Traditional Comprehensive Approach:
A Traditional Comprehensive Plan sets a specific course of action that, if followed, will bring you to a desired destination. That is all well and good, but when it comes to your challenges and possibilities, it’s not grounded in reality. The Traditional Comprehensive Plan approach results in Plans that are not implemented. The Traditional Comprehensive Plan is not dynamic or fluid and participants are often left uninterested at the end.
Undesirable Traditional Plan Outcomes
- The reality is that market, political, and other forces are unpredictable and are constantly changing and a static document cannot adjust to these changes.
- Implementation “To do” lists do not help you make good decisions that reflect your values, principles, and priorities.
- Plans fail to go deep to determine what is really going on, or it’s lost in a technical report that no one reads.
- Steering Committees have been relegated to read and respond and not inspire and take action
Implementable Comprehensive Plan Approach:
The Implementable Comprehensive Plan sets itself apart from a traditional comprehensive plan by the process it takes to develop the plan and the areas the community wishes to pursue. While the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code provides a backdrop of the plan requirements, the community drives the content.
Desirable Implementable Plan Outcomes
- The plan focuses on several specific items that community members identify as relevant and spend time focusing on enhancing assets or improving deficiencies.
- During the process of building the plan, the community builds implementation capacity and partnership recruitment.
- Community members acquire plan ownership by actively making decisions and preparing plan content.
- The plan includes the right mix of information to support the specific items the community is focusing on but not overwhelms the reader.