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Land Use Action Plan
"...so many people have expressed frustration and sadness at
witnessing the gradualtransformation of their once-distinctive communities into bland, formless,
suburban conglomerations of subdivisions and shopping centers. The challenge
is to encourage (or require) new development to complement, enhance and
build upon historic town patterns."
Randell Arendt, Rural By Design
Land Use considers the current and future use of land in the community. It is an important tool for shaping future development policy and forms the basis for zoning evaluations in the community. Click here for Land Use Action Plan Indicators and Linkages
The Land Use Action Plan can be broken down into four component parts:
While these areas are in many instances overlapping throughout the community, an effective review looks at these distinct areas and makes specific recommendations for each.
Downtown
Goals and Objectives
To download a Sustainable Downtown Plan, check out this Minnesota site.
Goals
- Prepare and enhance the character of the community by nurturing the quality of life through protection of its historic, architectural and cultural values.
- Maintain and enrich the traditional roles of the downtown area.
- Ensure the safe and pleasant movement of people, goods and services to and throughout the downtown.
Objectives
- Strengthen the economic base of the downtown.
- Encourage development of a balanced array of commercial activities, as well as offices in the downtown.
- Recommend opportunities for appropriate infill development, which are environmentally sensitive.
- Develop strategies for improving traffic movement within the downtown.
- Recommend parking strategies to fulfill parking demands.
- Preserve the boundaries between the traditional core and adjacent residential neighborhoods.
- Encourage compatible residential development where appropriate.
- Recognize historic resources and sites as valuable physical components of the heritage that contributes to the historic character of the downtown.
- Use urban design and architectural guidelines for determining the location, form and appearance of future development.
- Provide public facilities and services that meet the ongoing needs of private and public land users.
Recommendations for Action Planning
- Prepare land use recommendations.
- Determine parking needs and facility locations.
- Provide transportation recommendations.
- Develop urban design standards and recommendations.
- Propose streetscape recommendations.
- Develop economic development and financing strategies.
- Propose recommendations for reuse of buildings.
- Develop regulations to allow mixed uses in the downtown.
- Consider converting brownfields into productive sites.
- Encourage infill development and redevelopment.
- Encourage historic preservation initiatives.
- Establish urban design guidance including architectural guidelines.
- Provide for parking, streets, and pedestrian systems.
- Provide streetscape designs.
Residential Areas
Goals and Objectives
Goals
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Develop residential areas that are environmentally sensitive, pedestrian friendly and encourage a mix of compatible uses.
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Protect, and where necessary, improve the quality of life in all residential areas.
Objectives
- Stress the need to maintain the quality of existing and residential neighborhoods.
- Encourage the demolition of vacant, dilapidated houses.
- Encourage the removal of incompatible, illegal, and nonconforming uses within residential areas.
- Apply development criteria which maintain the quality and character of future residential areas.
- Minimize undesirable social and physical impacts on residential areas resulting from new construction or improvements of transportation facilities.
- Provide for an effective transition between residential uses and adjoining nonresidential uses through the imaginative use of urban design and the development of effective buffering techniques and standards.
- Recommend public facilities and services that are responsive to the specific needs generated by the residents of each residential area.
- Provide compact, mixed use, pedestrian friendly communities.
Recommendations for Action Planning
- Recognize the special environmental, historic and cultural character of residential areas.
- Provide recommendations on residential area densities.
- Complete the circulation network in a manner that diverts through traffic from local streets and provides adequate buffering of major traffic from residential development.
- Complete a pedestrian circulation system that encourages walking and biking.
- Apply standards which minimize various forms of noise, water, and air pollution.
- Encourage the design of land uses so that adequate preventative stormwater management measures are applied concurrent with development.
- Develop subdivision and land development regulations that allow design innovation.
- Encourage historic preservation initiatives.
- Maintain the character of existing residential areas.
- Utilize open space development which clusters housing and preserves open space.
- Orient residential areas to adequate, appropriate community facilities.
- Develop residential areas in conjunction with scheduled public facility improvements.
- Provide a range of housing to meet the needs of different household ages, sizes and income levels.
- Design residential areas to minimize vehicular through traffic.
- Link residential areas to community facilities, transportation facilities, employment areas and other living areas by a continuous system of pedestrian walkways.
- Buffering in the form of landscaping, open space, attractive fencing, and/or other creative site planning techniques should be utilized to protect residential areas from commercial, industrial and other incompatible uses.
- Prohibit housing in unsafe areas such as wetlands, floodplains, and unstable soils.
Industrial/Commercial Areas
Goals and Objectives
Goals
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To create more diversity in job opportunities and enhance the economic base of the community.
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Encourage and attract sustainable businesses.
Objectives
- Increase employment opportunities for community residents by encouraging new and high quality retail, office and industrial development in appropriate locations.
- Encourage an employment base within the community.
- Maintain existing employment areas where appropriate, while avoiding their extension into areas inappropriate for such uses.
- Identify specific employment area assets and liabilities which affect the image of the community.
- Limit industrial activities to sites which produce minimal adverse effects on adjacent land uses and traffic circulation.
- Locate employment centers in areas that minimize land use incompatibilities and minimize the impact on public facilities.
- Discourage creation of additional small, scattered industrial sites.
Recommendations for Action Planning
- Identify existing and future locations for industrial/commercial development.
- Consider future transportation improvements and sewer and water expansion and improvements.
- Utilize infill development and redevelopment where possible.
- Identify and promote utilization of brownfield sites.
- Discourage the use of greenfield sites; consider them for preservation as open space.
- Protect existing and proposed employment areas from encroachment by other permanent land uses.
- Employment area proposals should include an analysis of anticipated internal circulation, as well as any potential impact of the development on the local and regional transportation system.
- Employment activities that will generate substantial vehicular traffic should be located and designed as to minimize disruptive effects on traffic circulation and adjacent land uses.
- Encourage on-site separation of employment area traffic (automobile parking and truck loading and standing areas).
- Access roads to employment areas should border or pass around, not through, residential neighborhoods.
- Separate employment areas from living areas by the use of appropriate buffering, designed and placed to minimize sight, sound, and dust.
- Encourage industrial land developers to preserve natural amenities and to incorporate natural features and environmentally beneficial landscaping into their development proposals.
Agricultural Areas
Goals and Objectives
Goal
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Protect prime agricultural soils from development.
Objectives
- Preserve the lifestyles of rural communities.
- Minimize land use conflicts in agricultural areas.
- Protect farmland so there is a sufficient market for agricultural support services.
Recommendations for Action Planning
- Tax farmland on the basis of its value for the production of agricultural products, not on its fair market value.
- Target agricultural production and marketing to large nearby metropolitan markets.
- Propose comprehensive planning and growth management programs in rural areas under developmental pressure.
- Encourage donations of farmland easements to land trusts and government agencies.
- Adopt agricultural protection zoning.
- Discourage division of agricultural trusts into parcels that are smaller than a typical core farm.
- Establish setback requirements on adjacent residentially zoned land to avoid conflicts between residences and agricultural activities.
- Map prime agricultural soils.
- Investigate the use of transfer of development rights for farmland preservation.
There are a number of sources of information specifically for rural communities, including:
Revitalizing Rural America - Rural
Information Center which provides information and referral services.
The W.K. Kellogg Collection
of Rural Community Development Resources. This site contains an annotated
bibliography of the collection with information on how to obtain each
publication.
Smart Communities Network Rural Issues website has a range of tools and case studies.
The Northeast Regional Center
for Rural Development, out of Penn State University, is one of four
regional development centers in the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation
Reserve Program is a voluntary partnership between individuals and
government to safeguard American topsoil from erosion, increasing wildlife
habitat and protecting ground and surface waters.
EPA's Office of Policy and Reinvention has a limited number of copies of the Defenders of Wildlife publication, "National Stewardship Incentives: Conservation Strategies for US Landowners" available free of charge. Contact Dr. Gerald Filbin at filbin.gerald@epamail.epa.gov.
Click here for Land Use Action Plan Indicators and Linkages