Professional (community) planning has evolved since the early twentieth century to become a mainstream activity within almost all communities. I'd be hard pressed to find a community of any size that didn't have some form of comprehensive plan; dealing with issues such as land use, parks and recreation,transportation, water systems streetscaping and so on.
Technology master planning, on the other hand, has emerged in a few dozen communities only over the past decade, and in very few cases has it been tightly integrated with the professional planning process.
There are two schools of thought about whether and to what extent these two disciplines will continue to co-exist or converge going forward.
On the one hand, I could argue that the unregulated nature of the broadband market and the trend in television franchising - moving from a local to a state level - suggests that communities will become less involved over time in technology and communications planning. On the other hand, trends in our business and the market as a whole suggest that communities increasingly view communications infrastructure as being essential to economic development, social issues and government operations. As Eric Damian Kelly and Barbara Becker put it in their book Community Planning: An Introduction to the Comprehensive Plan, "In the information age, some of the most important highways are electronic ones." This view by local governments and community leaders seems to become more pervasive by the day, and therefore it suggests that we may see more convergence of these two planning disciplines.
What would be the implications of this for community planners? Technology planners and engineers? One thing it suggests is that the two two groups would increasingly find themselves working together, and a sharing of domain expertise would be inevitable. There is potentially much to be gained from this collaboration. Professional planners have extensive training and robust processes developed in areas that I have observed technology planners struggling with - community outreach and consensus building in areas of competing interest being great examples. There may also be tangible economic benefits from this collaboration, from cost savings from better coordination between public and private infrastructure deployment (e.g. deploying conduit and fiber during water, sewer or street maintenance projects.)
The outcome of this collaborative work may vary dramatically from one community to another. For example, the policies of the local government, and the role that they elect to play (e.g. that of provder, facilitator, regulator) will influence the focus of the planning work as well as the tactics that are determined to be appropriate within the resulting plan. One community may take a relatively hands-off approach, dealing only with the integration of things like cell tower siting, right of way management, aesthetics, etc. Another community that has chosen to play the role of provider may have more extensive technology plans for how public infrastructure may be deployed in concert with other infrastructure projects over time, the evolution of its communications infrastructure and so on.
To prepare for this convergence, there are practical things that communities can do today. One of the best tactics is to simply establish a more frequent dialog between the CIO/IT office and those organizations responsible for planning and development. I have worked with leading cities who are doing this today, and have observed real value being created with minimal effort and cost. Another tactic might be to provide introductory training for technology planners on the disciplines used in the professional planning world. These and other early steps will, at a minimum, encourage a more holistic approach to community development.