Design and Vision

description of the Millersville Borough Vision 20/20 process.

Allegheny Places, Allegheny County’s first comprehensive plan, establishes an overall vision for their future and a roadmap to get there. The comprehensive plan sets policies for development, redevelopment, conservation and economic initiatives. The plan provides a framework for the strategic use of public resources to improve the quality of life for all residents.

Final report on community visioning initiative in Damariscotta, ME.

According to the APA, Randall’s latest book “creates a sense of hope for those who face the everyday challenges of working with developers, space users, ordinances, and landowners to create places that make economic, environmental, and aesthetic sense. Arendt shows us that with diligence, thoughtfulness, and care, we can make our communities better in countless ways.”

Growing Greener is an illustrated workbook that presents a new look at designing subdivisions while preserving green space and creating open space networks. Randall Arendt explains how to design residential developments that maximize land conservation without reducing overall building density, thus avoiding the political and legal problems often associated with "down-zoning.

This report provides background information on the use of build-out analysis and water quality/environmental modeling as land planning and water quality predictive management tools. It also contains summaries of 14 build-out analyses that have been conducted.

This booklet summarizes how municipalities can use the development process to their advantage to protect interconnected networks of open space: natural areas, greenways, trails and recreational lands. Communities can take control of their destinies so that their conservation goals are achieved in a manner fair to all parties concerned. All that is needed are some relatively straightforward amendments to municipal comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances and subdivision ordinances.

This publication for the Montgomery County Community Revitalization Program provides an overview of downtown improvements including hard surfaces (i.e. streets, sidewalks, crosswalks, etc.), vegetation, and street furnishings.

The Pennsylvania Wilds Design Guide: A Design Guide for Community Character Stewardship was created to help communities protect these treasured characteristics while reaping and strengthening the benefits of economic growth. It outlines several principals that can be used by developers, design professionals and others. Its voluntary guidelines are meant to be a resource for people, businesses or organizations embarking on new construction, renovations, signage projects and the like.

This report summarizes data and research related to the transportation, career, and housing preferences of today's young adults. Known as millennials, this generation of Americans was largely born during the 1980s and 90s. They are the largest generation in American history and their expectations and priorities have the potential to influence the physical form of communities throughout our region and around the country.

Planners are uniquely positioned and qualified to help their communities engage in conversations about the potential benefits of solar energy use and create a local policy framework that allows and even encourages the appropriate use of solar energy systems. This compendium of briefing papers covers a range of specific topics related to planning for solar energy use. Each paper tackles a different aspect of the issue with a special emphasis on how local plans and implementation tools can reduce barriers to local solar market growth.

The purpose of this handbook is to help communities like yours begin thinking and planning for the future. It is not, however, a cookbook on community visioning. Every community in Pennsylvania is unique, so it must develop its own vision and plan for the future. On the other hand, many of the same principles and activities that are included in the process may be useful to many communities. To help communities find that common ground and allow them the freedom to decide what their plans might include, the Center for Rural Pennsylvania designed this handbook to focus on the process of visioning, not the outcome.

This report compares 26 metropolitan areas in terms of demographics, natural resources and the environment; livable communities; the economy; and transportation. The Philadelphia region’s strengths include its diverse economy; relatively affordable housing, myriad of colleges, universities, and cultural opportunities; health care resources; extensive highway and transit network; and quality air and port facilities. These strengths, however, threaten to be checked by regional challenges, including urban concentrations of poverty and unemployment; low labor force participation; disparately low educational attainment in its cities; an aging population; and fragmented local government. The challenge facing the region is identifying how to capitalize and build on its strengths while recognizing and working to resolve its identified weaknesses.

The concept behind ReVisionPA is simple: The more that people experience the role natural resource assets play in their community, the more in-tune they will be with opportunities to protect and enhance them. Since the best education begins with experience, ReVisionPA focuses on three approaches to help citizens and leaders become more experienced and informed decision-makers — visioning services, workshops, and programs. ReVision's web page includes a resource library that provides details about the practices and projects currently being undertaken by ReVisionPA.

A photo-heavy guide that helps visualize various residential densities.

Traditional Neighborhood Development creates compact, mixed-use, non-automobile- dependent neighborhoods and communities. It serves the needs of people and accommodates growth with minimal waste of land. (Print version of ConservationTools.org Guide)