Front Page / Issue Briefs / Housing and Community Development / Public Transportation / Policy Option: Comprehensive Planning

Policy Option

Comprehensive Planning

Summary    

• Comprehensive Planning means that a community has a planning process which identifies strategic goals, objectives, targets and evaluation practices, covering land use, transportation, economic development and social programs, and identifies policies, planning practices and programs to help achieve these goals and objectives (“Planning and Implementation,” VTPI 2005). Such a plan can determine the type of land use development that should occur in each area, and how it integrates with transportation and other public services. For example, a comprehensive plan should identify where denser development should be encouraged, where open space should be preserved, and coordinate public policies and infrastructure investments to support that development pattern.

Goal    

• A basic principle of good planning is that individual, local, short-term, local decisions are coordinated in order to support strategic, long-term, regional objectives. Comprehensive planning provides this coordination.

Cost    

• A comprehensive planning process may require additional staff time and special resources for information collection, public outreach and other activities. Citizens tend to benefit through opportunities for civic engagement, more predictable development, more cost effective public services and an opportunity to address specific community problems, although some people may be unhappy with some aspects of the plan, or consider the project too expensive.

Implementation    

Below are specific strategies for comprehensive community planning implementation:

• Comprehensive Plan Requirements. Higher levels of government can require regional and local governments to produce a comprehensive plan in order to qualify for infrastructure grants and other funds, in order to insure that such investments are well planned.
• Planning Funds. Higher levels of government can provide funding to help regional and local governments implement comprehensive plans.
• Capital Improvement Programs. Capital improvement programs (CIPs) establish a schedule and funding basis for extending and improving public infrastructure and services (e.g., streets, water and sewer lines, schools, libraries, parks, and other government services) based on comprehensive development plans. This tends to reduce public costs (particularly extra costs resulting from dispersed development), minimize unreasonable expectations by urban fringe residents, and encourage more efficient development.
• Planning Policy Assessment. A planning policy assessment is a detailed analysis of agency policies, rules, and regulations to determine whether they are in conflict with strategic plans. The location of public investments, tax incentives, land development regulations, and the criteria for receiving governments grants all contribute to shaping development patterns. A planning policy assessment can help identify and correct policies that are inconsistent with overall development goals.
• Adequate Public Facility (APF) Standards. Adequate Public Facility (APF) standards limit development to areas adequately accommodated by critical public facilities and services, such as water, sewer, drainage, and traffic capacity, or require developers to pay the costs of upgrading facilities that have inadequate capacity. APF standards ensure that urban growth is cost effective and does not overburden municipal facilities and reduce current service. APF ordinances encourage more cost effective development, and direct development toward facility-rich areas, which often consists of urban infill (JCSC, 2001).
• Specific-Area Development Plans. It is useful to develop plans for urban neighborhoods, downtowns, and other business centers, historic areas, and areas of environmental significance that are consistent with strategic plans.
• Establish Performance Indicators. Establish specific targets and indicators for evaluating progress toward those targets. For example, a comprehensive plan might include targets for the portion of jobs that will be accessible by transit and for openspace preservation.

Evaluation    

• Comprehensive planning can provide many benefits. The planning process provides a variety of useful information, encourages civic engagement, and is an opportunity to identify and address many problems. The resulting plan can provide predictability, consistency and integration, which leads to more cost effective decisions by individuals, businesses and public organizations. It provides cost savings to governments, developers and citizens, and improves service quality. Coordinating land use and transportation improves accessibility, for example, increasing the number of destinations accessible by walking, cycling and public transit within a community, which provides savings to businesses and residents, and is particularly important for physically, economically and socially disadvantaged people.

Status    

• Maryland Strategic Planning The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) adopted performance measures to help evaluate the agency’s success in meeting the goals laid out in the Maryland Transportation Plan (MTP), the overarching policy document that guides MDOT’s activities. The legislature established a task force to advise the agency on suitable performance measures to adopt. Because the MTP includes land use and smart growth goals, the recommended package includes measures that relate to Smart Growth and transportation-land use linkages.

• Greater Vancouver Regional Strategic Plan: The Livable Region Strategic Plan (LRSP) produced by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) provides a regional growth strategy. It was adopted by the GVRD Board with formal support of all municipalities and recognized by the B.C. provincial government in 1996. The primary goal of the plan is to help maintain regional livability and protect the environment in the face of anticipated growth. It is used by all levels of government to guide and coordinate land use and transportation decisions. The LRSP is linked to local community plans through a Regional Context Statement. Other agencies, the private sector and residents also use the plan to understand and contribute to Greater Vancouver's vision for its future development.

• Auckland: The Auckland Regional Council commissioned technical studies to evaluate their regional growth strategy.

•  While the region has made a good start, there is a need for a more concerted and sophisticated approach to implementation of the Growth strategy.

•  The Auckland Sustainability Framework has reinforced the importance of the Growth Strategy core principles - a more compact settlement pattern in a network of vibrant, walkable, centres offering diverse services connected by high quality passenger transport.

•  Significant progress has been made including development of supporting strategies and plans, legislative and governance changes, infrastructure investments.

•  Challenges include barriers to quality centres-based development, limited good development examples, community opposition, limited tools and uncertainty as to the sequencing and nature of future growth and investment.

•  Various actions are recommended to further improve the process

• Vision California - Charting Our Future: Vision California is a strategic planning program that explores the role of land use and transportation investments in meeting the environmental, fiscal, and public health objectives. Vision California uses the new Rapid Fire Model, a user-friendly spreadsheet tool that evaluates regional and statewide land use and transportation scenarios, including various combinations of land use density, mix, building types and transport policies, and predicts their impacts on vehicle travel, pollution emissions, water use, building energy use, transportation fuel use, land consumption, and public infrastructure costs. All assumptions are clearly identified and can be easily modified.

• Smart Growth Suburban Planning: The Newburg plan illustrates an example of practical, family-friendly, compact, mixed-use suburban development designed to be environmentally progressive, foster social vitality, and be economically efficient. In some ways, Newburg is modern version of old European towns, where daily needs are met within walking distances. The principal features that increase sustainability are:· Replace single storey non-residential with multistory mixed-use buildings. · Fewer single detached homes, with more attached homes (rowhouses) with private backyards and apartments. · Minimal or no setback requirements for most buildings. · Share parking lots and garages as much as possible. · Reduce the total amount of land devoted to transportation facilities due to higher modal shares for public transit, walking and cycling, and shorter trip lengths. · More efficient provision and use of parkland. · Mixed land use to support active transportation (walking and cycling for errands)

• Integrated Approach to Planning (IAP) is a is a collaborative endeavour between New Zealand transport sector agencies and Ministry for Environment to identify gaps and barriers to achieving better integration, both within and between transport and land-use planning, to help improve transport system sustainability. They project includes various studies that evaluate current planning practices and recommend improvements for more integrated planning. It used several case studies of actual transport and land use planning situations selected to represent various modes and problems, including strategic planning, regional growth, urban redevelopment, and freight transport improvements. 

Point of View    

Contact     

Bibliography    

Where To Get More Information About Comprehensive Land-Use Planning

• American Planning Association, 122 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 1600, Chicago, IL 60603, phone 312-431-9100, fax 312-431-9985. www.planning.org
• How Will America Grow? A Citizen Guide to Land-Use Planning. 1976. Washington, DC: Citizens Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality.
• Illinois Association of Regional Councils, 500 East Capitol Avenue, PO Box 1093, Springfield, IL 62705-1093, phone 217-525-7431, fax 217-525-7438.
• Ohio Planning Conference, 129 South Third Street, Suite 510, Columbus, OH 43125-7100, 614-221-4349.
• Ohio State University Extension, Community Development, 700 Ackerman Road, Suite 235, Columbus, OH 43202-1578, phone 614-292-8436.
• The Practice of Local Government Planning. 2nd ed. 1988. Frank S. So and Judith Getzels, eds. Chicago, Ill.: International City/County Management Association.
• Principles and Practices of Urban Planning. 1968. William I. Goodman, ed., and Eric C. Fruend, assoc. ed. Chicago, Ill.: International City Managers Association.
• The Small Town Planning Handbook. 2nd ed. 1995. Thomas L. Daniels, John W. Keller, and Mark B. Lapping. Chicago, Ill.: American Planning Association Press.