You Went to the Farmers Market. Who Didn't You Hear From? Building Better Community Engagement for a New Aquatic Facility

Your community is considering a new swimming pool. The planning team develops renderings, creates a survey, schedules an open house, puts a booth at the farmers market, shares information on the city's Facebook page, and invites residents to attend a public meeting. Hundreds of comments come in. Staff compile the results, consultants summarize the themes, and the project moves forward with a statement that sounds reassuring: “This facility was shaped by community input.” Maybe it was. But before making that claim, there is another question worth asking: Which community?

Public engagement is not automatically representative simply because it is open to everyone. The people who attend farmers markets, follow parks and recreation departments on social media, complete online surveys, attend Tuesday evening city meetings, or already participate in aquatic programs represent important voices. They do not necessarily represent the full population that will pay for, live near, work in, need, avoid, or potentially benefit from a new public aquatic facility.

When municipalities invest millions of dollars in aquatic infrastructure that may serve a community for the next 30, 40, or 50 years, we should probably work harder than putting a poster at the farmers market and waiting for people to come tell us what they want.

The Farmers Market Isn't the Problem

I have nothing against farmers markets. I actually love them. Bring the rendering. Set up the booth. Give kids stickers. Ask people what they think. Farmers markets can be excellent places for informal conversations, and they may reach residents who would never attend a formal city council meeting. The problem comes when that type of engagement becomes our evidence that we have heard from “the community.”

Every engagement method has a built-in audience. A Saturday morning farmers market reaches people who are available on Saturday mornings, know the market exists, can physically get there, feel comfortable in that environment, and have enough interest or time to stop at a municipal planning booth. An evening public meeting has a different audience. An online survey has another. A Facebook post reaches another. None is inherently bad. None is inherently representative.

Every Engagement Method Has a Built-In Audience

Engagement Method	Who You May Hear From	Who You May Miss
Farmers market booth	Residents already participating in community events	Weekend workers, homebound residents, people without transportation, residents who do not attend the market
Evening public meeting	Highly engaged residents with schedule flexibility	Shift workers, caregivers, families managing bedtime, people uncomfortable in government settings
Online survey	Digitally connected residents who follow city communication	Residents with limited internet access, limited literacy, language barriers, or low awareness of the project
Parks & Rec email list	Current recreation users	People who stopped participating or never participated
Pool survey	Existing swimmers and families	People who cannot or do not currently use the pool
Facebook/Instagram	People following municipal accounts	Residents outside those social-media ecosystems
City council meeting	Highly engaged residents comfortable with formal civic processes	Many of the people most affected by public-service decisions
School-family survey	Families connected to participating schools	Adults without children, homeschool families, older adults, disconnected families

The answer isn't eliminating any of these methods. It is stacking them intentionally so the limitations of one method are addressed by another.

The People Who Don't Use Your Pool May Be the People You Most Need to Hear From

This is one of the biggest mistakes I think we can make when planning aquatic facilities.

We ask existing swimmers what they want. That makes sense. Current users know the facility. They can tell you that the locker rooms are terrible, the lap lanes are constantly full, there isn't enough deck space during swim meets, the leisure pool is too cold for lessons, or they desperately want a warm-water pool. Listen to them.

But if the goal is creating a community aquatic facility, current users cannot be the only people defining what that facility should become. Someone may not use your current pool because:

• They cannot afford admission.

• They never learned to swim.

• There is no public transportation to the facility.

• The locker rooms do not meet their needs.

• They had a negative experience there.

• They don't see programming that interests them.

• Their child needs sensory or accessibility supports.

• Programs occur while they are working.

• They do not know how registration works.

• They do not feel comfortable in swimwear in the existing environment.

• They need a warmer water temperature.

• They cannot navigate the physical facility.

• They do not speak the primary language used in facility communications.

• They don't think of the pool as somewhere “people like us” go.

A survey distributed at the existing swimming pool will systematically miss many of those people. And those voices may tell you more about the future of your facility than another survey response asking for more lap lanes.

Start With Who You Haven't Heard From

Instead of beginning engagement with “How can we get lots of responses?”, try beginning with “Whose perspective would be easy for us to miss?” That changes the strategy.

Before launching the public process, create a community engagement map. Look at your community's demographics, neighborhoods, transportation patterns, schools, disability community, languages, age distribution, housing, income, and current recreation participation. Then compare those populations with the people participating in your engagement process.

Build a “Who Haven't We Heard From?” Map

Community Perspective	Why Their Input Matters to Aquatic Design
Current pool users	Understand existing strengths and problems
People who don't currently use the pool	Can identify barriers existing users may never notice
Families with young children	Lessons, supervision, changing spaces, leisure water
Teenagers	Independent recreation, employment, social space, competitive activities
Older adults	Water exercise, temperature, accessibility, social programming
Disabled residents	Physical, sensory, communication, cognitive, and program accessibility
Nonswimmers	Can reveal intimidation, access, learning, and belonging barriers
Lower-income households	Admission, memberships, transportation, scholarships, equipment costs
Residents without cars	Location and transportation decisions
Multilingual communities	Registration, signage, communication, programming
Religious communities	Modesty, privacy, scheduling, swimwear, changing environments
LGBTQ+ residents	Locker rooms, changing options, privacy, safety and belonging
People with larger bodies	Furniture, equipment, changing spaces, ladders and program experience
Caregivers	Supervision, family changing, seating and logistics
Aquatic staff	Operational realities patrons may not see
Former aquatic users	Can explain why they stopped coming
Neighborhoods farthest from existing facilities	Geographic aquatic-access barriers

The goal isn't achieving a perfectly representative sample of every possible identity. That's rarely realistic. The goal is noticing glaring gaps before the building is designed rather than after it opens.

Go Where People Already Are

One of the most important shifts is moving from “Come participate in our planning process” toward “We will bring the planning process to you.” That means the farmers market can stay. Just don't stop there. If you want input from older adults, go to senior centers, congregate meal programs, retirement communities, libraries, water-exercise programs, and community organizations serving older residents.

If you want teenagers' opinions, go to them. Visit schools, after-school programs, youth organizations, sports practices, skate parks, libraries, gaming clubs, and existing teen programs. Give them the rendering and ask what they would actually do there. If you want input from families with limited incomes, partner with organizations that already have relationships with those families rather than expecting people to identify themselves as “low-income residents” and attend your public meeting.

Potential partners might include schools, libraries, housing organizations, food pantries, refugee and immigrant organizations, disability organizations, cultural associations, childcare providers, community health organizations, faith communities, youth programs, neighborhood associations, and social-service agencies.

The organization does not necessarily need to speak for the people it serves. Ideally, it helps you create a place where you can speak with them directly.

Pay People for Their Expertise When You Can

This is another area worth reconsidering. Municipalities routinely pay architects, engineers, consultants, planners, designers, attorneys, and project managers for their expertise. Then we sometimes ask residents with the most relevant lived experience to attend three evening meetings for free.

• A disabled resident reviewing accessibility plans is contributing expertise.

• A parent explaining why the existing family changing room doesn't work is contributing expertise.

• A teenager helping design youth space is contributing expertise.

• A refugee family explaining why current swimming programs are difficult to access is contributing expertise.

• A nonswimmer describing what makes the current aquatic environment intimidating is contributing expertise.

For larger projects, consider stipends, gift cards, transportation assistance, meals, childcare, free recreation passes, or other appropriate compensation for people participating in deeper advisory work. Compensation does not magically make engagement equitable. It does acknowledge that people's time has value.

Stop Asking Only “What Do You Want in the New Pool?”

This may be one of the biggest improvements a municipality can make. If you show residents pictures of a lazy river, diving boards, slides, lap lanes, climbing walls, and splash features and ask them to pick their favorites, you will certainly collect preferences. But you haven't necessarily learned very much about access. Try asking about people's experiences first.

Ask Questions That Reveal Barriers

Instead of Only Asking...	Also Ask...
“What features should the pool have?”	“What would make you more likely to use this facility?”
“Do you want a waterslide?”	“What does your family currently do for summer recreation?”
“How many lap lanes?”	“When and why would you use a public pool?”
“Indoor or outdoor?”	“What keeps you from using our current facility?”
“Which design do you prefer?”	“What would make either design difficult for you to use?”
“Would you buy a membership?”	“What price would make regular participation unrealistic?”
“What programs do you want?”	“Is there something you wish recreation offered but you've never seen offered?”
“Are locker rooms important?”	“What would make changing, showering, or preparing to swim more comfortable?”
“How should we improve accessibility?”	“Walk us through what arriving, changing, swimming, and leaving would look like for you.”
“Any other comments?”	“Who do you think we still need to hear from?”

That last question is one of my favorites. Community members often know exactly whose voice is missing.

Show People the Tradeoffs

Meaningful engagement also means being honest. Communities cannot choose every feature. A project has a budget. A larger leisure pool may mean fewer lap lanes. A warm-water pool has operational implications. A diving well requires space and depth. More locker-room privacy may change square footage. Indoor facilities cost differently than outdoor facilities. A spectacular attraction may require staffing and maintenance resources for decades. Do not ask residents to design a fantasy facility and then disappear into a conference room where all their ideas are removed. Bring the tradeoffs into the engagement process.

You might give small groups a hypothetical $100 in project money and ask them to allocate it among:

• Swim lessons and instructional water

• Lap and competitive swimming

• Warm-water programming

• Teen recreation

• Leisure attractions

• Accessibility improvements

• Family/private changing

• Outdoor recreation

• Shade and seating

• Diving

• Splash play

• Community gathering space

Now the conversation becomes much more revealing. Someone may say, “I love the lazy river, but I'd rather make sure every child in this city can afford swimming lessons.”

Someone else may say, “Everyone keeps talking about kids, but this is the only exercise facility my 78-year-old mother can use.” Those conversations reveal values, not just feature preferences.

Accessibility Engagement Should Happen Before the Accessibility Review

Accessibility cannot be the meeting where someone looks at nearly completed architectural drawings and confirms that the project technically meets minimum requirements.

Bring disabled residents into the process while meaningful choices are still available.

Ask people with mobility disabilities about routes from parking and transit through admission, changing, deck circulation, water entry, spectator seating, and emergency evacuation. Talk with Deaf and hard-of-hearing residents about announcements and emergency communication. Ask neurodivergent residents about lighting, acoustics, locker rooms, sensory load, wayfinding, quiet spaces, and transitions. And don't ask one disabled person to represent disability. Different people have different bodies, sensory needs, communication methods, mobility, cognition, and experiences. Accessibility engagement should reflect that diversity.

Children and Teenagers Are Community Members, Too

Adults have a remarkable habit of designing youth recreation facilities almost entirely through conversations with other adults. Ask kids and not leading questions like, “Would you like a slide?” Give children pictures of different spaces and ask where they would want to spend time. Ask what scares them at pools. Ask where they like hanging out with friends. Ask what makes a locker room uncomfortable. Ask what they wish they could do at the pool that they currently cannot.

Teenagers deserve an even more serious role because they may use the facility independently, work there, participate competitively, socialize there, and eventually become the adults bringing the next generation of children. If teenagers are going to be major users of a public space, they should have some influence over its design.

Ask the People Who Stopped Coming

I would make this an actual engagement category. Former users are incredibly valuable.

Your registration system may contain families who took swim lessons three years ago and never returned. Older adults may have stopped attending water exercise. Teenagers may have stopped coming once they aged out of children's programming. Reach out and ask why.

Their answers may identify problems that current users cannot see precisely because current users are the people for whom the existing system works well enough to remain. This is essentially the aquatic version of an exit interview.

Language Access Is More Than Translating the Survey

Translate engagement materials into the major languages spoken in your community, but don't assume translation alone creates participation. A six-page translated municipal survey is still a six-page municipal survey. Consider oral interviews, small-group conversations, visual preference exercises, interpreters, short intercept surveys, translated videos, pictorial options, and trusted community partners who can explain the project.

Also consider literacy. A person may speak a language fluently without reading it fluently.

If the only way to provide input is through a written survey, you have already decided whose communication counts.

Track Who You Are Hearing From

This does not require creating an invasive demographic database. But if your city is 25% renters and nearly everyone attending your meetings owns a home, that is useful information. If teenagers will be major users but represent 1% of your feedback, that matters. If one part of the city generates almost all survey responses, look at your outreach there compared with other neighborhoods.

Your Engagement Dashboard Might Track

Measure	Question
Geography	Which neighborhoods have participated?
Age	Are youth, adults, and older adults represented?
Current participation	Are we hearing mostly from existing recreation users?
Language	Can major language communities meaningfully participate?
Disability	Have disabled residents participated directly?
Transportation	Have residents without personal vehicles been included?
Housing	Are renters and homeowners both represented?
Income/access	Have we intentionally reached communities facing economic barriers?
Former users	Have we asked why people stopped participating?
Nonswimmers	Have people without swimming experience had a voice?

The purpose is not to boast that you collected 2,000 survey responses. It is to discover whose voices are missing while there is still time to go find them.

Report Back What You Heard

Community engagement becomes extractive when municipalities ask residents for their time and experiences and then disappear. Close the loop. Publish a simple “What We Heard / What We're Doing” report. Explain which ideas are moving forward, which are not, and why. For example:

What We Heard	What We're Doing
Families want more privacy in changing spaces	Increasing individual and family changing options
Older adults want warmer water	Evaluating a separate warm-water programming area
Residents are concerned about admission cost	Developing financial-access options alongside facility planning
Teenagers want somewhere to gather	Adding teen-focused seating and social space
Families without cars are concerned about location	Including transit access in site evaluation
Residents want a 50-meter pool	Project budget and projected use do not currently support it; maintaining 25-yard competitive capacity instead

People do not have to get everything they requested to feel heard. But they should be able to see that someone actually listened.

Community Input Should Influence Operations, Too

There is one more mistake we can make: asking the community about the building while treating operations as something we'll figure out later. The most beautiful equitable facility in the world can become inaccessible through its policies.

Ask about:

• Admission and membership pricing

• Scholarship systems

• Operating hours

• Swim-lesson scheduling

• Registration practices

• Drop-in opportunities

• Transportation

• Teen access

• Caregiver policies

• Swimwear rules

• Locker-room policies

• Sensory-friendly programming

• Adaptive programming

• Language access

• Community partnerships

• Free or reduced-cost water-safety programming

A family may care much less about whether the slide is blue or green than whether four children can afford to use it.

From Community Input to Community Power

There is also a deeper question here that Sasha Costanza-Chock's work on design justice helps us ask. Community engagement can range from simply informing residents about what professionals have already decided to genuinely sharing some influence over the outcome.

• A survey is input.

• A public meeting is input.

• A resident advisory group involved throughout site selection, design, programming, pricing, accessibility, and evaluation has considerably more influence.

That does not mean architects stop being architects or residents individually dictate engineering decisions. Professional expertise still matters. Safety codes still matter. Budgets still matter, but lived experience is expertise too. The parent who has navigated your inaccessible locker room for six years knows something the architect does not to the teenager who avoids your current facility knows something the parks director does not to the nonswimmer who finds aquatic environments intimidating knows something the swim coach does not. Plus, the employee who transfers patrons onto the pool lift every week knows something the consultant does not. Good design brings those kinds of expertise into conversation with one another.

Keep the Farmers Market Booth

Seriously. Go to the farmers market. Put up the rendering. Talk with people. Hand kids dots and let them vote on features. Ask residents what they love about their current pool and what they hope changes. Then pack up the booth and keep going.

Go to the library. Go to the senior center. Go to the high school. Talk with disability organizations. Visit apartment communities. Partner with immigrant and refugee organizations. Talk with families receiving recreation scholarships. Ask current swimmers. Ask former swimmers. Ask people who cannot swim. Ask your employees. Ask teenagers. Ask residents who live nowhere near the proposed site. And as the process continues, keep asking one question: Who haven't we heard from yet?