Master Planning in Local Government: Everything You Need To Know

As a local government leader, you may already have a strategic plan that outlines where your city or town wants to be in the future, as well as the steps it will take to get there. But a strategic plan isn’t the only guidance you’ll need for future growth. A master plan can also help you get where you want to go.

ClearPoint Strategy gives local governments one place to collect data, create detailed plans, and monitor progress. With ClearPoint, you can make sure your master plan lines up with strategic goals and community needs.

In this article, we’ll look at master planning in relation to local governments and strategic planning: what it means to have a master plan, the benefits of having one, and ways to approach the planning process.

What Is Master Planning?

Master planning is a type of urban planning that pertains to the physical development of a city or town over the long term, usually covering a time frame of about 10 to 15 years into the future. It is intended to guide a community’s growth from a high-level perspective, focusing on ways to:

• Preserve a locality’s unique character
• Ensure diversity
• Support investment
• Promote desired change
• Enhance a community’s livability

Master plan formats vary, but a master plan is essentially a long-term planning document that provides a framework for future growth. It helps you think about development.

If you are trying to redevelop a downtown area, for example, you need a plan that looks out 10 to 15 years to maintain consistency in growth over time. That means knowing whether and how you’ll redesign or widen roads, so you don’t build in the path of a new road. It also means setting rules for new housing developments and knowing how growth will affect police, schools, and hospitals.

Fast-growing areas like Prince William County, Virginia, and Arvada, Colorado, are adding tens of thousands of residents each year. In places like these, a master plan helps you keep growing and keep serving the public well.

Master plans also help build and preserve character. Savannah, Georgia, is a good example. If you’ve ever been to Savannah, you know it has a definite sense of place. Period architecture, Spanish moss-filled trees, and beautiful squares all contribute to Savannah’s reputation as a place with historic charm. Its master plan (which extends to 2033) outlines a number of priorities, two of which specifically pertain to preserving and extending these character elements in future years. Its plan “encourages more of what we love about Savannah,” and aims to provide decision-makers with a set of design principles going forward.

Community leaders do the master planning, but they shouldn’t be the only contributors. Town development should reflect the broader community’s desires and values.

A good master plan should pull in ideas from a variety of sources: the public, city council, key stakeholders (like historical, environmental, or cultural groups), private contractors, and others, so future development reflects many perspectives.

Master plans are aspirational. They imagine what’s possible and propose a path to get there. They are not set in stone. Circumstances may change as time goes on, and plans may need to be adjusted accordingly.

For example, Saint Paul, Minnesota updated its master plan 12 years after creating it to provide more meaningful direction to developers as the government began a new campaign to revitalize the West Side Flats area of the Mississippi riverfront.

Master Planning vs. Strategic Planning

People sometimes confuse master planning with strategic planning because both are "big-picture" exercises that deal with anticipating and planning for future growth.

A strategic plan lays out a vision of where a municipality wants to be in three to five years, as well as the steps it will take to get there. It's essentially a blueprint of the city's goals, planned projects to achieve those goals, and metrics to determine success.

A master plan is a guideline for the future physical development of a community. It helps align the use and creation of land, public infrastructure projects, and buildings with the values of a locality.

The two are different, but together they help you decide which strategies and actions to take in the long and short term to reach your future goals.

5 Benefits Of Master Planning

A blueprint for your town’s future growth pays off in the long run because it:

1. Identifies And Unites Your Short-term And Long-Term Visions

Your strategic plan will identify goals you’re trying to reach in the next three to five years, as well as the projects that need to be done to achieve them. But even if, for example, two new parking garages bring in more revenue, they may not fit your town’s vision to be walkable and “greener.”

A master plan keeps you consistent and makes sure your shorter-term activities protect and preserve the character of your community as envisioned by residents.

2. Attracts Private Sector Investments

A master plan is a sign of intelligent community planning. Concrete plans and a deliberate direction for future growth make investors feel more secure.

You’ll also be more likely to attract the kind of investors you want, such as those interested in historical preservation or environmentally friendly development, if they can see their value to the town over the long term.

3. Engages The Local Community

Engaged citizens make for strong, healthy communities. When people play a meaningful role in discussions surrounding the future of their community, they are more likely to support ongoing projects and be satisfied with their outcomes. They also gain a deeper understanding of the challenges the town faces.

Part of your master plan preparation process should include outreach to community members, which may require some creativity. When Lowell, Massachusetts, leaders were creating a master plan, for example, they created an online “game” for residents encouraging them to think about the future in a fun, interactive way.

4. Helps Prioritize Work Plans

The master planning process should result in a thorough understanding of the community as a whole and its most pressing areas of need. This information should be used to prioritize projects.

Community leaders in Savannah, for instance, wanted to support interconnectedness among its neighborhoods by enabling multiple modes of transportation: walking, biking, and public transportation. As a result, one project that made the priority list was to convert on-street parking areas to bike lanes in certain areas.

5. Enables Clear And Consistent Decision-Making

A master plan gives town boards and committees a reference point for their decisions.

When everyone is working from the same set of “rules,” a town is more likely to develop in a predictable and orderly fashion.

The Master Plan Preparation Process

Below is an outline of the general steps for developing and implementing a master plan.

Engage the community

The first step in master planning is to ask the public about their vision for the community’s future. You need public support to achieve your plan. To reach the broadest audience and encourage everyone to participate, give residents several ways to provide input.

A combination of several methods is best, including:

• Online surveys
• Public “visioning” meetings
• Telephone surveys
• Direct mail surveys
• Request for text message responses
• Open house event
• Creative methods (like Lowell’s online games and snapshot contests)

Ask questions that prompt residents to reflect on the town’s character as well as their thoughts on the future, such as:

• What are the town’s strengths?
• What are its shortcomings?
• What concerns do you have with regard to future development?
• What types of development should the town encourage/discourage?
• How can the town support you and the specific interests of your group or community?
• Complete this phrase: “In the future, I want my town to be…”

The goal of this step is to create community-supported vision statements, goals, and objectives that will help guide the development of your master plan.

Gather and analyze the relevant data

You’ll next need to gather data that might influence the priorities and projects identified in the master plan. Data around your town’s financials, facility operations, condition of assets, population forecasts, land use, capital improvement projects, and stakeholder needs is typically used in the planning process. It is the foundation for the document you produce, so accuracy is important.

Governments that are using performance management software like ClearPoint have a leg up in this area. The software can pull in data automatically from compatible sources across all government departments. When source data changes, ClearPoint updates automatically.

You no longer have to chase down the people responsible for each data set. ClearPoint brings all your data streams into one place, so you can stay on top of the most current data relevant to your plan.

The goal of this step is to understand the state of your town and identify possible future conditions that might drive the need for specific changes.

Identify and narrow down your options

Using what you have learned about the town’s current state, future projections, land maps, and community input, consider a variety of development scenarios. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of each, and how you can best use your current land and resources to encourage your preferred type of growth.

To eliminate options, you may want to develop a set of criteria to measure each scenario against.

Prepare a strategy for moving forward

Once you’ve chosen a particular development scenario, you’ll need to decide how, when, and by whom the plan’s recommendations should be implemented.

As board and committee members in all functional areas consider proposed projects in the months and years ahead, you need a way to make sure development aligns with your goals and moves progress in the intended direction.

Try listing out the main guiding principles of development identified in your master plan and prioritizing them. For instance, decide whether accessibility matters more or less than sustainability. You could also develop weighted criteria to measure each proposed project against. You might weigh whether to fill existing gaps or address community preferences first. The parks and recreation master planning team in Palo Alto, California, incorporated these techniques into its master plan; you can read more about it here.

Using software makes it easier for all your teams to evaluate and prioritize projects. ClearPoint lets users tie individual projects happening across your government to high-level master plan objectives.

You can set it up to:

• Link projects with goals (even link a single project to different goals in different departments)
• See how and why projects are evaluated
• Measure and automatically evaluate projects according to specific scoring rules
• Visualize project performance in auto-generated reports

No matter your specific master plan format or evaluation criteria, you can see how your efforts are aligned across all your government departments with ClearPoint.

Manage and track the performance of your projects and programs

Just like government strategic planning, master planning isn’t a “one and done” activity. You need to track the plan’s progress over time to make sure you’re heading in the right direction.

Establish a set of KPIs against which to measure performance, as well as a reporting system to help with analysis and decision-making. You’ll also want a way to report on progress to your constituents, to keep them apprised of milestones reached or changes made.

Reporting can be time-intensive, and software can help.

‍ClearPoint simplifies and automates 70% of the reporting process, so you spend less time on manual reporting tasks. ClearPoint lets you:

• Automatically upload and sync data from various sources to include in your report
• Set criteria that automatically evaluates the status of any KPI and displays it as an easy-to-understand red, amber, or green indicator
• Manipulate and view your data in unlimited ways for different audiences
• Include quantitative and qualitative data describing progress
• Create visualizations like custom charts to present data in an appealing, easily digestible format
• Generate summary reports to pull lots of information into one place for easier sharing and interpretation
• Design community dashboards that show residents at a glance how new developments are contributing to long-term goals, and how current projects are progressing

Your community is likely to keep growing in the years ahead. Master planning and strategic planning together give you a deliberate approach to development that takes you in the direction you want to go.

At ClearPoint, we’ve helped many local governments with long-term planning. Several, like Germantown, Tennessee, have become award winners. We’d love to help you, too.

Master Your Planning with ClearPoint Strategy Software

ClearPoint Strategy simplifies master planning and helps you reach your long-term goals. Our software provides real-time data visualization, automated reporting, and data integration, so your plans stay actionable and aligned with your strategic objectives.

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