Agenda - Planning Commission - 09/05/2013

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RESOURCES • Brownson, Ross C., Christine M. Hoehner, Kristen Day, Ann Forsyth, and James F. Sallis. zoo9. "Measuring the Built Envi- ronment for Physical Activity: State of the Science." American Journal of Preventa- tive Medicine, 36(4): 99-123. Available at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc /articles/PMC2844244• • Center for Neighborhood Technology. 2013. "H+T Affordability Index." Available at http://htaindex.cnt.org/map. • Farr, Douglas. 2008. Sustainable Urbanism. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. • Knack, Ruth, Stuart Meck, and Israel Stoll - man. 1996. "The Real Story Behind the Standard Planning and Zoning Acts of the 192os." Land Use Law and Zoning Digest, February. Available at www.planning.org /growingsmart/pdf/LULZDFeb96.pdf. • Hall Planning and Engineering, Inc. 2012. "HPE's Walkability Index." Available at www.hpe-inc.com/walkability-index.html. • Leaf, W.A., and D.F. Preusser. 1999. Litera- ture Review on Vehicle Travel Speeds and Pedestrian Injuries. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Transportation. Available at www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research /pub/hs8o9o12.html. • U.S. Green Building Council. 2009. "LEED for Neighborhood Development." Avail- able at www.usgbc.org/neighborhoods. • Walk Score: www.walkscore.com. • Walk Score. 2013. "Get Your Bike Score." Available at www.walkscore .com/bike. • Walk Score. 2013. "Get Your Transit Score." Available at www.walkscore .com/transit. To increase effectiveness, planners can focus on the part they have the greatest control over —the planning process —to increase the depth of support for implementing an ambitious plan. approach, an objective should appear in the implementation section ofa plan only if the planning process has revealed ample support for its implementation, which is a model of planning effectiveness. Specific objectives that fail to garner support may appear as ini- tiatives lacking support. THE TWO PARTS OF CODE -READY SUSTAINABLE PLANNING Code -ready sustainable planning is made up of two parts: high performance planning and code -specific recommendations. High-performance planning describes a planning process rooted in evidence -based sustainability metrics. Given that recent re- search documents how our land -development patterns contribute to physical activity levels, pedestrian and bike safety, housing and transportation affordability, and climate resil- iency, high-performance planning is necessary to quickly increase the planning profession's effectiveness in a time of tight budgets and sometimes strident opposition. Code -specific recommendations are plan policies and action items written in language strong and precise enough to guide the devel- opment of regulatory provisions that will help achieve the plan's goals and objectives. In other words, code -specific recommendations provide clarity about how a particular recom- mendation will be implemented. PUTTING CODE -READY SUSTAINABLE PLANNING INTO PRACTICE In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, author Steven Covey wrote that in order to be effective, one must "begin with the end in mind." An aspirational "end" to a planning effort can seem hard to attain given the frag- mentation in how plans and their implementa- tion are authorized and governed. In order to increase effectiveness, planners can focus on the part they have the greatest control over — the planning process —to increase the depth of support for implementing an ambitious plan. In this effort, the green building industry may have experience of value to planners. Use High -Performance Sustainable Planning Criteria For more than 15 years, the green building movement has applied this "end -in -mind" thinking to the design of sustainable buildings in an approach called "integrated design." This approach has many parallels with the high- performance approach to planning proposed herein. An integrated design approach brings together everyone who will eventually have the responsibility for implementing the plan early in the process. The facilitators present, debate, and commit to a menu of strategic choices, along with their costs and benefits. Think of these as a project's bones. In integrated build- ing design it usually refers to structural or me- chanical systems. The analog in planning is a two -stage process: the first involving big policy decisions and the second, the level of perfor- mance to be written into code. To illustrate how this approach can work, the table on pages 4 and 5 provides an initial listing of policy objec- tives and code -specific performance targets. This table is divided into aspirational policy objectives and code -specific perfor- mance targets. Both objectives and targets are proposed at three levels of aspiration: weak, moderate, and strong. In setting up this hierar- chy, the expectation is not that municipalities will opt to adopt a strong policy on every topic but rather that the planning process will iden- tify those measures for which the community is most strongly committed. Any municipality that adopts policies from these ambitious targets is likely to earn positive recognition for doing so. ZONINGPRACTICE 8.13 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION (page 6