Northwest Michigan Transportation and Land Use Initiative
Traverse City, MichiganAbstractThe City of Traverse City (pop. 15,155), a regional center located on Grand Traverse Bay in Northwest Michigan, proposes to undertake a 12-year project to develop a transportation and land use plan for the City, and to strengthen growth management in the surrounding five-county region. This initiative will affect residents and a large population of commuters in a jurisdiction where the wages are lower and the cost of living is higher than the state and national averages. Improving the efficiency of the regional transportation system would be helpful for people with limited incomes. The Northwest Michigan Transportation and Land Use Initiative is an innovative plan designed to increase the efficiency of our existing transportationsystem while protecting the livability of the community. The primary purposes of this project are to 1) develop and adopt a transportation and land use plan for the city that is supported by the public, 2) create a shared regional transportation and land use vision, and 3) create a process that can be utilized by other jurisdictions struggling with growth issues. This planning project differs from traditional planning in that we will: - bring in consultants from both ends of the spectrum (mobility and livability) to provide education and to design preliminary transportation and land use plans;
- harmonize these two plans to achieve a balance (rather than a consensus) of the two approaches;
- utilize a comprehensive public participation process to achieve a supportable balance while analyzing the effectiveness of the different public processes; to identify the costs/benefits of each process.
These processes will be able to be replicated by other small urban centers throughout Michigan and the United States to build community support for transportation and land use plans and projects. Previous Page | 
