Are We Doing This Right? – Comprehensive Plans Edition
For this month’s edition of ‘Are We Doing This Right?’, we’re turning our attention to the comprehensive plan. There’s a lot to talk about, including:
History! Where did comp plans come from?
How to know when your city’s comprehensive plan is outdated (or even harmful)
An alternative vision for what comprehensive plans could be… from all the way back in 1967
Why some comprehensive plans just sit on the shelf gathering dust
What it means for comprehensive plans to “fail”—and what causes failure (from AJ’s experience)
Some examples of comprehensive plans we like, for one reason or another
Are comprehensive plans really necessary?
Best practices for comprehensive plans
Want to do some further research on the topic? Here are a few resources we used for this episode:
No Little Plans: The Evolution of the Comprehensive Plan (Lincoln Institute)
Why Comprehensive Plans Gather Dust (Planning Commissioners Journal)
C is for Comprehensive Plan (Planning Commissioners Journal)
Stand By Your Plan (Planning Commissioners Journal)
Planning Without A Comprehensive Plan (Planning Commissioners Journal)
The Importance of Comprehensive Planning in a Down Economy (Planetizen)
Recent Developments in Comprehensive Planning Law (The Urban Lawyer)
Integrating Capital Improvements Planning With the Comprehensive Plan (APA)
Searching for the Good Plan: A Meta-Analysis of Plan Quality Studies (Journal of Planning Literature)
A Noiseless Secession from The Comprehensive Plan (Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1967)
Want to discuss this further?
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