Comprehensive plans, elements, and consistency

Learning objectives

• Define a comprehensive plan and explain how it differs from a zoning ordinance.
• List the elements commonly found in comprehensive plans, and distinguish internal, vertical, horizontal, and implementation consistency.
• Explain the consistency doctrine and the range of legal weight plans carry across states.
• Distinguish comprehensive, area, functional, regional, and strategic plans, and choose the right one for a situation.
• Describe how community character and form are addressed in a plan.

Key concepts

What a comprehensive plan is

A comprehensive plan (also called a general plan or master plan) is a community's long-range policy guide for its physical development. It's:

• comprehensive: it covers the whole jurisdiction and all the topics that shape physical development;
• long-range: it typically looks 20 years ahead;
• general: it sets direction and policy rather than lot-by-lot rules; and
• officially adopted by the governing body after public hearings.

The classic statement of this idea is T. J. Kent Jr.'s The Urban General Plan (1964), which argued that the plan should be the governing body's own policy statement for physical development: long-range, comprehensive, and general, adopted by elected officials rather than left to the planning commission.

A comprehensive plan is not a regulation. The zoning ordinance is the regulation that implements the plan. The plan says where the community wants housing, jobs, parks, and infrastructure; the zoning code sets the rules that apply to each parcel today.

A key tool inside the plan is the future land use map, which shows the intended pattern of land uses over the plan horizon. It's often confused with the zoning map, which shows the regulations in force now. The two will differ where the plan anticipates change.

7 more sections follow in the full lesson.