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Envisioning the Region

P A R T V

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327

Creating a Regional

Vision for Regional

Planning

Gerrit-Jan Knaap

c h a p t e r 3 2

Reality Check is an approach to crafting a shared vision for how a region should manage future growth in population and jobs. My collaborators and I have devel- oped and applied this approach in Maryland, and similar efforts are taking place in other places around the country. Reality Check provides an effective model for reaching shared visions for future growth that can guide policy, motivate public support, and thus help shape landscape change to achieve critical social and environmental values.

Reality Check Plus was a statewide effort to raise awareness and initiate critical thinking about the level, pace, and distribution of growth in jobs and housing coming to Maryland over the ensuing twenty-five years. The word “Plus” was added to the title to convey the intention of organizers to go beyond the visioning exercise to a stage in which the development pattern in the state and the policies that govern it would actually be improved. Organizers also used the project to encourage both the public and elected officials to think regionally or even on a statewide basis about how best to accommodate this new growth. This process was carried out through visioning exercises held in 2006 in each of four regions of the state: the Eastern Shore and southern, central, and western Maryland. More than 850 political, business, environmental, real estate, and civic leaders participated in these exercises. The exercise is, in a sense, extremely simple—participants decide where they would like to see new jobs and housing go by placing representative plastic blocks on a table-top map—but the exercise at once captures key values that should drive detailed planning for growth, a regional point of view that integrates economic, social, and environmental values, and a recognition that the single most powerful tool government has in land use planning is the ability to direct where new development and conservation are placed on the landscape.

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Intentionally designed as a nongovernmental initiative, Reality Check Plus had no government funds or control but was carried out by private organizations and funded by charitable foundations and private businesses. It was not intended to produce a state plan or detailed development and conservation map, but instead to create a statewide set of guiding principles and indicators for how Maryland’s citizens believe new growth should occur. The process also began the task of figur- ing out how to implement these principles and development directives—a plan created by laymen that would look very different from today’s patterns of growth in the state.

The planning exercises described here were not aimed at replacing detailed professional planning and normal political processes at the state and local levels. They were instead aimed at building a consensus and constituency to do that plan- ning well, based on truly regional thinking, and to move those political processes forward to positive, sustainable outcomes. In this sense, Reality Check Plus and similar efforts elsewhere are a beginning and a motivator for, not an alternative to, sound government planning.

The initiative was led by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, the Baltimore District Council of the Urban Land Institute, and 1,000 Friends of Maryland. The largest individual fun- ders were the Home Builders Association of Maryland and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, although the largest percentage of the initiative’s budget was raised through a variety of contributions from nonprofit foundations. The initiative was organized by a statewide leadership committee and four regional committees for the Eastern Shore and central, southern, and western Maryland.

The motivation for developing Reality Check Plus was a recognition that Maryland is already one of the nation’s most densely populated states and is expected to continue growing at a rapid pace. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that Maryland will grow from its 2000 population of about 5.5 million to 7.0 million by 2030—more than half a million more people than the state itself projects over that period. In these circumstances, Maryland is faced with some critical, urgent questions:

• Where will these new residents—and the millions more to follow them in subsequent years—live and work?

• What will be the cumulative effect of such an increase in population and development on the state’s transportation network, housing costs, taxes, and the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries?

• What, ultimately, will be the effect on the quality of life for all Marylanders?

Regional Planning Exercises

The regional sessions brought invited participants together for a briefing session on trends in each region, then an extended exercise in planning for growth within the region. The regional committees spent a great deal of effort on their invitation

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lists, as the balance of those invited to participate in this exercise is critical to the project’s credibility. Regional committees took great pains to include a representa- tive sample of the region’s economic, political, geographic, and ethnic diversity. Farmers, business owners, developers, environmental activists, community lead- ers, and local, county, and state government officials were all represented. While elected officials and other government employees took no part in organizing Reality Check Plus, together they made up nearly one-third of the invited partici- pants. In the afternoon of each session, results from each table at the morning exer- cise were presented, and the meeting was opened to the general public for a review and discussion of the morning’s actions.

The heart of Reality Check Plus is the planning exercise in which participants collectively planned where to place the growth anticipated for their region through 2030. For this process, the forecast growth in jobs and housing was taken as a given with which they, as representatives of their own and the public interest, must deal.

At each regional session, participants were divided into groups of eight to ten people representative of the various interests and points of view at the session. Each group worked at a table on which a large, detailed map of the region was spread. The maps used colors to represent existing population and employment density and included major roads and transit lines, parklands, rivers and water bodies, floodplains, major public facilities, and other key infrastructure. To encourage regional thinking and discourage parochialism, the maps did not include political boundaries of counties and municipalities. Each table had a facilitator and a com- puter operator/scribe.

Participants first were asked to reach consensus on a set of general principles to guide their decisions about where on the map to place expected growth—using ideas such as protecting open space and natural resources, making efficient use of existing infrastructure, and balancing jobs and housing. Once they had created a set of guiding principles, participants were given Lego blocks of four different col- ors, each color representing jobs, higher priced housing (the top 80 percent), lower priced housing (the bottom 20 percent), and low density housing (exchangeable for the other housing pieces on a ratio of 4:1). Each group was given a number of pieces in each color representing the anticipated amount of jobs and housing cur- rently projected for the region through 2030. The maps were overlaid with a grid, with each square the size of a Lego piece and representing about 1 square mile (depending on the scale of each region’s map). Participants planned where to put growth by stacking pieces on each square. Stacking all jobs or housing pieces on a block produced single-use neighborhoods; stacking mixed pieces produced mixed use districts. Participants were required to use all of their blocks. They could not put them in another region, a neighboring state, or their pockets!

After they had placed their Lego pieces to their satisfaction, the members of each group discussed a series of questions:

• How does the group feel about the amount of growth projected for the region?

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• Given that some level of growth is inevitable, • What policies do you think state and local governments should adopt in

order to accommodate the additional growth, yet maintain the region’s quality of life?

• What are the implementation tools required to achieve the envisioned growth pattern and maintain or improve quality of life?

• Based on your knowledge of the region, what infrastructure improvements would be required to achieve the envisioned growth pattern?

National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education staff and graduate assis- tants collected and analyzed the guiding principles, Lego distribution decisions, and responses to the post-planning questions from each group in order to report to all the participants and the public during the afternoon portion of each program.

Using the average allocation of jobs and housing from all the groups, staff pro- duced a composite regional map for every table at each session and later produced a composite map for the state as a whole. After the exercises were over, the center also analyzed the Reality Check plans by comparing them against current forecasts of growth distribution by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, and a statewide build-out scenario based on current zoning. Organizers also compared the participants’ job and housing distributions with existing distribution within Maryland’s current priority funding area boundaries, inside the Baltimore and Washington beltways, and near existing transit stations. Finally, the center estimated the amount of new impervious surface, the increase in lane miles of highways and roads, the impacts on the state’s green infrastructure, and the degree to which participants mixed or segregated higher and lower priced housing.

Outcomes of the Regional Planning Exercises

It is impossible to capture all of the ideas, dialogue, and learning that take place at events such as the Reality Check visioning sessions. Nevertheless, the discussions gave rise to a number of important consensus principles for guiding future growth:

• Adopt stronger measures to protect farms, forests, and environmentally sensitive areas.

• Concentrate new development in existing communities or designated growth areas.

• Give priority to new development where infrastructure already exists. • Provide more housing for families of modest incomes. • Locate housing and jobs closer together. • Preserve the rural and/or historic character of Maryland’s small towns. • Provide more transit services in all four regions of the state. • Encourage greater regional cooperation.

While these principles may now seem obvious to many, it is valuable to enable leaders across a region and across a range of interests and societal roles to generate

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such principles through their own dialogue. In doing so, the process builds gen- uine commitment among diverse constituencies for shaping public policies to achieve these principles.

Several indicators showed that the participants wanted development to occur in ways that are different from current trends and policies. Participants placed a higher percentage of new growth inside Maryland’s designated growth areas (the priority funding areas) than is the case today, and a far higher percentage than zon- ing currently allows. By the same token, participants provided greater protection for the state’s green infrastructure land—the ecologically significant lands outside designated growth areas—than current patterns and zoning. Central Maryland participants placed enough growth inside the Baltimore and Washington beltways to keep the percentage of houses and jobs in those areas about the same as they are today, even with all the anticipated population growth for the state.

Participants favored denser development than typical current patterns and zoning allow—regimes that have often led to significant low-density sprawl. Even in the traditionally conservative and home-rule-oriented Eastern Shore, participants suggested the use of urban growth boundaries and state-sponsored management to preserve the rural hinterlands. The Central Maryland participants also placed more jobs and considerably more housing closer to transit stations than is forecast today.

Of course, not all participants were of one mind. In the Western Maryland ses- sion, for example, different perspectives appeared to reflect the amount of new growth each area had already seen: participants from high growth areas, such as Frederick, more strongly favored growth controls, while those from areas that were still very rural, such as Allegany County, were often more concerned about gener- ating new employment and improved infrastructure.

All four regions showed a fairly strong preference for locating housing for people of different income levels in the same places. All in all, the visions developed through Reality Check Plus would produce substantially less new impervious sur- face than permitted under current zoning.

Implementation

Reality Check Plus participants discussed the challenge of implementing their vision for Maryland’s future, and a consensus arose around several basic strategies:

• Increase the education of public and elected officials on growth and related issues.

• New infrastructure must be coordinated with new growth and supported financially by the state.

• Efforts to protect the environment and other resources should be strengthened.

• Zoning and planning should be modified to permit improved development patterns.

• More transit and transportation options should be provided.

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• Economic development incentives should be increased to support growth where it is wanted.

• Regional and intergovernmental cooperation should be increased.

Scenario Development

The National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland is assuming primary responsibility for research projects associated with the development of future growth scenarios and policy recommendations. The center, working with the Maryland Department of Planning and Department of Transportation, is in the process of developing and analyzing alternative statewide development scenarios. These scenarios will be based on plausible stories about how various driving forces could affect development patterns in the state in the decades to come, but in ways that suggest decidedly different spatial distribu- tion. Once those scenarios are developed, researchers will then compare their effects on such indicators as the creation of vehicle miles traveled, effects on water- sheds, consumption of energy, or encroachment into environmentally sensitive areas.

Also with assistance from the Maryland Department of Planning and support from the Abell Foundation and the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the center is developing a Maryland Smart Growth Indicators Program that will offer periodic performance measures of land development, housing, and environmental trends. The center is also leading a multiorganizational effort to evaluate the efficacy of land use pro- grams in five states that have established programs that are nationally prominent: Maryland, Oregon, New Jersey, Florida, and California.

Smart Growth @ 10

With the assistance of several organizations, the center hosted a conference in October 2007 titled “Smart Growth @ 10,” timed to provide an update on the ten-year anniversary of the passage of Maryland’s Smart Growth legislation. The center commissioned twenty-six papers from academic researchers and practition- ers for this conference, which was held in Annapolis and College Park, Maryland.

The Urban Land Institute’s Baltimore District Council, one of the original cosponsors of the Reality Check Plus effort, is providing educational programs related to growth issues in Maryland. The other partner, the statewide citizens’ coalition 1,000 Friends of Maryland, is advocating change in policy at both the state and local levels. The National Center for Smart Growth and 1,000 Friends have also formed a new coalition, called PLUS (Partnership for Land Use Success) that includes the Baltimore Urban League, the Citizen Planning and Housing Association, the Maryland Municipal League, and the Home Builders Association of Maryland. The goal of this group is to try to harness their disparate views on land use issues into constructive consensus whenever possible.

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333

Visioning

Sacramento

Mike McKeever

c h a p t e r 3 3

For the past decade, the Sacramento region has been deeply invested in the devel- opment, adoption, and implementation of integrated land use, transportation, and air quality planning. The effort is led by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for six counties (Sacramento, Yolo, Sutter, Yuba, Placer, and El Dorado), and the twenty- two cities within them. For measure, the Sacramento region had a population of 1,850,432 in 1999. By 2007, the population of this fast-growing region had increased more than 12 percent, to 2,268,620.

Since 1999 the SACOG board has adopted four major plans: the 1999 Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP), the 2002 MTP, the Blueprint long-range growth strategy (adopted in 2004), and the 2008 MTP. This case study examines the evolving technical, planning, process, and political aspects of each plan.

1999 Metropolitan Transportation Plan: The Last of the Old-School Plans

As the MPO for the region, SACOG is required to regularly update its MTP in a manner that is consistent with federal and state requirements, including the Federal Clean Air Act. Since 1974 portions of the SACOG region have not been able to attain the standards of the Clean Air Act, requiring that each MTP meet con- formity requirements to ensure that the region is making adequate progress toward meeting the clean air standards.

Like many regional agencies around the country, SACOG produced its 1999 MTP largely by combining the individual transportation plans of its member cities, counties, and various transit districts into what then qualified as the regional plan. While this approach had a certain perceived benefit to member agencies and partners, it did not optimize the regional travel performance of the transportation system or the air emissions.

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The underlying projected land use pattern for the 1999 plan was worked out by SACOG staff with senior planning staff of the local governments, based on their existing general plans, codes, and development trends. There was no regional analysis or proactive behavior on SACOG’s part, such as explaining how the trend in development patterns might damage or benefit regional travel patterns and air emissions. SACOG did not have parcel-level geographic information system (GIS) data for most of its region, so it was unable to analyze land use trends in a detailed manner. SACOG’s regional travel model, SACMET, was a traditional four-step travel model with households and employment aggregated to travel analysis zones as the basic unit of analysis. Citizen and stakeholder involvement was limited to one town hall meeting in each county, making requested presentations, consulting with a standing SACOG committee of primarily senior public works staff from local governments, and a public hearing.

The plan was unanimously adopted by the SACOG board of directors; however, its projected performance in terms of congestion, vehicle miles traveled, and non–auto mode share was modest to disappointing. Soon after the plan was adopted the veteran SACOG executive director retired and a new executive direc- tor was hired. He was greeted with a lawsuit against the MTP filed by a Sacramento environmental organization. The group opposed several road capacity projects in the plan and challenged technical and process details of the air quality conformity finding. The suit was settled in SACOG’s favor, with a commitment to a more extensive public review process for the air quality conformity finding in the next MTP cycle.

2002 Metropolitan Transportation Plan: The First Step Forward

The SACOG board appointed a fifty-five-person transportation roundtable to oversee development of the 2002 MTP. The roundtable was broadly representative of the diverse interests in the SACOG region, from business and development interests to activists for environmental, housing, and social justice issues, as well as civic organizations and academia. Notably absent from the roundtable were senior public works staff from the cities and counties, and only one transit operator rep- resented the thirteen transit operators in the region. These people were apprised of progress through other standing SACOG committees, but they clearly were not the focal point for input. The board appointed one of its members, the mayor of West Sacramento, to be its liaison to the roundtable. The mayor’s leadership is a thread through this story: he chaired the roundtable, then chaired the board during adop- tion of the Blueprint in 2004 and chaired its Transportation Committee to develop the new MTP in 2008 that was based on the Blueprint.

Over a two-year professionally facilitated process, the members of the round- table developed decision-making ground rules. To capture the broad range of ideas and opinions, the roundtable designed a range of transportation scenarios and asked SACOG to model the impacts of each, including one scenario that invested

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all of the available funds into road capacity enhancements, and one scenario that instead invested all of the funds into improvements to transit, walking, and bicy- cling systems. SACOG’s technical capabilities had improved since the 1999 MTP. A regional GIS network was forming with cooperative working groups of the cities, counties, electric utility, fire services, and others in the region. After scenarios were created and modeled that emphasized road investments versus transit, walking, and biking investments, the group concluded that a balanced investment portfolio for all modes worked best.

Early in the roundtable’s work, some SACOG board members, led by a veteran Sacramento County supervisor familiar with the Envision Utah scenario planning exercise, advocated for a scenario to be developed that emphasized what were coming to be known as smart growth principles (e.g., mixing land uses, growing more compactly, and using pedestrian and transit-oriented design principles). Environmental members of the roundtable were supportive. SACOG’s senior staff, supportive in concept, believed that to address land use in a technically and politi- cally effective way would require a greater effort than was possible in the final stages of the 2002 MTP cycle. It is interesting to note that, over a decade earlier, SACOG staff analyzed the travel benefits of a more compact future regional land use pattern. At the time, the board felt that land use was not an issue with which they wanted SACOG involved. The study’s findings were, however, cited ten years later by some board members who were advocating for investigating land use. The board agreed with the slower approach recommended by the staff and asked the executive director to pursue funds to conduct a comprehensive land use study to inform the next major MTP update.

The 2002 MTP was unanimously adopted by the SACOG board, and although the environmental organization that filed lawsuit over the prior plan was still dis- satisfied with some of the road investments in the plan, it did not litigate this time. Nevertheless, for all the broad-based work that went into the plan, its less-than-stellar projected future travel and air quality performance was of concern to the SACOG board, staff, and many members of the roundtable. This motivated many key people inside and outside of the government to get serious about a regional land use study. Maybe the problems were not solvable through a better supply of trans- portation improvements. Maybe there was something about growth patterns in the region that was creating a demand for transportation improvements that simply could not be met. It was this environment that led the SACOG board to launch the technically challenging and politically risky regional land use scenario planning project that eventually came to be known as Blueprint.

Blueprint: A Land Use Study that Became a Game Changer

The first year of the thirty-month Blueprint planning process was spent designing the project, developing strategic partnerships, raising funds, hiring staff, and sig- nificantly upgrading the data and modeling capabilities of the agency. SACOG hired a planner to manage the Blueprint process who had recently relocated to

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Sacramento from Portland, Oregon. His professional experience had included extensive involvement working with local governments on the development and implementation of the first regional land use plan in Portland, as well as work on integrated land use transportation planning with several regional planning agen- cies throughout the country. He was instrumental in the development of the I-PLACE3S (Planning for Community Energy, Environmental and Economic Sustainability) planning method and GIS software. The executive director made Blueprint the number one priority for the agency and instructed the new project manager to design the best regional land use planning project ever conducted.

Independently, regional business and civic organizations had decided that the Sacramento region badly needed a vision for its future. These organizations, the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Valley Vision (a civic organization), and the local chapter of the Urban Land Institute, formed the core strategic partnership for the project. Others joined as the project progressed, including the local chapters of the Building Industry Association, American Institute of Architects, and the envi- ronmental organization that had sued SACOG over the 1999 MTP. A long-distance partnership with leaders of the Envision Utah project provided strategic and tech- nical advice throughout the Blueprint process.

This strong base of support from nongovernmental organizations helped the Blueprint overcome its first challenge. A freshman local state legislator, with the support of many of the more urban local governments on the SACOG board, introduced a bill designed to change the way state sales tax revenues were distrib- uted to local governments, to encourage communities to plan for sufficient hous- ing, and not overbuild sales tax–generating retail stores. Debate over the bill created a significant fissure on the SACOG board. Weighted voting rules were invoked for the first time as the board deliberated whether it would oppose or sup- port the bill. Neither side could muster sufficient votes to pass a motion. SACOG remained neutral.

The experience led to a major, and ultimately critical, change in the structure of the SACOG board. For several years, the board had fourteen members, causing many of the smaller cities to jointly pick a single representative. In 2003, the board amended its bylaws to expand the board to thirty-one members, providing every member with direct representation. A veteran board member from the fast grow- ing suburban city of Lincoln in Placer County led the reform effort. In retrospect, many credit the broader board representation with creating the increased trust needed to pave the way for the development and adoption of the Blueprint.

As the board debated the controversial state legislation and reorganizing itself, SACOG staff embarked on a number of enhancements to its data and modeling capabilities, including developing parcel level GIS data; activating an Internet- based delivery system for the I-PLACE3S land use scenario building tool; installing an integrated growth forecasting model, MEPLAN; and adding a postprocessing capability to its regional travel model (the 4Ds—density, destination, design, and diversity) to enhance its sensitivities to land use changes that might influence travel behavior.

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The first product of the effort was a base case scenario for growth through 2050 that assumed policy and market trend lines of the recent past would continue unchanged. The base case was developed by SACOG staff and consultants, with significant input from a first-in-the-region committee of the land use planning directors for SACOG’s member cities and counties. A detailed projection for future growth in population, employment, and housing in the region was developed by a consulting firm specializing in projections for the California economy. A demo- graphic forecast was also prepared, including changes to the age, household size, ethnicity, and incomes of the region’s future population.

The performance metrics for the region in 2050 if the base case scenario materi- alized were very bad. Congestion, time devoted to daily travel, supply of affordable housing, conversion of farmland and natural resource lands to urbanization, car- bon dioxide and particulate matter all were significantly worse than current condi- tions. It is not an exaggeration to say the region was stunned. The lead editorial in the Sacramento Bee the next day was titled “SACOG Shows Region the Road to Ruin.” There was a quick and nearly unanimous consensus that the base case future was not what the region wanted. But if not the current trends scenario, then what?

Alternatives to the base case future were needed. These scenarios were designed to test the technical and political viability and the applicability of seven growth management principles, commonly known as smart growth principles, as follows:

• Provide a variety of transportation choices • Offer housing choices and opportunities • Take advantage of compact development • Use existing assets • Mix land uses and development types • Preserve open space, farmland, and natural beauty through natural resources

conservation • Encourage distinctive, attractive communities with quality design

The principles were not assumed at the outset to be inherently good or bad but ideas of sufficient seriousness to be worth examining. The Blueprint tested these principles at three geographic scales: neighborhood, county, and regional.

The Neighborhoods

A series of thirty neighborhood-level workshops were held, at least one in each of twenty-seven of SACOG’s twenty-eight member local governments. Multiple workshops were held in the two largest jurisdictions, Sacramento City and Sacramento County. To help reach out to communities across a large region, SACOG turned to Valley Vision, who was a full partner in executing the project. Valley Vision recruited and involved citizens and stakeholders in the workshops, and they formed advisory committees of key opinion leaders and stakeholders within each county to further recruit workshop participants. The goal, realized at most workshops, was to seat individuals from five to seven diverse interests at each small group table, including developers; local property owners and businesses;

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citizens; activists from the environmental, housing, and other issue-specific com- munities; and public agency representatives.

Each host local government selected two case study sites to be the subject of their workshop, one an example of infill development opportunities and the other an example of greenfield (larger tracts of vacant land) development opportunities. Six to eight citizens sat at each workshop table and, after watching an introductory video and PowerPoint presentation about the Blueprint, the region’s changing demographics, smart growth principles, and some details of the case study sites, they spent the balance of the evening designing a conceptual plan for one of the case study sites.

Project staff designed a series of interactive planning exercises for participants. In their small groups participants used context maps, pictures, and data, along with a map of the study area, and a menu of land use options to make decisions that were recorded by placing stickers on parcels to represent the land uses they wanted in their plan. Roving land use and transportation experts answered ques- tions, and a trained facilitator guided the discussion.

A laptop computer and operator running the new web-based I-PLACE3S soft- ware via cell phone connection were available at each table to enter the plan as the citizens created it and, at various junctures, to tell them how it was performing on key metrics like jobs-housing balance, housing diversity, vehicle miles traveled, air emissions per household, and mode choice (i.e., percent of trips by car, transit, walking, and biking). An economic reality test included in I-PLACE3S conducts a planning level pro forma analysis on the proposed development ideas for every parcel. This return on investment function was used to test the profit performance and, thus, investment feasibility for private developers.

This citizen involvement process reflects a significant advancement from the days of asking citizens “what do you want?” and recording their opinions on flip charts. The entire workshop was designed both to empower the citizens by build- ing their knowledge base and to reinforce the message that this was an information- based planning process, not one that had been precooked in some manner or was dominated by a particular planning philosophy. The technical results of these neighborhood workshops are summarized at http://www.sacregionblueprint.org. Every table’s plan is saved on the SACOG website and can be viewed at any time.

Two important findings became clear to many SACOG board members. First, the innovative outreach method attracted large numbers of people to the work- shops. Many were new participants in local land use issues. Second, there was a striking degree of agreement on the types of plans people supported, among the very diverse people at each table, among the tables at each workshop, and among the communities where the workshops were hosted. The smart growth principles of pedestrian and transit design, housing products that provided far more diversity than common in the current marketplace (in part to provide greater affordability, but also to meet the needs of the aging population), were supported throughout the region—whether they were from a low-income neighborhood in urban Sacramento or an affluent suburban jurisdiction.

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It is worth noting that, of the other regional scenario planning exercises in the country at that time, none had conducted extensive neighborhood-scale planning this early in the process. SACOG was, in fact, pointedly advised by veterans of some of these other planning processes not to do neighborhood-scale planning early in the process because it would generate too much controversy, and the project would never be able to proceed to alternative regional scenarios. However, SACOG’s approach to Blueprint from the outset was grounded in trying to find land use solu- tions that would work, would be politically supportable, and could be implemented at-scale quickly. The experience with too many planning projects at all scales is that enthusiasm, and therefore performance, falls off after the plan is adopted and moves to implementation. SACOG wanted to minimize the chances for what one repre- sentative from the U.S. Department of Energy (one of the funders for the develop- ment of the I-PLACE3S planning method) termed “stranded inspiration.”

By the time the neighborhood workshop series was complete, it was clear that the Blueprint project had acquired legs. Many participants commented about how great the experience was. The development community, some of whom were ini- tially skeptical of where the project was headed, gained confidence through seeing firsthand that a wide diversity of citizens supported growth on infill and greenfield sites alike in their communities.

The Counties

SACOG convened committees of senior land use planners within each of the coun- ties and built three alternative county level planning scenarios for growth through 2050 to compare to the base case scenario. The planners started with the citizen input from the neighborhood workshops. They examined the results of the current- day housing market preference survey and the long-range demographic forecast to develop realistic targets for what portion of future housing construction should be planned for about eight different low, medium, and high density housing prod- ucts. Current general plans and zoning codes were assessed to determine to what extent built densities were at or below allowed densities. The planner committees discussed ways it may be possible to change local policies and codes over the next five decades. Each county prepared three scenarios, all designed to use smart growth principles, but in different ways and to different degrees. The overall growth rate within the county also typically varied between the three scenarios. This method of building the county scenarios was designed to blend visionary planning with real-world local policies and market conditions—again, toward the goal of ultimately finding a preferred scenario that would perform well and would actually be implemented.

The county-level round of workshops was conducted with a minimum of one workshop in each county and several in Sacramento County. Modified but famil- iar maps, charts, and stickers seen earlier in the neighborhood workshops were used. But this time the participants had to first choose the countywide scenario they liked best, either the base case or one of the three alternatives. The scenarios were labeled A, B, C, and D (an idea borrowed from Envision Utah) to avoid biasing

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people’s opinions about their merits. Valley Vision again recruited and grouped five to seven diverse perspectives at each table. The citizen planners examined large posters with maps and performance metrics, comparing and contrasting the four scenarios; agreed on the single scenario they liked the most; and then used the stickers and felt markers to modify it to make it even more to their liking.

Again, laptop computers and operators were at each table to enter the changes and give immediate feedback on how their changes would alter the performance of the scenario for travel behavior, air quality impacts, jobs-housing balance, total growth, and other impacts measured by I-PLACE3S. This time, the computers were connected to the server via high-speed Internet, not cell phones, to transfer much larger data sets resulting from more parcels in a county compared to a neighborhood.

The county workshop series was also well attended and built greater momen- tum and credibility for the project. People interested more in the environmental protection side of the issue seemed pleased that there was so much support for sce- narios based on smart growth principles. People interested more in the housing supply and development side of the issue seemed pleased that the discussion was focused on managing growth well, rather than the often-typical fast-versus-slow or no-growth arguments. Following the county workshops, SACOG staff met with the committee of planners within each county to review the public input and decide which ideas that had been tested were supported by none or few, which ideas were supported by most or all, and which ideas had divided opinion. Through this process, a draft of three scenarios for each county fed into the creation of three regional scenarios.

Back to the Region

Three alternative regional scenarios were created with the regional planners com- mittee to compare to the base case future. The three scenarios were similar or iden- tical for about 80 percent of the growth through 2050. In one scenario, that final 20 percent was located in small towns (and one new town) around the periphery of the region; in another scenario, the final 20 percent was located in inner-ring sub- urban locations adjacent to existing urbanization, and in the final scenario, the final 20 percent growth was placed into inner infill and revitalization areas.

The four regional scenarios (base case plus three new ones) were also labeled A, B, C, and D and taken to a daylong regional forum attended by 1,500 people in downtown Sacramento. Facilitators for each table were recruited, drawing from local elected officials, senior local government staff, and staff from related state agencies, transit, and air districts. The training the facilitators were required to take, and their direct participation in the event, was an important element in build- ing their understanding and support for what became the final preferred scenario.

Again, Valley Vision recruited and placed the participants at small group tables. After hearing introductory video and PowerPoint presentations, each table spent the balance of the day selecting the regional 2050 scenario they liked best and then modifying it with peel-off stickers representing different land use types to better meet their preferences. This workshop was so large that SACOG did not have

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enough laptop computers for each of the 150 tables, so live computer analysis was conducted at only a few representative tables.

After the small group work, participants used individual keypad clickers to record both their personal preferences and the consensus preference of their small group. No tables voted for the base case scenario, and very few voted for the sce- nario that placed the final 20 percent growth in the cities the farthest away from the urban core of the region. The consensus votes of the tables favored the scenario that placed the final 20 percent in the inner suburban areas, while the individual votes favored the scenario that placed the final 20 percent of the growth in inner infill areas, an interesting divergence that turned out to be not particularly difficult to resolve. After analyzing each of the table’s maps, SACOG staff prepared a draft preferred scenario that was a balance of the two most popular scenarios from the regional workshop.

Throughout the entire workshop process, SACOG board members were briefed and provided opportunities to give input and guidance on project progress at least monthly, both at committee meetings and at full board meetings. The input from the elected officials hit a crescendo, however, with the last big event of the Blueprint, a first-ever regional summit of all city and county elected officials. In preparation for the summit, a random-sample public opinion poll was taken to measure citi- zens’ attitudes about growth and the principles that underpinned the draft pre- ferred scenario (now modified and relabeled “Blueprint Principles”). A national polling firm conducted the survey, and its president, the primary pollster for gov- ernor and President Ronald Reagan, came to the summit to present the results per- sonally. Among his key messages and advice to assembled local elected leadership of the region were the points that citizens were very nervous about growth, fearing that it would degrade a quality of life that they believed currently was very high; supportive of using the Blueprint growth principles to manage growth; supportive of regional cooperation for managing growth but skeptical whether their local offi- cials would do it; and dramatically more positive in their attitudes about the positive aspects of growth if they believed their local communities would use the Blueprint principles to help them make planning decisions.

The elected officials used electronic keypads to identify what aspects of the draft preferred Blueprint alternative they liked and disliked. The draft alternative was very popular with the participants, and the few areas of concern gave SACOG staff fairly clear direction about the types of final refinements needed before taking the plan to the SACOG board for final action.

By the time the workshops and two regional forums had been conducted in April 2004, more than 5,000 individuals had used the modeling software and given input into the future vision of land use in the Sacramento region.

The Blueprint Decision

In December 2004 the SACOG board unanimously adopted the Blueprint growth strategy. By this point in the process SACOG had received many regional, state, and national awards for the project, including the Governor’s Award for

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Environmental and Economic Leadership, the Federal Highway Administration/ Federal Transit Administration Transportation Planning Excellence Award, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Award for Smart Growth Achievement, and the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations National Award for Outstanding Achievement. A remarkable group of broad-based supporters, indi- viduals, and organizations came to the SACOG board meeting to applaud the board’s work, including the Building Industry Association and the environmental organization that had sued SACOG. Instead of suing, this same organization gave SACOG its Environmental Leadership Award for 2004.

The board’s Blueprint adoption action included a conceptual map for growth through 2050, a set of Blueprint growth principles, and an implementation strat- egy. The implementation strategy included actions such as pursuing state legisla- tive reform to amend the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to better promote Blueprint-style growth, development of a rural lands and open space strategy for the region, technical assistance to local governments to help them amend their general plans and zoning codes to reflect the Blueprint, and pursuit of financial incentives to assist, in particular, with infill development.

MTP 2008: The Region’s First Integrated Land Use, Transportation, and Air Quality Plan

Immediately after the Blueprint was adopted, SACOG went to work on the 2008 MTP. There were three main, related, technical and regulatory issues to address:

1. How could SACOG best employ the adopted Blueprint as its long-term land use plan for determining transportation needs in the MTP?

2. How would the MTP accommodate the new requirements in SAFETEA-LU, the reauthorized federal transportation bill?

3. How would the MTP address the new air quality plan (State Implementation Plan, or SIP) being prepared by air districts to meet the new, tougher eight- hour ozone standards the federal government had promulgated to replace the one-hour ozone standard?

SACOG, of course, wanted this MTP to be significantly influenced by the Blueprint; that is why the board had launched the Blueprint in the first place. SACOG also wanted to produce the new MTP using a stakeholder and citizen involvement process that met, or exceeded, the bar established by the Blueprint. A working committee to create an outreach strategy was established with SACOG’s partner Regional Transportation Planning Agencies (RTPAs), the major transit operators, and the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, which had the lead role in developing the new SIP for the region. After the 2002 MTP, public works directors requested greater involvement in developing the next plan. A regional committee of local government public works directors was actively involved throughout the project.

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The Analytical Tools

In preparation for both the public workshops and the technical work of the MTP update, SACOG committed to another round of enhancements to its data and models. A somewhat simplified version of SACMET, the regional travel model, was programmed into PLACE3S so that it could be used interactively to produce travel and land use information live in public workshops. SACOG’s overall analytical capacity was improved by shifting from the SACMET four-step model to a new, activity-based regional travel model, SACSIM, which projects transportation behavior at the parcel rather than zonal level for the entire region. The net effect of the parcel specific I-PLACE3S and SACSIM modeling capabilities is like shining a bright light into an underlit room. Fine-grain relationships between specific land use choices and travel behavior are suddenly measurable.

The Process

SACOG and its partners designed a two-part workshop series to support the MTP update. A series of seventeen community workshops started the process. Valley Vision was reengaged as a partner and used Blueprint recruitment and workshop participant and table perspective diversity techniques. Nearly 1,800 citizen planners came out to workshops throughout the region between February and June 2006.

A transportation version of the Blueprint workshop program was designed, complete with menus, stickers, maps, and posters. This time, instead of planning for a specific number of new people, jobs, and houses coming to the region by 2050, participants were asked to design for mobility in 2035, and they were given a budget to spend. Federal law requires that MTPs only include transportation proj- ects that can be delivered by revenues that are reasonably certain to be available. So the budget was important to keep the workshops focused on what was realistic, and not an exercise to produce a dream list of ideas.

SACOG staff worked with senior local government planning staff to develop a preliminary land use map to show growth through 2035, the planning horizon year for the MTP. The 2050 Blueprint preferred scenario map was the starting place for developing the 2035 map, with changes made both to reflect the shorter time frame as well as SACOG’s best information on where local governments and the market were performing in ways consistent, or not, with the Blueprint. The preliminary land use allocation for 2035 was significantly refined over the course of the MTP planning process as more empirical experience became available with Blueprint implementation and SACOG staff had more time to work, in detail, with local government planning staff.

SACOG staff worked with its partners and local agency staff to design three alternative transportation scenarios for each county. Participants listened to a short video and a PowerPoint presentation explaining how the underlying smarter growth land use pattern for this MTP would create more need for investments in alternative modes to the automobile, and for shorter distance automobile trips. Ways to quantify differences in mobility performance among the scenarios were also explained.

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Participants in each small group agreed on the scenario they liked best and then used stickers representing a variety of transit, pedestrian, bicycle, and road invest- ments to modify the scenario to better match their preferences. Laptop computers again were used to show participants how their choices changed the performance of the scenario, for better or worse. This may have been the first time in the history of U.S. transportation planning that live feedback on regional travel performance was provided in a public workshop addressing an area this large.

The results of the county workshops were compiled, analyzed with the travel models at SACOG, and used to prepare three regional-scale transportation scenar- ios. SACOG deviated from the Blueprint approach to the large regional workshop for the MTP. Instead of inviting everyone to a single downtown location, eight simultaneous workshops were held throughout the region, linked by satellite video. The goal was to make it clear, by allowing more people to attend one of eight dispersed workshops, that this truly was a regional plan being developed and their input mattered. The event was cohosted by the local network television station with the highest ratings in the Sacramento region. One of the station’s news anchors served as emcee throughout the evening. Presentations at the largest site, Memorial Auditorium in downtown Sacramento, were broadcast to all eight sites, along with prepackaged educational videos. The balance of the citizen’s work was done locally at each of the eight workshop locations.

Again, a diverse range of workshop participants sat in small groups, chose which of three regional scenarios they liked the most, and used menus and stickers to refine the map to better match their preferences. As with the county workshops, a budget was imposed. Laptop computers were not used interactively at these workshops, although at the end of the workshop all participants used electronic keypads to record their opinions on key issues. Although there were temporary technical issues with both the satellite and keypad technology at this event, it was a significant success, attended by nearly 1,500 people at the eight locations, and extensive citizen input was provided to guide development of the draft MTP.

The final big public involvement event was an hour-long live television show sponsored by the station, replacing the regular 6:30 newscast on January 31, 2007. Forty studio guests, selected by the station, were seated in an in-the-round, town- hall-style studio and responded to questions posed to them by two news anchors. An online poll collected viewer feedback on several questions posed during the show. More than 56,000 viewers tuned in to watch this regional dialogue, and 1,300 gave immediate feedback responses in the interactive poll.

Significant public attitude research also was conducted. A regional telephone poll was completed to test attitudes on different transportation investment options. The poll was supplemented with four geographically representative focus groups of the general public and an online poll. A separate set of eight focus groups was con- ducted to focus in on environmental justice issues. In total, more than 1,500 indi- viduals gave input through focus groups and scientific surveys. SACOG learned that all areas and groups of residents want a balance of highway/freeway improve- ments and public transportation expansion.

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The Decision

On March 20 the SACOG board unanimously adopted the 2008 MTP—the first MTP to explicitly propose a range of policies and associated strategies specifically designed to integrate with a Blueprint-influenced land use pattern. The SACOG board’s action also included the certification of the associated environmental document that includes meaningful mitigation measures to integrate the MTP’s transportation plan with land use, air quality, and climate change concerns.

The MTP shows dramatically improved transportation performance compared to the prior plans, including less congestion; more transit, walk, and bike travel; and reductions in per household vehicle miles traveled. Its state environmental document also showed reductions in carbon emissions per household, a big issue in a state with the nation’s toughest global warming law.

Conclusion

The story of these four major planning actions by SACOG traces a steady evolution to a new style of regional planning. The keys to success were commitments to the highest quality data and modeling tools—necessary to ground policy making in information; create meaningful citizen engagement; and focus on the connections and interactions between land use, transportation, and air quality planning issues.

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