CNU -Comprehensive Planning-Installment 1

It's amazing the people you meet just waiting in line to register! Dee Meeriam a Community Planner with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. She's here because the CDC recognizes that how we have recently built our neighborhoods as unwalkable, auto-oriented places directly impacts health. It's virtually impossible to combat the childhood obesity epidemic if children cannot walk anywhere, but have to be driven everywhere. CDC is working to support walkable, mixed use communities. Read more at the CDC-Healthy Communities.

New Urbanism and the Comprehensive Plan
Thursday, June 11, 2009 Session One

Gianni Longo is moderating this session. He is a remarkable planner who has a deep and expansive understanding of participatory planning processes and techniques. Check him and his firm out at ACP.

Gianni introduced the session. A long-time thought leader among New Urbanists, he pointed out the the convergence of New Urbanism and Comprehensive Planning is inevitable. The Charter of the New Urbanism's 27 principles lay our the elements of place making and their relationship to character and form.

We always have to be careful when discussing comprehensive plans-can mean different things to different people. In this session we are not talking about the "Great Plans," not talking about enabling legislation that oftentimes doom the transformative power of visionary plans, not talking about the often conflicting state enabling legislation.

We are talking about the convergence of New Urbanism, Smart Growth, and Sustainable Development. These three movements bring together the Three P's-People, Place, and Prosperity; a new variation on the Three E's- Economy, Equity, and Environment.

The convergence has resulted in three innovations in comprehensive planning.

• It has evolved from an exercise in land use designation to one that develops and reinforces form and character.
• It utilizes a rigorous approach to analyzing and designing place.
• It deliberately integrates land use and transportation.

1. Moving from Land Use to Form and Character-Land use is not the same as character and form! The colors can look the same on the map, but the product is very different (e.g., strip malls vs neighborhood centers) The challenge is that a colorful map does not preserve or produce a sense of place. A comp plan must identify places that need to be enhanced and retrofitted and result in policies that produce the results people want and are place specific.It is now becoming the norm that comprehensive plan mapping identifies the character of a community and is not about colorful land use maps that cordon off areas for uses. The new mapping links policy to outcomes. The comprehensive plan identifies growth opportunity areas-primed for redevelopment effort. This approach will fail if the community's zoning code does not allow it! Two examples of this approach are the Lancaster County Plan and Independence by Charter Homes and DPZ.
   
2. Rigorous approach to analyzing and designing place-New Urbanist approach is based on neighborhoods, corridors, and the transect. It establishes relationships between a place and its reality and allows change.
3. Integrate land use and transportation-It is an essential linkage because what makes a great city is the relationship between its transportation "bones" and the built environment. The transportation infrastructure creates and links, and creates the public spaces that are framed by private, public and civic buildings and spaces. The only space in which we can create great places and great communities is the public realm!

Second speaker in the session.

Abby Thorne-Lyman Strategic Economics

Forces that Shape the Plans

"Understanding the Demographic and Economic Forces that Shape Land Use and Development"

Abby introduced her presentation with an overview.

• What are the demographic and economic forces? The future does not look like the past. Historic trend information is increasingly irrelevant because of the massive shifts that are occurring
• How do you evaluate the local economy?
• Bring transportation into the story with an economic perspective.
• Lessons learned from comprehensive planning.

1. The Demographic and Economic Forces at Work-The purview of the Comprehensive Plan is narrow. It deals with the built environment, but ultimately it is about job, proximity to work and residence, and access. Major shifts are occurring that change the future.

• Only 1/3 of households have kids under 18
• Only 24% of households are traditional nuclear families
• By 2023 majority of children will be children of color
  
• By 2042, majority of population people of color (An example of the impact of projecting the future as the past is it ignores the spending power of residents in urban centers.)
• Households are aging. By 2050 19 million people will be over the age of 85. They will demand a type of new housing that does not now exist and will demand transit

2. Understanding and supporting the local economy-Comprehensive Plans usually fail to understand employment areas and the pressures to convert them to other uses (e.g., from industrial and manufacturing to residential, institutional etc.). The comprehensive plan must
understand all unique employment areas and understand the dynamics of each. Are they growing, shrinking? Location matters to industrial users as much as to retail.
Strategic Economics categorizes industries into three types.

• Driving industries (push regional economy)
• Household Serving industries (retail, personal services)
• Business Serving industries

Must look at trends for each over time.

3. Transportation with an economic impact
Transit rich environment cuts household. The Housing and Transportation Affordability Index that is based on US Census Data can calculate this index for every community. Transit rich environments result in significant household savings and result in a significant increase in disposable income. Quality transit has destinations and origins that reflect community and character. In cities that are aggressively expanding transit, such as Denver, they are defining both character and form prior to the investment.

4. Lessons learned

• Comprehensive planning varies depending on development opportunities. Know the opportunities for change
• Local economies are not local-make sure workers/residents can connect to work-always consider the regional context. The Longitudinal Employment Household (LEHD)data gives every community the ability to understand this relationship.
• Good land use policy should support economic development.
• Plan for economic and demographic diversity