Each year, IAP2 affiliates around the world recognize leaders in the profession through the IAP2 Core Values Awards. The awards go to projects which best demonstrate IAP2's Core Values and help to raise the bar in the field of public engagement by sharing best practices and inspiring the P2 community to learn from one another. 

The 2026 IAP2 USA Core Values Awards - presented October 1, 2026 at the North American Conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Our appreciation goes to our judges for their challenging work and to all of the incredible submissions we received. 

Valencia Street in San Francisco's Mission District is one of a kind — the longest stretch of independent businesses in the country, a beloved cycling route, and a neighborhood anchor for thousands of residents. It's also a street that, by 2023, had become a flashpoint. Pandemic-era growth in outdoor dining parklets and delivery services had made double-parking in the bike lanes a near-constant problem, forcing cyclists into traffic and resulting in two serious bicyclerelated injuries every month.

To address the safety crisis, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) launched an innovative center-running bikeway pilot in August 2023, physically relocating the bike lane to the center of the street. The safety data was compelling — double-parking incidents blocking the lane dropped from 40% to nearly zero. But the pilot generated fierce community opposition. Merchants worried about customer confusion and economic impacts. Drivers struggled with new turn and parking restrictions. And many community members felt they hadn't been adequately consulted before the change was made.

A year later, the agency moved towards a new side-running design — and committed to getting the process right this time.

What followed was ten months of intensive, ground-level engagement. Staff went door-to-door along the corridor half a dozen times, meeting individually with 100+ merchants and holding dedicated conversations with all 26 parklet owners about their specific situations. Two public open houses drew more than 150 attendees. A direct mailer reached 12,000 residents and businesses. Block-specific meetings, walking tours, and a close partnership with VCMA ensured that everyone could have their voices heard. Materials and interpretation were provided in English, Spanish, and Chinese throughout.

Every conversation was anchored in three shared principles — safety, access, and economic vitality — developed to give stakeholders differing needs a set of values that would enable productive conversation and compromise.

The resulting design reflected what the community asked for, block by block. San Francisco's first floating parklets gave business owners flexibility while keeping the bike lane at the curb. A custom curb management plan addresses the specific loading, parking, and access needs of individual businesses. Protected left turns were reintroduced at three intersections. And construction — handled by the SFMTA's first-ever Construction Working Group — was scheduled to avoid summer, warm fall months, and the holiday season, exactly as merchants requested.

The bikeway opened in May 2025. Bicycle and pedestrian collisions are down from both preproject and pilot conditions. Double-parking, while not eliminated, remains lower than before the project began. And the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association, once among the project's most vocal critics, partnered with the city to launch Valencia LIVE! — a monthly street fair celebrating the corridor.

Valencia Street is proof that a fractured relationship between a public agency and its community can be repaired. One year later, Valencia Street is thriving. That is because of the ways in which the SFMTA showed up, block by block, conversation by conversation, until the design reflected the needs of everyone who loves Valencia Street.

The Port of Seattle’s Duwamish Valley Community Equity Program (DVCEP) is in its sixth year as a public participation program designed to transform the relationship between a major port authority and the frontline BIPOC communities most impacted by port and industrial operations. Established by Port Commission Resolution 3767 in December 2019, the DVCEP operates in South Park and Georgetown—Seattle neighborhoods where 66% of residents identify as BIPOC, 37% speak a language other than English at home, and life expectancy runs 13 years shorter than wealthier parts of the city.

The program is anchored by the Port Community Action Team (PCAT), eleven community representatives who function as co-designers—not advisors in name only. PCAT members co-authored Resolution 3767, co-created the Community Benefits Commitment (CBC) framework defining the program’s three goal areas (Community Capacity, Environmental Health, Economic Prosperity), advocated for the opening of the Port’s Duwamish River Community Hub and co-designed the 2026–2029 Strategic Plan process. Meetings are held in community spaces with multilingual interpretation, cultural foods and childcare.

Key outcomes to date: 87 Green Jobs Training graduates (44 youth, 43 adults); 1,000+ events at the Duwamish River Community Hub; 195 events and organizational sponsorships; a 35+ organization partner network; a full-time Sr. Program Manager and two former PCAT members hired as Port FTEs. The 2026–2029 Strategic Plan—co-created through 30+ individual CBO meetings, three community dinners, and a public open house—charts the program’s next phase grounded in community-identified priorities.

The program operates at the IAP2 Collaborate level with documented evidence of community influence on Port policy, resource allocation, and program design. Every element of DVCEP’s methodology reflects deliberate choices to make participation genuinely accessible to communities historically excluded from decisions that affect them most: compensated PCAT service, multilingual engagement in four languages, community-designed meeting formats, consistent presence in neighborhood association meetings, and individual meetings with each major partner organization.

DVCEP is submitted for the Respect for Diversity, Inclusion, and Culture Project Award because it exemplifies equity-centered public participation in an environmental justice context. Its institutional embedding in Port Commission policy and multi-year strategic planning ensures this commitment is durable, not contingent on any single leader or administration. Six years in, DVCEP has produced measurable outcomes in community capacity, environmental health, and economic opportunity—and established a model for how large public agencies can operationalize equity in their public participation practice. Not as a project. As a transformation.