Local nonprofit, business and government leaders are in the early stages of a widespread planning effort for the future of Western Pennsylvania and beyond, using input from residents of dozens of counties in four states.

The effort, called the Imagine Pittsburgh Project, will be seeking ideas from residents in 14 Pennsylvania counties, 12 counties in West Virginia, and others in Eastern Ohio and Western Maryland on what they want the greater Pittsburgh region to be like decades from today.

The emphasis will be on getting grass-roots input on planning, rather than a top-down effort led by a few leaders, said William P. Getty, president of the Benedum Foundation.

"It's going to be a broadly participatory project, engaging as many citizens as possible in envisioning the future of the region," said Mr. Getty, one of the project's lead organizers.

"It's about developing shared goals for the region -- what we want to be and aspire to," said another organizer, Bill Flanagan, communications chief of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. "What is the road map we aspire to and how will we get there?"

Imagine Pittsburgh is what is called a "visioning" project in planning circles -- a long-term plan, put together with widespread public input that includes traditional public hearings, but also technological advances such as interactive kiosks at malls and voting over the Internet. The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission -- another partner in Imagine Pittsburgh -- used visioning to compile its award-winning "Project Region" plan for long-term transportation needs in a 10-county area around the city.

The commission's effort included polling devices at public meetings, where the public could vote on transportation goals, and a meeting held simultaneously in all 10 of the commission's counties. Imagine Pittsburgh's reach would be greater, covering 33 counties and a broader range of issues.

"It could be education, health, culture. The subject matter is much more open to what people say they want to do," said the commission's Executive Director Jim Hassinger.

Outreach efforts for a visioning program in Calgary, Alberta -- at www.imaginecalgary.ca -- collected input from 18,000 residents living near the fast-growing Canadian city. Some of the outreach included interactive games for children, which the Pittsburgh project hopes to adopt, using a $100,000 grant from the Grable Foundation.

"There's no reason, if we do it really well and the technology is available, not to involve tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands -- and involve them meaningfully -- in this process," said Grable executive director Gregg Behr, another lead organizer. The Grable Foundation's board also issued a $250,000 grant in general support for the project.

The project has been in planning for more than a year and leaders of three groups leading it -- the Allegheny Conference, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and the Greater Pittsburgh Nonprofit Partnership -- agreed to pursue it formally this summer. Its next step is naming a steering committee of leaders from the 33 targeted counties (which include six in Ohio and one in Maryland). Mr. Behr said it will be a diverse group, with "titans of industry to titans of their community."

Public meetings could start sometime next year. No budget has been adopted, but it is likely to be in the $2 million range, supported largely by private foundations. The project will have a staff, officials said, but it will be temporary and phased out after two to three years.

Visioning plans typically focus on economic development and this one may as well, but it also may target social and education issues or air quality and sustainable development.

The Pittsburgh area has no shortage of marketing plans, such as the much-maligned, 16-word "brand promise" that an 87-member Image Gap committee released in 2003, and similar efforts throughout the 1990s by the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.

But Imagine Pittsburgh is not a marketing plan, its leaders said repeatedly yesterday -- instead, it will be an effort allowing a diverse group of people, all of whom consider themselves from Pittsburgh, to work and think together on big issues for the first time.

"The region isn't just Pittsburgh, or Allegheny County or even southwestern Pennsylvania. It's broader than that," said Kevin Evanto, spokesman for county Chief Executive (and commission chairman) Dan Onorato. "We have a shared history, economy, culture -- Pittsburgh is the capital of that broad region."

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