Achieving Our Shared Goals through a Regional Development Framework
Communities, organizations, and people have made clear their priorities for how the greater Madison region grows. Responses to the Greater Madison Vision survey of more than 9,000 people demonstrated strong agreement on the importance of reducing impacts and increasing resilience to climate change, increasing access to jobs and resources for all people, expanding transit and housing options for all, and conserving natural, farmland, and taxpayer resources.
Many efforts are underway across the region to tackle those challenges: large-scale investments in renewable energy; creating “green infrastructure” plans to reduce increased flood risks fueled by climate change; bringing resources to previously underserved neighborhoods like the new Madison College campus in South Madison; accelerating planning and implementation of the regional bus rapid transit system; large increases in workforce and affordable housing in communities across the region; and land purchases to permanently preserve important natural resource and agricultural areas.
CARPC has also been working on these regional priorities through collaboration with local communities to guide the physical development of the region. We call this effort the Regional Development Framework.
To start, CARPC prepared goals and objectives reflecting priorities from A Greater Madison Vision. CARPC confirmed strong support for those goals and objectives through a survey of local government officials.
Next, we forecasted population growth to learn that nearly 200,000 more people will call Dane County home by 2050. We engaged local planners and officials through a Technical Advisory Committee that has provided valuable input. We studied local plans and strategies for growth, and examples from other regions. From this research, we identified development strategies and maps that reflect current local planning and development and that can best achieve our shared goals.
One of the key regional development strategies is to focus growth in centers and corridors. Centers are vibrant places where people can live, work, shop, entertain, and meet and connect with others. They are welcoming places for all people, which foster innovation. Corridors connect centers with a variety of ways to travel including walking, biking, and where possible transit.
The map below shows the network of existing and potential future centers of different scales. The growth framework identifies half of new household growth occurring in centers and corridors.
This level of growth in centers and corridors reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which fuel climate change, by bringing people closer to destinations, thereby reducing car travel and related emissions. Centers connected by transit corridors can further reduce car travel and related pollution. Centers and corridors can increase access to jobs and other resources and needs by bringing housing, jobs, stores, and amenities closer together in areas better served by transit as well as other modes of transportation. They also offer additional housing choices in the region and can reduce people’s transportation and utility costs through more compact development.
Other regional development strategies identified are: prioritize growth in already developed areas, plan new residential development as “traditional neighborhoods,” avoid growth in important natural and agricultural areas, and plan areas for business growth, especially for vital sectors of our economy.
CARPC will report more about these strategies, the framework maps, and estimated outcomes in coming months. We are happy to share the regional development strategies with you and hear your thoughts. For more information contact Steve Steinhoff at steves@capitalarearpc.org.