|
A
Vision Statement: A Must for all Communities
About
15 years ago, the Washington Township Planning Board (Mercer County) saw
its neighboring towns going the way of suburbia, and worried that its
own agrarian community would follow suit, Planning Department Director
Robert Melvin said. Today, the town (www.washington-twp.org)
boasts a 400 acre, pedestrian and bicycle friendly center with public
parks, sidewalk cafes, and old style front porches, surrounded by 6,000
acres of land preserved for agriculture and open space.
Creating
Washington's vision statement was a give and take, long-term process;
the planning board had been practicing Smart Growth concepts for years
before they called a consultant to help verbalize the vision statement.
Board members planned pro-actively, rather than reacting to individual
site plans and fighting developers in court. They also drew on the good
and bad images they saw when they took field trips to numerous towns and
cities. Melvin explained, "The more you show (the board members)
what their future could be, the easier they can verbalize what they want."
The
most effective way to grapple with land use issues in your town is through
the municipal master plan process. The master plan is a statement of objectives,
policies and standards upon which the physical, economic and social development
of the municipality are based. The master plan shows the existing and
proposed locations and intensity of land development for specific uses,
such as residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, and educational
uses. The future of the community's land use lies in the pages of the
master plan, so it is crucial that the master plan be well thought out
and carefully written with the needs of the community at the forefront.
A
community is much more than a collection of streets, houses and buildings
or subdivisions pieced together by a developer. Strong communities have
a unique character that concerned local citizens have built over the years
through responsible land use planning. Newer communities can learn from
this experience by exploring through a public process what their municipalities
could look like over the next several decades. Developing a vision statement
should be the first step when amending or writing a master plan because
a well-crafted statement will tie the rest of the plan together.
The
New
Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan (a.k.a. The
State Plan) provides guidance as to which Planning Area a community
belongs in, be it a metropolitan, suburban, fringe, rural, or
environmentally sensitive planning area, or any combination of
these. The policy objectives pertaining to the applicable Planning
Areas set the general parameters for a community's future growth
and natural resource protection. Municipalities should provide
a statement in their Master Plan (Municipal Land Use Law, N.J.S.A.
40:55D-28.d) indicating the relationship of the Master Plan to
the State Plan. Major goals of the State Plan are to reduce sprawl,
provide affordable and diverse housing stock, and protect natural
resources, so you should keep this in mind as you plan your vision.
Getting the Public Involved
Creating a vision should be a collaborative process among the citizens
of the community, municipal officials (including environmental commission
and planning board members), developers, engineers, and professional planners.
The first challenge is to assemble everyone together to start discussing
how the municipality should develop in the future.
The
easiest way to initiate discussions is to hold a number of public meetings
at the start of the master plan review process where citizens can share
their ideas and opinions. Advertise for these public meetings by placing
press releases in your local paper, advertising on the community webpage,
and handing out flyers at the schools and community centers. Hold the
meetings in a central location, and provide transportation and childcare
services to entice more citizens to come.
Tools for Visioning
A picture is worth a thousand words; bring visual aids to the meetings.
Photographs from other towns and cities that have implemented their community
vision can help citizens decide what characteristics they find desirable
and what characteristics they want to avoid. In addition, citizens can
design their own three-dimensional communities using scale models of buildings,
houses, and other facets of a community. The three-dimensional model is
beneficial because it makes the community easier to visualize, and community
members can continuously move components of the model around until everyone
is satisfied with the result. Three-dimensional envisioning can be accomplished
with either computer graphics or block models.
Other
useful techniques to gather information on the citizens' preferences include
standard surveying techniques. A mail survey can be sent to a great number
of people at a low cost and results can be easily standardized. The downside
is that the response rate is usually low (20-30 percent maximum) and the
person answering the survey is limited to the questions printed, though
space can be provided for extended responses.
Focus
groups can be arranged as well; these could resemble a more compact and
organized form of the public meetings. Responses from focus groups are
more valuable than survey responses because they are accompanied with
explanations and discussions. However, the person compiling the gathered
information may inadvertently bias results because the responses are not
standardized the way mailed surveys are. Also, the results will not be
as useful if the focus group is not representative of all the people in
the community. For example, senior citizens can be tapped for a discussion
on senior housing options such as group homes, large complexes, and smaller
developments, but this would not be representative of the entire community.
A
compromise between the two options is a telephone survey, which can also
reach masses of interested citizens. Telephone surveys have the benefit
of being somewhat standardized and impersonal, so the interviewee is not
put on the spot, but the interviewer can ask follow-up questions and receive
more detailed answers as if in a discussion group. Also, because a large
number of people can be interviewed using a telephone survey, it is more
likely that the entire community will be represented. The disadvantage
is that the results may be biased towards the interviewer's preferences,
but this can be minimized with well-written questions that the interviewer
is asked to read.
Once
you agree on how to communicate with the public, you need to focus your
discussions on issues that are relevant to your community.
Essential Elements of the Vision
Because a vision statement will eventually be incorporated into the master
plan, which is the basis for the zoning ordinance, it is essential that
the community identify important or unique resources, so that they are
preserved through the development process. Such categories may include,
but are not limited to, environmental resources, such as streams, mature
woodlands, and steep slopes; agricultural resources; historic, cultural,
and scenic resources, such as parks and recreation areas; and non-renewable
resources of economic value, such as sand, gravel and gas deposits. Brownfields
should also be identified for their redevelopment potential.
You
should then consider the costs and benefits of development. If little
planning is done, development is financially expensive, and it causes
secondary environmental impacts such as air and water pollution and resource
depletion. On the other hand, special attention to your community's environmental
needs during the planning stage may actually reduce financial costs. For
example, river and stream corridors provide flood control when they are
protected from development. Also, lighter-colored materials and trees
reduce energy use in cities. As a result, your community spends less money
on energy and flood control because some of it can be handled naturally.
When
you've envisioned all the general requirements that developers
should follow, you can move on to specific issues of character
and design. Will your community have a historic look or a
modern look? Will the center of town contain a pocket park, a
high school, or a shopping district? Topics of discussion should
include land use, infrastructure, and open space.
You may also want to include aesthetic planning features in your vision
statement. For example, the characteristics you want your community to
portray will determine the materials used for the buildings and the style
of the architecture. Small and quaint will look very different from city
skyscrapers. Such features may include building materials, styles of buildings,
setbacks, lighting, and landscaping, among others.
And
don't forget traffic and parking. Will parking be on the streets, in lots
behind the stores, or in parking garages? How much space will be offered?
If you gear your community toward pedestrians and the mass transit system,
cars can be accommodated, but not encouraged, and your town will become
more pedestrian-friendly. Reducing traffic not only helps protect the
environment, but it also improves the aesthetics and acoustics of your
community.
Your
community should be user-friendly so people from all walks of life and
ages can enjoy it to its maximum potential. Students should be able to
safely walk or bike to the school and the park or recreation center. Adults
should be able to walk down the street for a quick bite during their lunch
hours, and mass transit should be easily accessible and convenient to
travel to a neighboring community. Strip malls that are built in isolation
without connection to the surrounding development should be avoided, and
green buffers should separate incompatible uses.
Writing the Vision Statement for the Municipal
Master Plan
The
vision statement in the master plan must be specific to be effective;
you can't leave room for interpretation. The community should be pro-active
with its vision statement rather than reacting to individual site development
plans. Developers should be able to visualize from the master plan what
the town will look like in the future, so it is helpful to include photographs
and illustrations. The master plan should identify the characteristics
that your community deems desirable, thus ensuring appropriate development
of your community.
When
creating the vision for your master plan, it is imperative that the communication
lines among community members remain open. Moreover, everyone must keep
an open mind and be willing to compromise. Suggest alternative plans if
your views are too extreme for the general public.
Once
there's general agreement on a vision, you have one step left. Work with
the Planning Board to write it down, and insert it into the master plan.
For further information
Email the
ANJEC Resource Center, 973-539-7547
Municipal
Land Use Law, N.J.S.A. 40:55D et seq see Resources Section of
Office of
Smart Growth web site or in print from New Jersey Planning
Officials (NJPO). 908-412-9592, www.njpo.org.
NJ
State Development and Redevelopment Plan, 800-522-0129
Sprawl
Watch Clearinghouse, 202-332-7000
|
