Areas of Practice Flashcards
Steps of Comprehensive Planning
Identify stakeholders
define goals
gather information and analysis
develop alternatives
select an alternative
setting a budget
establishing action steps for implementation
evaluation and amendment at regular intervals
Tribal Planning
engages tribal government leaders, residents, and businesses in preparing plans and administering planning processes in support of the tribal community. Tribal governments develop comprehensive plans, much like in cities.
The U.S. Department of Transportation supports a specific Tribal Transportation process that allows federal agencies to consult with tribes on transportation policy, regulation, and projects. And some states have developed planning guides to help support state-level support for tribal planning.
Subarea Planning
Corridor Transportation Planning - Corridor planning most typically refers to roadways, but can also apply to rail corridors, waterways, and greenways. Corridor planning can happen at the multi-national, multi-state, state, regional, or local level. Typically starts at the regional level.
National COrridor Planning - At the national level, the latest effort by the U.S. Department of Transportation is called “Integrated Corridor Management (ICM).” ICM refers to the “efficient movement of people and goods through institutional collaboration and aggressive, proactive integration of existing infrastructure along major corridors.” The main goal is for corridors to be managed as multimodal systems where operational decisions are made “for the benefit of the corridor as a whole.”
Scenic Corridor Planning - The Federal Highway Administration developed the National Scenic Byways Program in 1992. The purpose of the program is to designate and fund enhancements of scenic highways across the United States. To receive Scenic Byway Designation, a roadway must have archaeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational, and/or scenic qualities. As part of the designation process, a Corridor Management Plan must be prepared, which documents the roadway’s intrinsic qualities, identifies goals and strategies, includes an implementation timeline, and identifies responsible parties.
Neighborhood planning - Public participation is a critical part of the neighborhood planning process. The limited geographic extent of a neighborhood plan can have drawbacks, including a more limited focus, fewer resources, and often, limited political influence. On the other hand, stakeholder engagement is likely to be easier since the issues being discussed are closer to home. There is an opportunity to be more specific and detailed about future goals in the context of neighborhood-scale plans.
Neighborhood Unit
The neighborhood unit was proposed by sociologist Clarence Perry in the 1920s. Perry’s neighborhood unit—an idealized, aspirational version of neighborhood—was 160 acres (the acreage of a half-mile square, within which Perry placed a circle with a quarter-mile radius), with a density of ten units per acre and a population of 5,000.
In 1929, Clarence Perry published the Neighborhood Unit Concept as part of the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs. The Neighborhood Unit Concept defines a neighborhood based on a five-minute walking radius, with a school at its center. Each neighborhood is approximately 160 acres.
Planning Process
collecting information, identifying key issues, setting goals, coming up with alternatives, selecting alternatives, determining the implementation mechanisms, and evaluating the progress towards the implementation of the plan.
Edge City
describes a relatively new concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional urban area in what had recently been a suburb or rural community. The term was popularized in the 1991 book Edge City by Joel Garreau, who argued that edge cities were the new normal of urban growth worldwide. Garreau established five rules for a place to be considered an edge city:
It must have more than five million square feet of office space to accommodate between 20,000 to 50,000 office workers (as many as some traditional downtowns);
It must have more than 600,000 square feet of retail space, the size of a medium shopping mall. This ensures that the edge city is a center of recreation and commerce as well as office work;
It must be characterized by more jobs than bedrooms;
It must be perceived by the population as one place;
It must have been nothing like a city 30 years earlier.
Scale Maps
USGS uses 1:24,000 scale - 1 inch represents 2,000 linear feet; 12 inches (1 foot) represents 24,000 feet
smart growth
Describes planning for greater sustainability; provides a benefit to all; not just developers
The Smart Growth Network has established ten primary principles for Smart Growth.
Create a range of housing opportunities and choices;
Create walkable neighborhoods;
Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration;
Foster distinctive, attractive places with a strong sense of place;
Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost-effective;
Mix land uses;
Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas;
Provide a variety of transportation choices;
Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities;
Take advantage of compact building design.
Sustainable Development
defined as balancing the fulfillment of human needs with the protection of the natural environment to meet the needs of present and future populations. Sustainability includes environmental, social, and economic components.
Triple Bottom Line
first coined in 1994 by John Elkington. His argument was that companies should be preparing three different bottom lines: one for corporate profit, one for people, and one for the planet. These three Ps were intended to measure the financial, social, and environmental performance of a corporation over a period of time.
Carrying Capacity
Carrying capacity is a biological concept indicating the maximum population size of a species that could be sustained in perpetuity within the environment, given the availability of food, water, habitat, etc. The concept of carrying capacity is used in city planning to discuss the maximum population and employment that could be carried within a particular community. This can relate to the amount of land available for development, as well as infrastructure capacity. The term “carrying capacity” was first used in 1845 by the then U.S. Secretary of State James Buchanan. Ian McHarg wrote about the concept of carrying capacity in his book Design with Nature.
Trip distribution
examines where people are going. A region or area is often divided into traffic zones. Trip distribution information generally provides information on how many trips are made between each zone and every other zone. The trip distribution component of the planning process also provides information on trip distances, time and cost, the nature of the trip, socioeconomic characteristics, and the nature of the transportation system.
Trip Generation
deals with the number of trips that a particular site is likely to generate. Thus, it is a byproduct of land use and intensity of use, factors which “induce” people to travel. The propensity to make trips is also dependent on the characteristics of the journey, trip purpose, and socioeconomic characteristics of the person making the trip (income, age, auto ownership).
Modal split
deals with how people get to where they want to go, and the form of transportation that they use. By having information on the number of people using cars, mass transit (bus, train, etc.), bicycles, or walking, planners are able to estimate how many vehicles need to get from one place to another. Some important definitions to keep in mind include:
AADT (Average Annual Daily Traffic) is the amount of traffic on a roadway in a 24 hour period, averaged over a year;
Peak Hour Volume equals the hourly traffic during the peak period;
Seasonal Hour Volume is the peak hour volume during different seasons;
Design Hour Volume (DHV) is the capacity of the roadway to handle traffic.
Traffic assignment/trip assignment
allows us to use network models to predict the distribution of traffic for each roadway (the routes that will be used), by the hour. Peak volumes can then be compared with DHV to see which, if any, roadways are going to experience traffic over their design capacity, i.e., where the congestion is going to occur.
Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT)
a measure of vehicular mobility obtained from travel inventories. VMT is a function of many factors, including topography, population density, travel distances between home and other daily destinations (such as work, shopping, and recreation), and the availability of mass transit. Communities vary in their mix and in the significance of these factors.
High VMT indicates that more vehicles are on the road to meet growing employment, errand, and other travel demands. It can also mean that the trip origins and destinations are getting farther apart and travel times are becoming longer.
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962
created the federal mandate for urban transportation planning in the United States. It was passed at a time when urban areas were beginning to plan Interstate highway routes. The Act required that transportation projects in urbanized areas with a population of 50,000 or more be based on an urban transportation planning process. The Act called for a “continuing, comprehensive, and cooperative” (3 Cs) planning process.
MPOs were created as a result to meet federal requirements for urban transportation planning. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962 required that urbanized areas with populations of 50,000 or more develop comprehensive urban transportation plans in order to receive federal financial assistance for road construction projects.
Transportation Demand Management (TDM)
a general term used to describe strategies for the efficient use of transportation. Examples of TDM strategies include:
Car Sharing
Flextime
Guaranteed Ride Home
Public Transit
Park-and-Ride
HOV Lanes
Telecommuting
Commute Trip Reduction
Transit Oriented Developmen
complete street
a safe, accessible, and convenient street that everyone can use regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation. This means that motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit riders have sufficient infrastructure for safe access.
Energy Efficiency
Buildings are made more efficient by using insulation, which is rated in terms of thermal resistance, called R-value (the resistance to heat flow). The higher the R-value, the greater the insulation. A minimum R-value of 20 is recommended for residential use.
Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act
1988; This act constitutes the authority of the federal government, FEMA, to respond to a disaster. The Stafford Disaster Relief Act defines an Emergency as “any occasion or instance for which, in the determination of the president, Federal assistance is needed to supplement State and local efforts and capabilities to save lives and protect property and public health and safety, or lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in any part of the United States.”
The Stafford Act outlines four primary components of a state hazard mitigation plan, outlined in section of 409 of the act:
An evaluation of the natural hazard in the designated area
A description and analysis of the state and local hazard management policies, programs, and capabilities to mitigate the hazards in the area
Hazard mitigation goals and objectives and proposed strategies, programs, and actions to reduce or avoid long-term vulnerability to hazards
A method of implementing monitoring, evaluating, and updating the mitigation plan; such evaluation is to occur at least on an annual basis to ensure that implementation occurs as planned, and ensure that the plan remains current
The Stafford Act was amended in the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, which requires local governments to prepare and adopt hazard mitigation plans. The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 focuses on prevention. Before the act was signed, emergency managers’ planning usually focused on preparing for and responding to disasters. After the act passed, emergency managers began using a more proactive planning process. Leading their communities through that process resulted in FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plans. Plans are required to receive certain types of FEMA assistance.
Clean Water Act 1972
passed in 1972, with a major amendment in 1977. The official name was the Federal Water Pollution Control Act but “Clean Water Act” became the act’s common name. The act requires anyone wanting to discharge pollutants into a body of water to obtain a permit. It also regulates the amount of water that can be discharged and the types of pollutants that can be released.
Clean Air Act 1970
1970 and made major revisions in 1977 and 1990. The act includes provisions that cut off federal funding for metropolitan areas not in attainment. In non-attainment areas, new pollution sources are allowed only if there is a reduction in pollutants greater than the pollutants contributed by the source.
The Clean Air Act monitors six pollutants:
Ozone
Particulate Matter
Carbon Monoxide
Nitrogen Dioxide
Sulfur Dioxide
Lead
According to the EPA, national emissions of the six most common air pollutants have been reduced substantially since 1970.
