1999 Grant Recipient Information
Michigan

Regional Growth: Choices For Our Future
Lansing/Tri-County Region, Michigan

Abstract

The Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, representing Clinton, Eaton and Ingham Counties and the Lansing, Michigan metropolitan area, has initiated Regional Growth: Choices For Our Future to develop a shared regional vision of land use and development patterns, to establish an action plan to address urban sprawl, and to guide public and private investment decisions for the next two decades. TCSP funding of $355,000 is being requested for a series of innovative pilot planning techniques to supplement $454,600 of locally funded traditional methods. Results will demonstrate enhanced planning methods which may be readily transferred to similar efforts nationwide. The current Tri-County regional population is approximately 445,500. By 2035, the area's population is projected to increase to 541,600. Although the annual growth rate is less than one percent, TCRPC projects that each additional family of four will result in at least four additional acres of land being converted to urban use. To alter this trend, TCRPC's Regional Growth: Choices For Our Future project will need to formulate consensus on a new land use pattern and on new policies to guide land use change. TCRPC will do this by involving 78 local governments, hundreds of local officials, and the region's citizens and non-traditional stakeholders in an innovative partnership. Elements proposed for TCSP funding were identified by these citizens and non- traditional partners as critical activities which should be added to our locally funded work plan in order to achieve consensus required for successful implementation. These elements include use of three dimensional computer imagery of alternative growth scenarios in visual preference surveys of citizens and leaders, and participants in focus groups, town forum workshops and other public involvement activities to assist participants in visualizing sprawl and alternative growth scenarios. Innovations on real cost studies and fiscal impact analysis, analysis of how transportation investment decisions and asset management strategies effect urban sprawl, gathering information on why people relocate, and developing measures to monitor, evaluate and track successful implementation by creating a "Sprawl Index" are also proposed, as is a comprehensive evaluation program. TCSP funding will permit application of these innovations in a dynamic proactive regional consensus building process. These techniques, as applied in the Regional Growth: Choices For Our Future project, and in the shared regional vision and action plan to implement a preferred growth alternative to urban sprawl as developed through this project, will improve efficiency of the transportation system, reduce environmental impacts and need for costly future public infrastructure, ensure access to jobs, services and trade centers and examine and encourage private sector development patterns which achieve these goals.

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