Creating and Review a Comprehensive East Lansing Plan - Essay Example

East Lansing Comprehensive Plan East Lansing is a in the Michigan of the U.S that serves as the state capital. The larger part of the city is found in Ingham County directly of Lansing with the rest lying in Clinton County. Mostly known for the Michigan State University, the city has a population of around 48,579 as of the last census carried out in 2010. Serving as the major education, administrative as well as commercial centre in the state, it was necessary to develop a comprehensive plan for the city. This saw the community of the city start discussions on East Lansing’s future as early as 2002. A team of volunteers consisting of professionals drawn from different fields worked on the city’s trends and projections to come up with a draft document providing strategies seeking to achieve targets and goals for the city in the future. This report seeks to provide a review of the Comprehensive Plan for the city known as East Lansing’s Big Picture. Adequacy of context The Comprehensive Plan has a clear explanation on the legal aspect of how the plan is to be carried out. Drawing from the Michigan municipal Planning Act, Act 285 of 1931, legally, the city’s Planning Commission is the administrative authority charged with the creation and adaptation of development plans concerning the municipality (Legislature.mi.gov). However, before the commission makes any recommendation, it needs to carry out surveys and studies of the municipality’s and neighboring territory’s present conditions comprehensively. Public participation should also be part of the process as a whole. All these conditions need to be met for the adoption of the plan to be legal. Clearly the plan is meant for the community of the East Lansing. The Big Picture outlines that the purpose of the plan is generally to guide the city community in the achievement of a coordinated, harmonious and adjusted municipality development. However, the plan fails to provide a summary of the whole plan. Rational model Although the Big Picture was developed to provide guidelines in the accomplishment of certain milestones in the development of the municipality, it also provides an avenue for assessing the development of the city. The plan outlook is intended for the next 20 years. However, it also states that there should be a regular re-evaluation for updating of the plan which will involve conducting comprehensive studies and surveys on how the city scenes have changed (Singh, Kevin and Roberta, p. 111). While stating the existing conditions at the time of the plan’s development, the team identified problems specific to each planning area. The Big Picture also specifically identifies the goals and objectives that each planning area should achieve. Here there is a description of specific actions meant to attain these goals. While aiming to develop the areas, the actions also seek to eradicate the problems identified for the region. The actions are not only meant for the city as they also apply to neighboring territories that have to be affected by the change. As such the plan also involves the Michigan state government. However, it does not provide alternatives. Procedural validity The comprehensive plan was formulated by a team assembled by the Planning Commission and the City Council (Singh, Kevin and Roberta, p. 3). It consisted of several members of the City Planning Commission and the City Council as well as volunteers from the city community. The professionals on the team were chosen for their qualifications that would be necessary in the creation of the plan. The community volunteers were, however chosen at random. The City Council members’ purpose in the team was to protect the city’s interest. The professionals provided knowledge and expertise on what was needed in the different planning areas in relation to their fields. The community volunteers purposed to represent the community’s needs. Comments were used to tabulate and identify opportunities and challenges in each area. The team then prepared a report incorporating data from the 2000 Census. Drafts were distributed in April 2005. Adequacy of scope The team that developed the Comprehensive Plan needed to gather comments from the communities and carried out surveys before drafting reports for each planning area (DeHaaan, p. 11). This enabled them to get enough information about the issues of each region. This enabled them to cover all issues ranging from transport and social amenities to environmental issues. As such the plan seems to have considered all issues. The team was able to identify specific problems in specific areas by breaking the city down into regions. This avoids the neglect of different areas promoting equity. There was also consideration of efficiency with the plan providing the best alternatives, for example the use rolled pavements. The plan does take into consideration the financial implications of the actions. It aims to increase the city’s income, and even create avenues for the creation of employment through job training partnerships. However, legal issues were not considered as the plan seems to dictate what one should with his or her property (Singh, Kevin and Roberta, p. 111). The planners covered political issues as they ensured no region of the city was neglected. Guidance for Implementation The plan does not highlight any action or objective as being the priority in the bigger plan to develop the city. All goals come across as being of the same priority. The plan only states the actions that need to be taken in order to achieve the set goals. However, it fails to highlight the cost of implementation of the actions as well the source of the funds. Another failure is the plan’s lack of a clear timeline over which the actions should be implemented and completed. The plan states that regular checks are needed to review the Comprehensive Plan (Singh, Kevin and Roberta, p. 111). However, it fails to provide a program for analyzing the actions’ impacts. Finally, the plan does not stipulate which agency will be charged with the implementation of the actions. Data The plan is a summary of the points that arose from a large amount of data. The team organized forums for the community where stakeholders provided feedback and ideas. All this information contributed to the development of the final draft. The plan anticipates that new data may arise and has provisions for this allowing reviewing and updating every five years. In the plan, the Census identifies as the major source of data used in its development and implementation. The data from the census is directly related to the goals set by the plan. The data have to do with measurement in terms of the size of the population, housing units, and income distribution (Singh, Kevin and Roberta, p. 19). Quality of communication The plan identifies the community of East Lansing as a whole as the client of the program. The goals, objectives and actions outlined in the plan bring out the ideas of the intended vision for the city clearly (Singh, Kevin and Roberta, p. 113). The plan puts focus on every goal, explaining every action aimed at attaining them. In discussing the current scene of each planning area, the plan shows the challenges the regions face. These serve as the rationales for the decisions behind the plan. This is evidenced by the actions developed which are consistent with the goals. Nevertheless, there is no clear outline on the evaluation criteria. Plan format The East Lansing’s Big Picture Comprehensive Plan was authored by Samir Singh, Kevin Beard and Roberta McElmurry and published on 25th October 2006. It has a table of contents with the pages numbered from page 1 to page 142. The incorporation of graphics in the form of maps has helped in explaining the ideas. Generally the plan comes off as an efficient and proper strategy for the development of the city. Work cited DeHaan, Heather D. Stalinist City Planning: Professionals, Performance, and Power. , 2013. Print. Legislature.mi.gov. Michigan Legislature - Act 285 Of 1931. N.p., 2014. Web. 18 Sept. 2014. Singh, Samir, Kevin Beard, and Roberta McElmurry. East Lansing’S Big Picture Comprehensive Plan For Our Future. 1st ed. East Lansing: N.p., 2014. Web. 18 Sept. 2014. Read More