Title: 10 Keys to Making A Great City Plan - Blogs | Planetizen
Headings: 10 Keys to Making A Great City Plan
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10 Keys to Making A Great City Plan
10 Keys to a Great Plan
1) Create a plan for TOMORROW, not yesterday or today. Keep the conversation on "where the puck is GOING to be."
2) Plan for OUTCOMES, rather than time-frames.
3) Speak and write HUMAN. Don't be boring!
4) Know WHAT in your plan is a consolidation, a tweak, and a rethink.
5) Don't make readers play "where's Waldo" with your plan's BIG IDEAS. Put them up-front—better yet, design your plan around them!
6) Have the confidence to design your plan with both FLEXIBILITY and CLARITY, and the wisdom and experience to know when to prioritize each.
7) Emphasize FOLLOW-THROUGH in every step, policy and decision.
8) Don't be shy to put the cities needs and tough choices up-front. Do the math!
9) Be BOLD, and don't be afraid to risk "competent failure." Empower your team to be clever, creative, and fast!
10) Realize the CATALYTIC power of a plan. Every plan can be a game-changer!
Brent Toderian
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Content: Those numbers aren't a target, mind you—just a projection. I myself have done that many times, but I'm no longer a fan of doing it. In recent plans I've worked on, including AbbotsForward, we've made the key decision to plan for a city at a specific population level—in other words, for an outcome—regardless of how long it takes to reach that population. It might be 10 or 15 years, or it might be 25 or 30 years. That population outcome won't be the end of growth, to be clear—just the basis for the current plan and its policies (and of course, the plan must telegraph further growth beyond that outcome, since growth doesn't just stop at that number). The important thing isn't the speed of growth, but the nature of growth. It's based in part on the realization that planning has a lot more control over the "what" than the "when." Frankly, the one thing we know about population projections, which tend to project past trends forward assumming the future will be the same as the past, is that they will be wrong—by how much and in which direction tend to be the only surprises. Source: City of Abbotsford "AbbotsForward" Plan Process.