In the first of two presentations Jan. 5, Dave Godschalk, of UNC's City and Regional Planning Department, delivered a lecture on sustainable comprehensive planning.

Godschalk began his talk by stressing that planning is not just about a process, which has been much of the focus of Chapel Hill 2020 thus far, but also about a final end product.

We have described some of the principles from Dave Godschalk's talk on the town's 2020 Buzz blog ( bit.ly/wZL1Sp), but beyond those basic principles, Godschalk also described best practices and many of the complicating issues facing communities in the 21st century: resource depletion, climate instability, energy scarcity, economic stress, social inequity, and public health.

He also described the comprehensive plan as an ideal instrument for sustaining places because of their legal authority, scope to cover functions, and history of practice in the United States.

Furthermore, they have a mandate to set community goals, engage residents, establish responsibility for component parts, and achieve consensus.

A good plan serves as a record of community agreement for where a community wants to go and how it wants to get there.

Godschalk posed the question "What can Chapel Hill learn from plans of other places?"

A list of plans used can be found at the end of this post.

The plans selected represent growing and shrinking areas, large and small, local, county, and regional plans. The plan Godschalk focused on as an apt model for Chapel Hill was that of Fort Collins, Col..

To think about sustaining places, Godschalk suggests breaking out of the traditional community planning assumptions on account of new realities and moving toward an adaptive planning model: continuous monitoring of plan, strategic changes to plan as needed to face unanticipated challenges or issues.

The adaptive model combines the technical and participatory tracks of planning; develops contingencies; develops and tracks outcome measures; and has ongoing implementation.

The new planning method necessitates a new format and topics to focus on multi-topical systems. The new format stems from an integrative framework that breaks out of traditional silos.

In the best cases, the comprehensive plans shape budget priorities, have clear assignment of responsibility, a metric for measuring the success of the plan, and a timeline in place for the completion of goals and objectives.

Sustaining plans typically:

Adopt sustainability principles

Integrate policies across programs

Consider equity, health, and wellbeing inputs

Act on scientific evidence

Address demands with limited funds

Implement non-traditional goals

Monitor sustainability metrics

Link to regional plans

Conduct stakeholder engagement