21st Century Comprenhsive Plan: Substance

By Ben Herman And Darcie White

It's been a little over five years since the start of APA's Sustaining Places Initiative. In that time, a significant number of new or updated comprehensive plans have been completed that continue to define the framework for the 21st century plan. The content of many of these plans is a departure from plans that came before them.

First, they cover new topics: sustainability, social equity, energy, climate change, and adaptation are all front and center, and land use and transportation are much better integrated. They also employ a more creative structure based on themes and big ideas, rather than the more traditional organization by elements such as housing, land use, environment, or transportation. Not all do, of course — Raleigh and Seattle are examples of forward-thinking communities that retained an element-based structure in their recent plans, but they did so in a manner that addresses 21st century challenges and opportunities.

Finally, comprehensive plans of today are far more results-focused than ever before, with more emphasis on setting desired outcomes and tracking progress.

As we move into the early decades of a new century, planners and their communities are crafting a new generation of comp plans and updates that will be shaped by several key trends that will help drive their content and focus.

Community members see themselves as plan stakeholders when they know they are part of a greater whole. Block Party by Eric Allix Rogers, Flickr (CC-BY-NC-SA).

Evolving challenges and opportunities

While comprehensive plans will continue to address traditional planning topics, they are also tackling new and evolving challenges:

• Equity, health, and income disparity
• Meeting the needs of changing populations
• Climate adaptation and mitigation, as well as planning for energy needs of the future
• Resilience and the dynamic and unpredictable pace of change

Increasingly, these challenges are being addressed through the lenses of sustainability and resilience, rather than as stand-alone issues. Although resilience has been characterized by many as the "next generation" of sustainability, a 2015 Post Carbon Institute publication entitled SixFoundations for Community Resilience suggests that one way of looking at sustainability and resilience is as two different frameworks for achieving the same goal: organizing how we interact with the world around us and with each other in ways that can continue indefinitely.

Take Seattle's 2035 Comprehensive Plan update (2035.seattle .gov), slated for adoption in 2016. It is structured around four core values that guide the goals and policies in the plan: Race and Social Equity, Environmental Stewardship, Economic Opportunity and Security, and Community. Longmont, Colorado's draft policy framework (www.EnvisionLongmont.com), also slated for adoption this year, is organized around six guiding principles that address responsible stewardship of resources (environmental, historic, financial), community health and adaptability, and access to services and opportunities, among others.

Both plans not only take on big issues like the environment and equity, but use them as framing concepts. Sustainability and resilience are interwoven throughout. "After experiencing the devastation of the floods in 2013," says Erin Fosdick, AICP, a senior planner with the city of Longmont, "we began to understand that community resiliency is a critical component to consider. Using the framework of the comprehensive plan, we've been able to expand these conversations, for example, by helping people understand that we're talking about more than environmental quality, hazard mitigation, and disaster preparedness. We are truly looking at the big picture — how all the interrelated things covered in our plan, including sustainability and resiliency, move us closer to our desired vision."

A key opportunity associated with this approach is the ability to generate discussion at the local level about what it means to be a sustainable and resilient community, and the importance of strengthening cross-linkages between the two as part of the planning process. A sustainable community is resilient and a resilient community is sustainable. This interdependence shows up in overlapping goals, policies, and metrics being addressed in today's comprehensive plans, which seek to:

FOSTER inclusivity and equity through attention to issues of cultural and racial diversity, affordability, gentrification, and homelessness.

ADAPT to a changing climate by planning for development and infrastructure that can withstand major disruptions due to flooding, wildfire, sea-level rise, or other catastrophic events without failure of critical systems.

REDUCE greenhouse gas emissions through expanded use of renewable energy, reduced reliance on single occupant automobiles, and mitigation of the urban heat island effect.

MINIMIZE future risk to people and property.

PROMOTE emergency preparedness, reducing impacts from future crises on populations, infrastructure, and institutions.

ENCOURAGE community health and wellness and improve health outcomes (e.g., rates of disease and obesity) through expanded access to health and human services, healthy food, and opportunities to lead active lifestyles.

PROVIDE a range of housing options to meet the needs of all ages, income levels, and abilities, including strategies to address affordable housing and homelessness.

IMPROVE access to services by aligning future housing, employment, and services with investments in multimodal transportation systems.

PROTECT the natural environment by preserving important resource areas.

ENHANCE food security through preservation of agricultural lands and expanded support for local and regional food production, sales, and processing.

FOSTER economic diversification at a local and regional scale.

PROMOTE a culture of transparency, accountability, and fiscal sustainability by aligning plan policies with budgets and capital investment plans.

While this shift toward a more integrated approach is being driven in part by increased awareness at all levels, it also gets a big boost from initiatives such as the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities Network, which is focused on helping communities become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic challenges of the 21st century. Also influential is the Compact of Mayors, a coalition of the leaders of 452 cities who have pledged to reduce and prepare for the impacts of climate change.

Both of these efforts, and others, are compelling elected officials to publicly commit to taking action to address new and emerging challenges. The role of the comprehensive plan in establishing a policy foundation for these actions is being defined right now, as the next generation of plans begins to take shape.

Boulder, Colorado, known for its innovative planning practices and its landmark approach to growth management, is in the process of preparing an update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. At the same time, the city is preparing a resilience assessment and strategy, with help from the 100 Resilient Cities initiative. The resilience strategy will be fully integrated with the plan update, which is expected to be complete in 2016. The update will build on the legacy of the plan that has been in place since the 1980s, but is adding several areas of enhanced focus, including climate, energy, and resilience; housing/ jobs balance and the need for middle income housing; and urban form.

Boulder and other communities at the forefront of working to reduce climate impacts — Portland, Oregon, is another notable example — have had sustainability or climate action plans in place for many years. As a result, their recent comprehensive plan updates look to align policies and recommended actions between targeted resiliency and climate initiatives and their comprehensive plans, and continue to seek new and innovative ways to become more sustainable and resilient.

The vast majority of communities, however, do not have sustainability or climate action plans in place. Newly initiated plan update processes coupled with the desire to advance the community's understanding of 21st century issues related to sustainability and resilience will provide new opportunities to address these policy choices and new models will continue to emerge.

One of the most important considerations for these emerging models will be their ability to withstand political change over time. The most effective plans and policies are ones that have — and maintain — broad support. It is important to recognize that establishing an aggressive greenhouse gas reduction, affordable housing, or other kind of target may not be realistic in all communities today — or in the future. As such, planners must be prepared to discuss a range of possible approaches to advance local sustainability and resilience initiatives and to help make the case as to why they are important.

Accountability and measurement

Effective planning can be defined as the transformation of knowledge into action. With the axiom that "what gets measured gets done" in mind, cuttingedge plans can make this transformation possible by defining their community's desired outcomes and linking them to measureable metrics that assess the results of plan policies and implementation.

These kinds of plans make it clear how the community's planning vision will be defined, measured, and acted upon. That helps planners, decision makers, and stakeholders understand more clearly the effectiveness of action strategies so that they can adapt and revise them to meet adopted goals.

Imagine Austin, the Austin, Texas, comprehensive plan (http://austintexas.gov), adopted in 2012, links policies, goals, metrics, and actions in its chapter on Implementation and Measuring Success. The city charter requires that the planning commission and staff provide an annual report to city council about the implementation of the comprehensive plan, including metrics to track progress.

Similarly, the 2013 Norfolk, Virginia, comprehensive plan, plaNorfolk2030, (http://norfolk.gov) contains 11 elements, each of which highlights key issues facing the community, along with goals, desired outcomes, and metrics and actions for each. "Because we're measuring progress all the time, it's really resulted in the plan being more of a living document," says George M. Homewood, AICP, the city's planning director. "We've changed some of the initial metrics to reflect the reality of the community, and to help better inform us about the effectiveness of the actions in the plan. This approach has been a real game-changer for us not only in terms of the plan's effectiveness, but also the level of participation by other city departments."

Continuous improvement

Traditionally, a comprehensive plan is revisited every five years or so and generally left untouched in the interim. In today's planning environment, the plan is never really "done," as communities need to remain nimble to be able to respond to ever-changing circumstances. Also, with an increasing focus on implementation and measuring progress, many communities are continually evaluating the effectiveness of strategies and adjusting them as needed.

Since the adoption of Imagine Austin, city staff members have focused on strategic implementation efforts, with eight priority programs providing the structure and direction needed to implement the plan. Each priority program has a lead department, cross-disciplinary team, community partners, and a work plan that is reviewed and revised on an annual basis.

In Fort Collins, Colorado, following the adoption of its last major plan update in 2011, known as Plan Fort Collins, (http://fcgov.com/planfortcollins) the city made major changes to its organizational structure by combining economic health, environmental services, and social sustainability departments under one umbrella—the Sustainability Services Area. The city has just completed strategic action plans for each of the three departments to implement key initiatives of its comprehensive plan.

Place-based design

While incorporating design into comp plans is not a new idea, what is changing is an increased focus on plans that make areas more livable, more vibrant, and more people-oriented. Particularly as planners are increasingly being asked to manage change through increased density and urbanization, plans will need to provide more clarity about the desired future form and shape of their community. New technologies help. They illustrate desired patterns, at varying scales — from the structure and form of the entire city to that of its districts, neighborhoods, and corridors.

One trend in comprehensive plans that has gained momentum over the past few years is the concept of form-based or place-based land-use plans. Place-based planning is a way to shape the future of the city by concentrating on the look, feel, form, and character of places instead of conventional categories of land use.

Portland, Oregon's draft comprehensive plan update (portlandoregon.gov/bps/68411), slated for adoption early in 2016, includes an Urban Design Framework diagram that identifies centers and corridors (areas that are expected to grow and change) within the city's physical context. The framework supports the evolution of the city by illustrating the linkages and relationships between various elements of the built and natural environment through a network of place types: centers, corridors, transit station areas, city greenways, urban habitat corridors, and employment areas. It also identifies a set of "pattern areas" — broad geographies that are defined by existing patterns of natural and built features, such as the central city, neighborhoods, and inner-ring districts, and provides basic urban design characteristics and comparisons for different types of centers, corridors, and other features.

What's next?

The current generation of plans is breaking new ground in addressing the goals of the Sustaining Places Initiative to help communities of all sizes achieve sustainable outcomes. Looking to the future, new challenges — global economic shifts, energy innovations, and emerging transportation technologies such as driverless vehicles and autonomous delivery systems — will need to be addressed in community plans. The comprehensive plan will continue to evolve and will have an increasingly important role as the central unifying document for communities to address the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Ben Herman is a senior consultant with Clarion Associates, a national planning firm based in Denver. He served on APA's Sustaining Places Task Force and Plan Standards Working Group. Darcie White is a director with Clarion Associates. Her practice focuses primarily on comprehensive planning.

Resources

Global Impact of the Compact of Mayors: Cities are where some of the most effective and immediate climate actions take place. In the U.S. 122 cities have signed on; there are 452 worldwide. Watch: tinyurl.com/jupxvrh

Land-Use Change Request Sites: Using this interactive map, see what may be in store for the major update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan: tinyurl.com/zq975lv