Comprehensive Planning

I've always loved legos, but I learned about a new use for the colorful plastic blocks last week that makes me like them even more: cooperative city planning.

I attended the Urban Land Institute's breakfast session at the Main Library downtown, which was co-sponsored by Foley and Lardner (a big environmental law firm). Along with some useful updates on growth management legislation, city plans, and some vivid expressions of terror about the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment petition, there was a fascinating presentation about ULI's Reality Check process for community visioning, recently completed in the Tampa Bay area.














Imagine a table-sized map of Duval County and the Jacksonville Metropolitan Area (which includes all areas from which commuters drive TO the city, daily). Now, imagine you and ten other citizens from all walks of life are given blocks representing the total number of people and jobs expected to move into this geographic area by 2050 (yellow for folks, red for jobs), as well as ribbons for proposing roads and new transit lines. As a group you decide on a list of operating guidelines (such as a focus on environmental integrity, transit-oriented development, town centers, and economic growth), and then place the population and jobs on the map.

What you get is a land-use plan, by the people, for the people, and you might be surprised what the folks in the area surrounding Tampa Bay came up with. Almost all the tables had essentially the same guiding principles (all of them prioritized environmental sustainability and increased mass- and multi-modal transit), and most of them decided it would be best to build more densely, and in conglomerations of residences and employment spaces (i.e. walkable town centers instead of sprawl).

Everyone in the room seemed to understand that this sort of process could be a viable alternative to the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment. Even I (seemingly the lone environmentalist, and one of few nonprofit folks) could see the benefit of this sort of alternative, although I wholeheartedly support *Hometown Democracy.

I would love to see something like Reality Check happen in Jacksonville. The one big problem I see with the FLHD amendment is that it might freeze in place the useless current Comp Plan, and make it harder for a process like Reality Check to have an impact.

Here's an article about the session in the Daily Record.

*My opinions don't necessarily match or reflect those of RADO. But you guys knew that, right?