Decisions on land use issues are often difficult and controversial. They have different impacts on communities in a region. Even when the cumulative pattern of land use decisions creates a landscape that is inefficient and that a majority find distasteful, it is still often difficult to reverse the trend that created it.

Work by Myron Orfield for the project and analysis by the Michigan Land Use Leadership Council has identified improved land use planning as a way to manage expanding residential and commercial growth. This project has used improved land use planning as a guiding principle for our project to reach stakeholders who can start to look at development trends close to home.

We have focused on improved information for decision making. The project first undertook a series of community conversations with local officials to understand the dimensions of land use change and discuss the findings of the Genesee Metropatterns report. Our conversations established a relationship with Mundy Township and we used the Community Viz software to provide a series of growth scenarios to inform their planning process. Mundy Township is part of an emerging planning group in Genesee County that consists of several jurisdictions and is known as the Southern Lakes Planning Initiative (SLPI). The project has supported the work of the SLPI in seeking to establish a coordinated approach to planning issues.

This web site is way for us to make the results of our work available and encourage feedback from the broader community.