Tiny Primer on Land Use Planning

The idea behind land use planning is making sure that in the future, your community can accommodate adequate quantities and varieties of location opportunities for important land development and open space. Commonly communities undertake this venture as a major part of a comprehensive plan, master plan, or general plan. In most states, this type of planning is a legal and good practice prerequisite to zoning.

Typically state laws assign this duty to a planning commission, sometimes called a planning and zoning commission. Usually they delegate the actual research and writing to a consultant or staff, but in some cases, especially in smaller towns, you'll find the commission itself burning the midnight oil toiling away on a map.

Probably in the long run it's more politically defensible as well. And it gives future decision making bodies some ammunition if they want to act contrary to public opinion in denying or affirming a particular land development proposal. This document doesn't have to be the length of a Ph.D. dissertation; a few pages may record your thought process.

Whether you're preparing a land use plan for the first time or updating an old one, the principles of land use planning are similar. In an update process, consider the evolution of ideas and techniques since your last plan was formulated, and look for opportunities to specify that mixed-use development, for example, could be appropriate in particular locations. Bear in mind that you need not work out the details of what the mix of uses would be or how they would be regulated; you would be merely identifying potential locations.

However, I suspect that in many communities, you'll have to spell out exactly what mix you have in mind and where, if you propose to introduce the mixing of land uses where most parcels have been developed.

A second general caution for future land use planning involves managing the community's expectations. Try to make clear in every venue and on every occasion that you can that the future land use plan will not specify all of the detailed requirements or qualifications that might be placed on a future land development. You are simply drawing up a general scheme of things.

So a good land use planning activity involves the community in a discussion of land use policy. Then an inventory of existing land uses should be prepared, and if you are a free-standing community, a projection of population for some future interval or intervals should be made using professionally acceptable methods.

In suburbs or in land-locked central cities, you have only so much undeveloped land to deal with, and your policy questions will revolve around whether you want to increase your population, and if so, where.

If you're in an inner city with too much vacant land, then you may decide you want to be as flexible as possible in the future land use planning. That policy wish can be advanced in a wise planning method by designating a fair amount of your desired infill as mixed-use development. Alternatively, you may specify options that will be acceptable as long as an entire block face is developed the same way. For example, a particular block could be all residential or all neighborhood commercial. If your explanatory text is persuasive, this should stand up to scrutiny.

The Traditional Land Use Planning Method for Small, Stand-Alone Cities and Towns

Traditionally, the amount of land you need for each land use category was determined by making a projection about your future population, determining the amount of land used for each category currently, and then projecting future land use needs. This only works if you think your economy will stay about the same in composition, and you have agricultural land that is free to be developed surrounding your borders if you think your population will grow. But that applies to some of you, so here it is.

Population projections actually can be done by amateurs nearly as well as professionals. It even can be explained in one paragraph. Look at the population trend for perhaps the last 50 years, at 10-year intervals or whatever you have. If you have annual estimates, also look in detail at what has been happening in the last 10 to 20 years. You can use your algebra (O.K., your computer) to make a straight line projection of what will happen in the next 20 years, or whatever your planning interval might be, based on the past 20 years, or a different interval if you have reason to think that 20 years would misrepresent the trend. Then adjust the results up or down based on known future developments, such as the withdrawal of a major employer.

Determine the current acreage or square miles used for each type of land use you're studying. Then divide by the current population to determine the acreage needed per person for each type of land use. Lastly, multiply this decimal by your population projection.

Then adjust again for likely or known future events. Is a major plant leaving town? Then it's silly to project a need for additional industrial land; you will have a surplus. Is your economy rapidly changing because the state made you the intersection of two major highways, so now you're a warehouse center? Well, maybe you need less land for factories and more near the transportation hub for a warehouse district.

A Few Notes on How to Do the Plan

Yes, you can do it yourself, but no, you really shouldn't, if you can afford staff or a consultant. If you can't afford either, maybe you can find an urban or regional planning graduate student for a summer internship. Or maybe a law student who's interested in land use law.

If you're close to a metropolitan area but your local or county government doesn't have much map-making capability, there may be a soil and water conservation district, extension office, resource and conservation district, university, or other resource to help you with mapping. Most map-making occurs now by computer, using what is called GIS (geographic information systems). The GIS system not only makes maps, it makes layers on the maps, which can be shown or not shown when you print out a particular map. It also attaches the points on the map to a database, which can be quite elaborate and contain property ownership information.

The computerized nature of a GIS system will come in handy during future land use planning because it enables you to try out many more options than just a generation ago when maps had to be made by hand.

If you hire a land use planning consultant, be very careful about accepting what is recommended without asking enough questions. It's your complete right to understand what steps were taken, who was interviewed, what data were collected, how data were analyzed, what assumptions were made, and generally why each land use designation that would change future land use was selected.

It's the job of consultants to help their firm make money, and if you think they're doing your land use plan because they love you so much, think again. At some point if you ask too many questions, change your mind too many times, and want too much information collected and analyzed, they're going to back off and not perform. So it's important to give considerable attention to what they propose as their Scope of Services. Then be a good client and don't make them attend more meetings than they are contracted to attend, and so forth. Think before you sign.

Land Use Categories

A sidebar here needs to be what categories to use in your land use planning. You need to call out residential. Probably your community expects single-family detached housing to be separated from single-family attached, multi-family, and perhaps other housing types common in your community, which could be anything from two-family, four-family to live/work units. Common ground should be classified with the housing it's attached to, if possible. But don't make your categories more intricate than you can research!

Then you need commercial, and many communities will divide that into retail, office, wholesale, and other. Some cities will map automotive, big box, and so forth. If you have industry, the traditional categories are light industry and heavy industry, but perhaps more workable will be light industry, storage and warehousing, research facilities, and so forth.

An institutional category should be divided as appropriate into educational (sometimes as intricate as early childhood, K-12, higher education, and vocational education), and then hospitals and medical facilities. You'll have a government category. Then there's open space (usually demarcated separately from vacant land). Open space typically is conservation land. Sometimes parks are included in the open space and sometimes in government.

A mixed-use category, transportation facilities, cultural and museums, and recreation facilities sometimes are displayed as discrete categories.

Principles of Land Use Planning

Policies should emphasize determining future land use, emphasizing any changes, of course, according to these principles:

1. The physical characteristics of the land, including slope, soil types, rare geological or environmental characteristics, floodplains, wetlands, and hurricane zones. If you are forced into a linear configuration, such as a beach community between the ocean and adjacent jurisdictions, or a valley community between mountain ranges, you will of necessity have more than one business center to prevent people constantly having to drive from one end of a corridor to another, for example.

2. The capacity and characteristics of the transportation system, including bridges. Heavy traffic generators should be placed on the larger capacity streets. Major shopping and other traffic generating uses should be placed at major intersections so there is access from two streets.

3. Recognizing the existing downtown and any other major shopping or activity centers, and then planning to allow auxiliary services to group near them. Generally more dense and intense land uses should be closest to the activity centers. In the event that your downtown is too large, the land use planning update is an opportunity to right-size it by planning for future multi-family housing or mixed-use development.

4. The density of the housing allowed also should relate to the capacity of the transportation system and physical characteristics of the land.

5. Gradualism is good. Don't place your heaviest industry by your largest lot single-family detached homes. Residential should give way to neighborhood-scale retail, then to more intense retail and light industry.

6. Change ideal future land uses when there's a reason as you progress across the map. If there's a sea of existing and future residential together when you see the color-coded maps, you may want to think of neighborhood-scale commercial where there's some vacant land at an intersection.

7. Mixed-use development is quite worthwhile, but should be allowed a large enough quantity of space to make it feasible.

8. Transit-oriented development in general should be mixed-use development, although of course there are exceptions. But do allow for intense future land use around future or current transit stations.

9. Keep in mind that some industry still uses heavy rail, so of course provide some access if you intend to attract those types of industries.

10. Remember that you're trying to bring everything to appropriate scale. In some cases, that means prohibiting any further development of a particular type, and in other cases, that will mean aggressively mapping for additions to current land uses that you have in small quantities.

11. In general, try to create districts approaching a square, as opposed to long oblongs. For instance, rather than strip development along a highway, create a wholesaling district. Of course for retail and entertainment districts, try not to make them linear. Streams and bikeways should be linear, but shopping needs plazas, benches, and fountains in the middle, don’t you think?

12. In all cases, document in words why you're making the mapping decisions that you're making.

13. If you are part of a metropolitan area, even a mostly agricultural part of a Census-designed metropolitan area, pay close attention to what is happening in the metro area. Is population growing? Are jobs growing? Are property values increasing? Is the population composition changing in any way, due to immigration, aging in place, or lack of in-migration of people from other cities? Are major employers leaving or arriving? Is your airport expanding or contracting? What about military bases? These should give you some important clues about future land use.

14. If you have active agricultural land uses in your community, consider their value to future generations. Consider their value to you in case of national emergency threatening the integrity of the food supply. And think of their value as open space. However, if your policy is to convert agricultural land use to residential and other urbanized land uses, make sure that population increases in your metropolitan area justify this conversion. Otherwise, don't plan conversion to urban uses. If you think the land is more appropriate as conservation land because it is poorly producing ag land, that's reasonable too.

15. If you are at the edge of a metropolitan area, or if you are planning for a town or small city that encompasses most of the urbanized land development within your boundaries, consider establishing an open space buffer or greenbelt at the periphery of your town to help control sprawl. You'll send the signal that this marks the end of the urban development, and future expansions should fit within that boundary.

16. In most cases give private developers some choices. If you map only one parcel of undeveloped land in your entire community for commercial development, that pretty much closes the case if that parcel is not for sale. Expect an uproar or a lawsuit. Obviously, in some cases outlined above, you might win, but really do your homework when you want to limit future development of a particular land use sharply.

Morphing from Land Use Planning to Neighborhood Character Planning

In a community that is mostly fully built, your future land use planning can concentrate on laying out a few infill principles that would be applicable to your few vacant tracts. If you have just one or two vacant tracts of any size, give those considerable deliberation, as they could influence the neighborhood character in their area for the better or worse.

Even in communities that have a consider amount of land available for development, you may want to say in your land use plan or plan update that you should consider the form-based codes discussed on our zoning regulations principles page.

Especially if the value of land is high in your community, and every development requires a high degree of discretionary scrutiny, you may want to put most of your emphasis on thinking and writing about the neighborhood character goals rather than traditional land use goals.

New Ideals in Land Use Planning: From Segregation to Mixed-Use and Transit-Oriented

Older materials on land use planning emphasize segregation of land uses, and many citizens still think that is the principle. Some of your planning commissioners and elected officials may think so too. And separations of land uses do have their place.

However, a newer emphasis is on the performance of any particular type of land use, and retail commercial establishments under a specified square footage can be easily incorporated into keeping the spirit of a residential neighborhood. Keep the neighborhood retail at the end of a block or end of a vista. The same principle applies to smaller governmental and institutional uses.

Be sure to accommodate also the fact that mixed-use development may be vertical, i.e., within the same building. On the land use planning level, simply mark certain tracts as appropriate for mixed-use, but generally don't set it up so that is the only future land use permitted unless you're really sure this is the public policy you want to promote.

Particularly next to the transit station, make sure that your future land use category is extremely versatile.

Making Density Acceptable

If I knew the answer as to how to make people accept more density near their homes, I'd be wealthy and retired.

But I do know that as difficult as it is politically, you need to think about the density you need to make your transportation system efficient, to make walkable communities, to make expensive land yield enough profit that the development community will pay attention to you, and to avoid development in environmentally sensitive lands that might be adjacent to or within your boundaries.

Stop and do the extensive public education that it will require to make the reasons behind your wish for density acceptable. Bring in experts (or their books or website) to explain the benefits of compactness to your community and the metro area, if any. Address directly the fear of property value loss. Calculate and explain in detail the fiscal benefits of density. If necessary, hire an architect to produce really great-looking renderings of the aesthetic possibilities under the density under consideration.

Sometimes elected officials fear that calling for a higher density will drive the development community away. If so, educate them about the mood of land developers today. Point out the publications and conversation at the Urban Land Institute, which is basically an organization of developers serving developers.

But do be courageous.

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