Falkirk residents are being asked to help shape the future of the district by telling Falkirk Council's planning team how they feel about their own communities.
An online survey urging people to 'tell us about your place' is now live on the council's website.
The planning team wants to know whether residents feel safe and happy or if they feel their area has been run down and neglected.
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This is just the first stage of a journey to update a document that will play a vital role in how the Falkirk area grows and changes in the longer term.
The current Local Development Plan - LDP2 as it is commonly known - is the second plan to set out a vision for what the council area will look like over the next few years.
But the plan needs refreshed every few years and work is already starting to prepare a third.
The LDP is a blueprint for where new housing will go, where roads, schools or medical centres are needed and how parks, paths and green spaces can be improved.
All of this has to be balanced with meeting climate change targets and making neighbourhoods attractive and convenient for everyone - not just car users.
Anyone who has ever battled a planning application - either for or against - will learn quickly just how important the local development plan is. And many will realise that by the time an application is made, many of the most important decisions have already been taken as part of the LDP.
Most housing developments, for example, will have been considered and approved as part of the development plan, long before any planning application is made.
"This is people's chance to be involved in creating that overarching plan," said planning officer, Alexandra Lewis.
"For example, when you see plans for a new cycle path, quite often that will have been in the LDP and people don't always realise that."
It's a complex process that involves evidence gathering, analysis and review, so it's not always easy to keep people's attention.
But it is important and that's why they want as many people to be involved as possible in creating the new plan - which will be known as LDP3.
It is not expected to be adopted until 2027. But as a first step, the team want to create an evidence report that will look at communities across the council area to see what's working and what could be better.
The online survey has been developed to help measure how people feel about their own immediate area - and the more people that take part, the more complete the picture will be.
Alistair Shaw, Falkirk Council's development plan co-ordinator, said: "The information we get will be very important. It highlights what's good and what's bad, and what we need to address.
"For example, typically, in Falkirk, people feel quite good about their open spaces so we'd expect to score quite highly there and that would give us a bit of reassurance that we're going in the right direction.
"On the other hand, if moving around and getting access to facilities scores badly then we know we've got work to do on local transport and active travel."
As well as getting an overall feel for how people feel about their communities, there is also an opportunity for people to comment on specific issues that can provide finer detail for the planners.
In a bid to involve more people, there are also separate surveys for children and young people, to give them a chance to be involved too as any decisions could affect them most.
The survey and background information can be found on Falkirk Council's website or paper copes are available in libraries.
