DVRPC's Connections Hopes to Link Land-Use and Transportation

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission is currently working on its long-range plan for the year 2035, entitled Connections. One of the goals of this plan is to show the impact that land-use has on transportation, the environment, and the economic development. DVRPC plans to use Connections to address new regional issues such as climate change and energy needs/usage as well. DVRPC has put a significant amount of effort into making this long-range plan a public process. From January 2008 to April 2008, DVRPC conducted an on-line survey of the public, the results of which have been used as input for the refining of the regional vision.

The next step in engaging the public involves a series of public workshops, to be held in each of the nine counties that represent the DVRPC region. At these workshops, participants are presented with two distinct scenarios for the future of the region: Sprawl and Recentralization. Sprawl involves the movement of population and employment from the urban cores and developed communities to the growing suburbs and rural areas. The Recentralization option locates future population and employment growth in the region’s core cities and other developed communities, which are more pedestrian friendly. DVRPC also developed a Trend scenario, which is based on the planning commission’s actual forecasts for population and employment growth in the region. The Trend option is meant to be used as a baseline for comparison between the other two scenarios. The implications of each scenario on transportation, land-use, energy use, the environment, and economic development are all examined in detail during the public workshops.

After the public workshops are completed, DVRPC plans to develop a transportation financial plan that will outline transportation reinvestment in areas that best support the vision for the DVRPC region. Implementation of the regional plan will involve working with stakeholders throughout the region such as: municipalities, planning commissions, county governments, developers, DOT’s, and citizens’ groups. For more information about DVRPC’s long range plan, Connections, and the locations of public workshops being held in our region, please click here.