the research and an ethic toward the community who are associated with that scale. 

Making the final decision. 

The way that final decisions are made depends on the power dynamics in the team of collaborators or potential collaborators. If top-down authority is held by a principal investigator over a team that is compelled to participate in the project, the final decision on the geographic scale can be made by the PI, who would need to mitigate conflict thereafter. In cases where an initiating team is convening a group of potential collaborators whose participation is voluntary but necessary for success, consensus may be a better option, as this may be likelier to maximize the value of the project for all involved. See the Resources section for more options for group decision-making processes. 

Conflict management. 

Conflict management is also needed to develop consensus around the scale of the project. This involves understanding where people are coming from and a commitment to working through these issues. Ultimately there should be enough consensus to move forward. More details are in the Resources section. 

Evaluation 

You have succeeded in scaling your project when: 

• Everyone has consensus around the geographic boundaries of the effort 
• Everyone has shared sense of time frame 
• Project collaborators can name who you are focusing on, where you are focusing, and what the area of action is 
• You can “place” the decision makers you want to inform 
• You can title your project 

You will know if you have failed to scale your project if there is fracturing in the project team — people go off and splinter, taking on their own projects. When this happens, it is best to get everyone involved to agree that it is necessary to fork off. Blaming the scale can be helpful in this conversation. In other words, failure of the collaboration wasn’t a result of not wanting to work together, it was also a disagreement on spatial or time scales. The project team can then splinter, work on different aspects of the project, share results, and inform one another.

Benefits of clear geographic scale include: 

• Less conflict among collaborators 
• Enhanced coordination 
• Efficient use of energy and resources 
• Greater ease identifying appropriate stakeholders and actors; 
• Clearer definitions of resilience 
• Streamlined, perhaps even more impactful, decision making.

Related tools and plays

Community Resilience Project Planning Playboard 

Examples

Solís, Patricia, Jenni Vanos and Robert Forbis. 2017. The Decision-making / Accountability Spatial Incongruence Challenge for Research linking Science and Policy. The Geographical Review 107(4): 680-704. doi: 10.1111/ gere.12240.

Resources

Action Priority Matrix (www.mindtools.com). These simple diagrams help you choose the activities you should prioritize and the ones you should avoid, if you want to make the most of your time and opportunities. 

A Manager’s Guide to Resolving Conflict in Collaborative Networks (maxwell.syr.edu). Written by two scholars of public administration and service, Rosemary O’Leary and Lisa Blomgren Bingham, this is a practical, thorough, and overall excellent guide to managing and resolving conflict in collaborative networks. 

Ethical Decisionmaking Protocol (worldofwork.io). The foursquare protocol is a four stage process. It helps individuals and leaders make ethical decisions in the workplace. The stages are: gather facts, understand how previous ethical decisions were reached, look for similarities to previous ethical situations and assess self-interest or bias. 

Find your Elected Decisionmaker Map (myreps. datamade.us). This is a tool for looking up who your elected representatives are across the United States. Based on your address, we can find all the federal, state, county and local officials who represent you in government. 

Group Decision-Making Practices (uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence). There are a variety of ways to make decisions as a group; this seven-step decision-making model offers an effective structure for choosing an appropriate course of action for a particular task or project. It can also be an effective method for dealing with a challenge or interpersonal conflict that arises within the group. 

SWOT Analysis (www.mindtools.com). SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT Analysis is a technique for assessing these four aspects of your project.