11.13.17 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Community Designation: Ramsey is an Emerging Suburban Edge Ramsey is designated as an `Emerging Suburban Edge' by the Metropolitan Council. The Metropolitan Council uses community designations to group communities with similar characteristics in order to more effectively target its policies. The Metropolitan Council uses these community designations to: • Guide regional growth and development to areas that have urban infrastructure in place and the capacity to accommodate development and redevelopment. • Establish land use expectations, including overall densities and development patterns, for different community designations. • Outline the respective roles of the Metropolitan Council and Ramsey along with strategies for planning for forecasted growth. An Emerging Suburban Edge Community is characterized as transitioning from rural to developed. It should be noted that although a portion of Ramsey certainly is transition in this manner, a significant portion of the community remains guided for larger -lot, single-family development on private well and septic along with goals to protect a significant amount of exceptional quality ecological resources. The Emerging Suburban Edge includes cities, townships, and portions of both that are in the early stages of transitioning into urbanized levels of development. Strategically located between Suburban Edge and Rural communities, the Emerging Suburban Edge communities offer both connections to urban amenities and the proximity to open spaces that characterizes a rural lifestyle. Often, the cities and townships in the Emerging Suburban Edge are in more than one Community Designation. In the majority of Emerging Suburban Edge communities, less than 40% of the land has been developed. Communities in the Emerging Suburban Edge have a mix of residential, rural, and agricultural areas, often including lower -density single-family neighborhoods and small downtown service centers. The growth patterns in these communities demonstrate the challenges of changing from rural to suburban. New developments are typically built in a traditional suburban pattern, characterized by large curving streets, limited through -roadways, and auto -oriented street design. Emerging Suburban Edge communities have access to regional wastewater services (either municipally owned or regional services), access to the metropolitan highway system, and include existing or planned Regional Parks System facilities. The Emerging Suburban Edge communities provide a variety of commercial activities along the main transportation corridors, and most encompass historic small downtowns with small town characteristics. These communities benefit from their proximity to more developed areas while retaining their local rural character and protecting natural resources. Commercial areas in the Emerging Suburban Edge tend to be individual large employers and smaller -scale commercial centers serving the local population. Although these communities have some redevelopment potential in older areas such as historic downtown districts, the focus in the Emerging Suburban Edge is on greenfield development. Greenfields present opportunities to integrate natural resource preservation into site planning prior to development. Some of these communities have land available within their jurisdiction staged for future development, while others are expanding through orderly annexation agreements with neighboring townships. This mix of uses, availability of undeveloped land, and rich access to natural resources is a characteristic unique to Emerging Suburban Edge communities. As of May 2014, the Metropolitan Council forecasts that the Emerging Suburban Edge area will add 201,000 residents, 93,000 households, and 58,000 jobs between 2010 and 2040. This represents growth of 66% in population, 87% in households, and 66% in employment over the three decades. Because most Emerging Suburban Edge communities also have areas designated as rural, these numbers are approximations. These City of Ramsey 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update Land Use Plan Page 10 of 26