Pikes Peak Community Foundation: Our Spacious Skies

The Pikes Peak Region is experiencing rapid growth, putting pressure on housing, infrastructure, natural resources, and quality of life. Regional leaders lacked a shared, resident‑driven understanding of what is working, what is not, and how growth should be managed to protect what makes the region special. To build alignment and inform long‑term decision‑making, Pikes Peak Community Foundation launched Our Spacious Skies—a regional visioning initiative designed to capture the community’s voice on priorities essential to sustaining a vibrant quality of life into the future.

Through Our Spacious Skies, Heart+Mind Strategies conducted a values‑based regional visioning effort that combined deep qualitative exploration with a rigorous scientific survey matched to regional demographics. The approach included civic leader interviews, an Illumination Lab, immersive resident engagement on a weeklong BrightBoard, and large‑scale surveying. Findings were organized across five regions and ten subregions to balance local nuance with shared priorities, centering residents as the experts on what matters most in their daily lives and in the region’s future.