What is a Comprehensive Plan?
In short, a comprehensive plan is a community's long-range guide for shaping future growth and development over ten, twenty, or more years. It creates a vision for what kind of place a city should be in the future and describes policy choices to become that city.
The Comprehensive Plan as a Guide for the Management of Change
Communities change, as do families, businesses, institutions and natural systems. Retaining conditions just as they are now is no more feasible than turning back the clock to a prior era. While change itself may be inevitable, the direction and rate of change and the kind of places which change produces, are not. The act of planning reflects a decision not to accept “the inevitable,” but rather to influence and guide change to produce a future that gives us the kind of community we want to live in.
The Comprehensive Plan as a Reflection of Community Values and Aspirations
Our motivation in planning must be to respond to citizens’ aspirations for a better community, for economic prosperity and for a city that values beauty, retains identity and creates a sense of connectedness. The core value questions are: What aspects of our life today do we value and wish to retain and enhance? What are our aspirations for the future of our community? What are we willing to do to achieve this future?
The Comprehensive Plan as the Foundation for Policies, Strategies and Actions
Vision and concepts must be backed by sound, factual understanding of the dynamics of community change. These begin with socio-economic and technological trends. Local market and growth pressures influence land use patterns, which in turn influence, and are influenced by, transportation and other public facility demands, all of which determine the community’s quality of life. The planning process sorts and compares concepts and strategies, leading to the selection of an “optimum”—one that is technically sound, but also is capable of broad public and political support.
The Comprehensive Plan as the Community’s “To Do” List
The planning process should be crafted as a continuum: from Vision to Goals, and Strategies, to a timeline of short-term, intermediate and long-term Actions... becoming the community’s “to do” list.
To gain immediate traction requires an implementation element that clearly spells out:
- An action program and schedule identifying short, mid-term and long-term actions to be taken, where responsibilities are assigned and with what resources.
- A protocol for plan administration, including updates and amendments.
- An annual “report card” that identifies what parts of the action program have and have not been acted upon and any associated revisions.
The Comprehensive Plan as a Catalyst for Community Consensus
Questions of how to deal with growth and change often elicit very different responses from citizens. The planning process often acts as a wake-up call, prompting recognition of the trends underway and their consequences, raising awareness of the choices to be made in how this growth might be best managed, and guiding public opinion toward a consensus on what approach is best for the common good of the community.
