Table of Contents

Built Environment and Health

The city’s comprehensive plan includes a Public Safety, Health & Welfare Plan. It advocates for a coordinated, regional approach to improving health systems, the environment, food systems, and physical activity. An Implementation Matrix summarizes the chapter’s strategies and objectives and identifies the time frame, cost, responsible departments, and progress indicators.

Community Visioning

This city's comprehensive plan offers its vision and guiding principles in Chapter 3. The vision grew out of a four-hour community workshop that attracted more than 500 participants, and focuses on main themes of social equity and sustainability, reshaping the economy, quality of life, adapting to change, youth, and civic life.

Comprehensive Planning

This city's comprehensive plan is from a legacy city that was the APA Michigan Excellence Award winner for Public Outreach in 2014. The plan is richly illustrated and covers a wide range of social and economic topics absent from most comprehensive plans in Michigan. An extensive public engagement process lasting nearly three years, including 300 community events and engaging more than 5,000 residents and stakeholders, is documented through a project timeline. The plan is based around a vision and six guiding principles, which the plan's goals reference: Social Equity & Sustainability, Reshaping the Economy, Quality of Life, Adapting to Change, Youth, and Civic Life. The plan comprises eight elements: Land Use; Housing and Neighborhoods; Transportation and Mobility; Environmental Features, Open Space, and Parks; Infrastructure and Community Facilities; Economic Development and Education; Public Health, Safety, and Welfare; and Arts and Culture. The plan lists out but does not assign responsibilities for a number of implementation strategies.

Food Systems

This city's comprehensive plan focuses on developing local food systems as an important part of the city's revitalization strategies; discussions of food-related goals and objectives are embedded throughout the plan. Food issues are addressed in conceptualizing "green innovation" areas for redevelopment (p. 66); the housing and neighborhoods plan's best practices for greening residential areas (pp. 102-103); the environmental features, open space and parks plan's best practices for urban agriculture (p. 162); and the economic development and education plan's best practices for local food economy (p. 222). The public safety, health and welfare plan's objectives include developing a local food system and it offers supporting policies and actions (pp. 235, 250–52, 258).

Social Equity

The city’s comprehensive plan lists Social Equity & Sustainability as its first guiding principle. Throughout the plan, the relevant guiding principles are visualized next to each objective. Some examples of objectives that address equity include Objective 4 in the Housing & Neighborhoods chapter, Objective 4 in the Environmental Features, Open Space & Parks chapter, and Objective 6 in the Public Safety, Health & Welfare chapter.