• Anticipate and shape future
• Prioritize actions
• Schedule activities
• Budget time and money
• Improve communication and integration
• Teambuilding exercise
• Sell your agenda internally and externally
• Evaluate progress

• Unrealistic and unachievable
• Superimposed from above
• No support from below
• Not “business-like”
• Planning paralysis
• Principal advocate leaves

What are our attitudes and aspirations? Learning the tools of design and planning is important, but first we must define our goals. These are suggested:

• Be innovative
• Be sustainable
• Promote respect for animals and nature
• Enrich animal’s lives
• Enrich care giver’s lives
• Enrich visitor’s lives
• Inspire conservation action
• Nature is the Model

• Things are not good enough
• The world changes quickly. Staying the same is falling behind
• Novelty and change drives attendance
• Change and challenge improve resilience

What are the most limiting factors to zoo improvement?

• Attitude of scarcity
• Limiting standards
• Fear of change, “change only brings problems!”
• Copies of copies reduce innovation
• International Best Practice “…a 20-year-old idea that just got here.”
• Don’t copy, innovate
• If you can’t innovate, improve
• If you can’t improve at least understand what you copy

• A deep understanding and respect of all end users, their needs and ambitions including need for choice & control over their own lives and work
• A dynamic balance of science, empathy, intuition & inspiration
• Blending “hardware” (built environment), “software” (people and management programs) and “Bioware” (living animals & plants) in the design and implimentation process

• You can’t operate a 21st Century Zoo with a 19th Century management system
• Integrate physical design with management design
• Exceed standards and expectations
• Don’t be satisfied with “Best Practice” Invent you own even better practices

The planning and design process is a journey through successive refinements from the universal and aspirational to the particular and tangible. Think of planning & design as similar processes at different times and scales. Planning precedes design, setting major parameters and principles. Design refines plans and facilitates implementation and eventual evaluation. Planning and design of built environments may use different tools, take different forms, and utilize different expertise than planning for human and animal management programs, or financial planning, but the processes are similar.

In this diagram planning begins with the central aspirational Vision Plan and mission, clearly defining where you want to be and setting the principles guiding each area of your enterprise. Next, the Concept Plan gives your vision a rough outline generally delineating and integrating all the domains or operational areas, perhaps with general priorities identified. Once approved, the concept plan is expanded in scope and detail into the Master Plan, including development guidelines and implementation prioritization as required. Some groups favor general, more flexible master plans with needed details included in future project development plans. Others favor highly detailed master plans extending far into the future. Such choices depend upon management style and approval requirements of authorities.

Here are two diagrams of the planning process which, with a little thought, can also be used to guide project design as well. Both begin with development of a clear guiding vision expanding to show how this vision is activated and given form by major shareholders through increasing levels of understanding of critical opportunities and constraints in each field, and then integrating the proposed physical environment, operational environment, and business environment.

Individual project design begins with its unique vision within and supporting the overall planning vision, understanding, and optimizing opportunities and constraints within its area of influence and developing integrated design concepts for financing, construction, operation and maintenance, and evaluation.

This diagram shows a typical relationship between planning (grey boxes) and design (white boxes). While these diagrams suggest a linear sequence from global and general to local and specific, the process is in fact highly iterative, with dives into the particular to test general assumptions before returning to the general with better information. It is also important to generate and test several alternative concepts at each stage to avoid missed opportunities and overly hasty decisions.

• Woodland Park Zoo, Long-Range Plan Seattle, WA USA.1976 J&J
• Northwest Trek, Eatonville, WA USA. 1975 J&J
•  Pittsburgh Zoo, Pittsburgh, PA USA. 1979-1981 J&J
• Toledo Zoo, Toledo, Ohio, USA. 1981
•  Zoo Atlanta, Atlanta, GA USA.1985 CLR
• North Carolina Zoo, North America Zone Asheboro, NC USA.1986 CLR
• Kakum National Park, Cape Coast, Ghana.1994 CLR/ASLA
• Coimbatore Zoo, Coimbatore, India. 1994 CLR
•  Territory Wildlife Park, Berry Springs, NT Australia.1998 CLR/Hassell
• Woodland Park Zoo, Long-Range Plan Update Seattle, WA USA.1999 CLR  (See above at 1976.)
• Chimp Haven, Shreveport, LA USA 2001 CLR
• Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park, Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia. 2006 JCD
• Bali Safari and Marine Park, Bali, Indonesia. 2006 JCD
• Tanjiahé National Wildlife Preserve, Sichuan, China. 2008 JCD/EDG
• Al Ain Wildlife Park and Resort (Advisor), Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, EAU, 2009 JCD
• Philadelphia Zoo, Zoo 360 Master Plan Philadelphia, PA USA. 2009 JCD/CLR 
• Thrissur Zoo, Kerala, India. 2010 JCD/Idea Design
• Perth Zoo, Perth, Western Australia. 2018 JCD
• Kyabram Fauna Park Victoria, Australia. 2019 JCD