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Abstract
Strategic planning started in the U.S. as a
corporate planning endeavor. By the 1960’s,
it had become a major corporate management
tool in the Fortune 500. At fi rst, it was seen as
a way of interweaving policies, values and pur-
poses with management, resources and market
information in a way that held the organization
together. By the 1950’s, the concept was simpli-
fi ed somewhat to focus on SWOT as a way of
keeping the corporation afl oat in a more turbu-
lent world.
The public sector has been under pressure
for a long time to become more effi cient, effec-
tive and responsive. Many have felt that the
adoption of business practices would help to ac-
complish that. One tool borrowed from business
has been strategic planning.
At the local government level, strategic plan-
ning became popular starting in the 1980’s, and
the community’s planning offi ce was called on
to lead the endeavor. The planning offi ce was
often the advocate of the process. Urban plan-
ning offi ces had been doing long-range plans
for decades, but with accelerating urban change
a more rapid action-oriented response was de-
sired.
The paper describes this history and pro-
cess in the East Lansing, Michigan, U.S., where
comprehensive community plans are the result
of a multi-year visioning process and call for ac-
tion-oriented, strategies for targeted parts of the
community.
Keywords: strategic planning, US, local
communities, comprehensive community plans,
East Lansing, MI.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
IN U.S. MUNICIPALITIES
James Van RAVENSWAY
Roger E. HAMLIN
James Van RAVENSWAY
Adjunct professor, Urban and Regional Planning Department,
School of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, USA
E-mail: jvanrav@aol.com
Roger E. HAMLIN (corresponding author)
Professor, Urban and Regional Planning Department, School
of Planning, Design and Construction, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, USA
Tel.: 001-517-353.8743
E-mail: hamlin@msu.edu
Transylvanian Review
of Administrative Sciences,
Special Issue 2015, pp. 55-70
56
1. Introduction
The public sector throughout the world has been engaged in reform eff orts for
more than three decades. These eff orts have been wide-ranging in both purpose
and process. Major purposes of reform have been to make government more
effi cient, eff ective and responsive. Rightly or wrongly, effi ciency has been a concern
because many have seen government as ineffi cient. Perceived reasons for this have
been unmotivated public employees, high cost procurement processes and general
corruption.
Government has been seen as not eff ective enough not just because of effi ciency
concerns in the narrow sense of output per unit, but also because of lack of direction,
strong leadership and suppression of innovation. Responsiveness issues have resulted
from citizens concerns about the lack of bo om up connection between citizen desires
for public services and public motivation to respond. In short, even in representative
democracies, the connection between political demands and bureaucratic response
has been perceived to be slow and weak.
Others have pointed out that corporations, particularly those with oligopolistic
positions, can also become ineffi cient, unresponsive, short-term oriented, and corrupt.
Whether or not and to what extent the perceptions of government versus the private
sector are correct, one thread that has run through the public administration reform
movement is that governments should act more like private companies, responding
to market demand and competing to fi nd the most effi cient and eff ective methods.
In the 1980’s a strong movement in the U.S. focused on reforming governments
in a variety of ways that injected market forces and private sector expertise into the
governmental process. Some of the eff orts included: the application of public-choice
economic theory (Tollison, 1984), private procurement of public services (Boyne,
1998), and public-private partnerships (Leuca, Hamlin, and Van Ravensway, 2011).
The era of Regan, Nakasone and Thatcher witnessed the push for the privatization of
government on three continents (Hamlin and Lyons, 1996). The 1993 book Reinventing
Government, started a movement by off ering a set of specifi c examples of how market
forces could be injected into public policy without changing government’s basic
structure or mission (Osborne and Gaebler, 1993).
This thrust, which is still alive, today, has been successful in changing the
dialogue about how to reform government. Even when pro-market eff orts to
reinvent government have failed, they have highlighted new areas of concern about
governance. How do we answer the following questions with respect to each of
the goods or services demanded by society: 1) Who should produce those goods
or services?; 2) How much should be produced?; 3) Who pays?; 4) What price?; 5)
Who benefi ts?; 6) What level of quality should be demanded?; 7) What underlying
infrastructure should support production?
For each of the questions above, we also have to decide: 1) Who determines the
answer to the (above) questions?; 2) On what criteria are the answers are based?;
57
3) Who are these decision-makers accountable to (or who is accountable to whom)?
(Buchanan and Tollison, 1984).
Planned economies try to make all of these decisions based on rational analysis
through centralized decision making. Yet, all a empts at planned economies are
overwhelmed with the magnitude and speed with which all of these decisions have to
be made. And, rational analysis seldom escapes various forms of bias. Market forces
always creep back into the system, either intentionally, or through black markets.
Pure market economies try to rely on market forces to make all decisions, but
are always overwhelmed with the high level of externalities present in nearly every
action. Very few markets for goods and services can be said to fl awlessly exhibit
Adam Smith’s pure-competition invisible hand.
One way to look at public administration reform is to seek the right balance
between technocratic planning and management and the injection of market forces,
while maintaining governments’ ability to set goals that lead to the achievement of a
public purpose and the public interest. A part of this thrust has been to look to the
business world for tools that would help fi nd that balance. One of the tools coming
out of the world of business that has been adapted and adopted by the public sector
is strategic planning.
The purpose of this paper is to describe briefl y the history, process and future of
strategic planning in local governments in the US, a story that is somewhat diff erent
than that in Europe. The fi rst section looks briefl y at the historic roots of strategic
planning in the U.S., how that history might be diff erent from that in Europe. The
second section describes how strategic planning is typically done in the U.S., with the
third section providing a case study. Then some conclusions are drawn.
2. Background: A brief history of strategic planning in the U.S.
Strategic management is more than 2 millennia old and has military origins. The
word ‘strategy’ may come from the Greek word ‘strategos’, ‘general of the army’.
In the modern context, strategic planning may have come from the Harvard Policy
Model developed by the Harvard Business School in the 1920’s. The Harvard Policy
Model is o en considered one of the fi rst strategic planning methodologies for
private businesses. The model defi ned ‘strategy’ as a pa ern of purposes and policies
that acts as a common thread or underlying logic that holding a business together.
Strategy weaves a pa ern that unites company resources, senior management, and
market information. This sort of comprehensive, embodiment approach was lost for
a while. In the 1950’s, the strategic planning’s focus shi ed away from organizational
policy and structure toward a be er way to organize day-to-day management. The
focus was on how to ride herd on things like shi ing markets and competitive threats
that lead to risks and opportunities. This kind of strategic planning became a common
and accepted management tool in nearly all Fortune 500 companies, as well as many
smaller companies (Blackerby, undated).
Through the 1970’s, strategic planning was mainly found in corporations. The
primary private sector strategic concerns such as market share, customer service,
58
advertising, industry growth, and risk management were not salient to local
governments. Federal and state bureaucracies focused on program planning. The
result was o en an emphasis on internal concerns or program inputs such as taxes,
fees, funding, staffi ng levels, waste, and fraud. Eventually, those saying to run
government more like a business and get more ‘bang for the buck’, changed the focus
from inputs to outputs (Blackerby, undated).
Former Ford Motor Corporation Wiz Kid and President, and, later, U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert S. McNamara advocated scientifi c management. He promoted the
above-mentioned trend in strategic planning by connecting planning activities to
the budget through program budgeting, and ultimately the planning, programming,
budgeting system (PPBS). Other private sector initiatives considered for adoption by
the public sector were zero-based budgeting, reengineering, total quality management
(TQM), and continuous quality improvement (CQI). At the time, this author heard a
Ford executive voice a familiar refrain: ‘The private sector has been working hard
to reestablish competitiveness in a rapidly changing world. It is about time that the
public sector (in the U.S.) did the same’.
At the local government level in the U.S. the word ‘planning’ tended to refer to
urban planning.
Paradoxically, one of the peculiarities of local public management in the U.S. has
to do with the nature and history of the urban planning profession. This aspect has
not always been refl ected in the U.S. public administration literature because the
public administration professional organization and the urban planning professional
organization seldom communicate and cooperate.
Urban planning in Europe has had deep roots in the design professions of
architecture and landscape. One can argue that this goes back centuries. The result has
been that city planning usually focused on design and the physical aspects of urban
structure such as the location of streets and buildings, street design and streetscapes.
This tradition carried over into Latin America and Asia is still salient today, although
changing.
The same tradition was initially prevalent in the U.S. Things like the L. Enfant
plan for Washington, D.C (1791), the Commissioner’s grid iron street plan for New
York City (1811) and the Columbia Exposition in Chicago (1893) were evidence of that
design orientation (Campbell, 2015). Yet, these were long before the formalization of
a planning profession and professional organization. A transition took place at an
earlier stage of the U.S. planning profession toward the concept of comprehensiveness
than in Europe. A comprehensive plan looks at the long-term and interconnected
implications of nearly all facets of local government.
So, the diff erent path of the US urban planning profession is, perhaps, because
it had a diff erent kind of origin. Urban planning in the U.S. grew, in part, out of the
municipal reform movement (Wheeland et al., 2014). The municipal reform movement
was a part of a more general reform era o en called the Progressive Era (Clingermayer
and Feiock, 2001). The U.S. Progressive Era was from approximately 1890 to 1919.
59
The Progressive Era included the tenement house movement, the nursing movement,
women’s suff rage, civil service reform, increased focus on urban sanitation and an
aggressive a ack on corruption in government, particularly in cities (Cocks, Holloran
and Lessoff , 2009).
2.1. The City Manager movement
A signifi cant result of the municipal reform movement was the creation of the
city manager movement. Wealthy businessmen were o en the promoters of the city
manager movement. These ‘city fathers’ were disturbed by the existence of big city
political bosses. Those political bosses were able to remain in power and keep control
of the city legislative body by doling out patronage as a way of building a political
campaign structure. This sometimes involved corruption and infl uence peddling.
Much of the blame for the ineffi ciency of government was put on ‘politics’ and the
political class (Stillman, 1974).
The solution was perceived to be to reduce politics and increase objectivity in
government. One component of the municipal reform movement and the progressive
era was the creation of municipal research bureaus, as local independent, non-profi t
organizations to act as watchdogs over the political class. The business community
and wealthy city fathers funded municipal research bureaus. Their job was to point
out waste in government, promote effi cient processes and look out for corruption.
A second related component of the municipal reform era was promotion of
the use of scientifi c management principals. A third component was an a empt to
professionalize city managers and other municipal employees through education,
mid-career training, and the creation of professional organizations with codes of
ethics. The creation of a professional civil service to reduce patronage and increase
competency was another part of the Progressive Era.
And, the most important component of the municipal reform movement has
been the creation of a city manager position within a city manager-form of local
government. Some characteristics of the city manager form have been: 1) no separation
of powers; 2) a city council elected at large so as to reduce confl ict between parts of
the city and promote consensus on the council; 3) a professional city manager hired
by the council, not elected; and 4) department heads under the city manager rather
than under an elected mayor.
Theoretically, the council is only supposed to deal with policy issues, with day-to-
day management le to the city manager. Not only is the council elected at large, but,
the terms of council members are staggered to create greater stability and continuity.
Also, theoretically, the city manager is to be a trained, full-time professional manager
who does not get involved in politics or even policy debates. He/she focuses on day-
to-day management. The manager serves at the pleasure of the council and is subject
to periodic management performance reviews.
The not-so-hidden agenda of all of these characteristics of the city manager system
is that politics is dirty and the political class is not to be trusted. The municipal
60
corporation should be run more like a private corporation, with scientifi c management
principles applied whenever possible.
That the city manager movement is still strong a century later is a testament
that many of these perceptions underpinning the movement were correct, at least
in some circumstances in the U.S. (Otis, 2007). However, most cities and most local
governments have not adopted this style of governance. The debate between the
city manager form and the traditional strong mayor form centers on the ability of
a democracy to make a distinction between several concepts. They are: 1) politics;
2) policy; 3) administration; and 4) management. While most people feel that they
understand the diff erences, this debate continues in the fi eld of public administration.
Certainly, large areas of defi nitional overlap exist between the four. The debate
conjures up many other issues such as how much technocracy is a good thing, and
what are the basic tenets of scientifi c management.
Formalized urban planning in the U.S. also grew out of the Progressive Era. The
tenement house movement and the concern for greater sanitation in big cities lead in
many ways to building codes, housing codes and the concept of zoning as a way of
managing overall urban development, connecting it to issues of health and safety. The
New York State Tenement House Act was passed in 1901. The fi rst formal planning
commission was started in Hartford, Connecticut in 1906. Harvard off ered the fi rst
course in urban planning in 1909. The fi rst zoning ordinance was in New York City
in 1916. The American City Planning Institute began in 1917 (Campbell, 2015). In
part, because of their common origins in the Progressive Era, city managers and city
planners in big cities were perhaps more aligned in their thinking at an earlier stage
that was true in Europe.
In the 1980’s when the public sector was looking to the private sector for new
management tools, strategic planning became popular in the public sector. At
this time city managers o en looked to the city’s planning offi ce to undertake the
creation of the strategic plan. In many cases, the planning offi ce was the aggressive
promoter of the idea of doing strategic planning. The strategic planning process fi t in
many ways with the long-range planning process that professional urban planners
were trained to use. Strategic planning became a subject taught in university urban
planning programs in the 1980’s.
Goal se ing, interdisciplinary analysis, the identifi cation of problems and oppor-
tunities, looking comprehensively at the interconnectedness and mutual synergy of
city function such as transportation, housing, parks, water and sewer, employment
and economic development were already a part of the program for planning
professionals. Expanding these functions to social services, recreation, and health
care was not such a jump.
Strategic planning demanded a diff erent time frame from the long-range (30-year)
planning typically done by urban planning offi ces, and greater impetus to take action
in the short-run. But, planners in the 1980’s were o en anxious to embrace the shorter
time horizon so as to see their plans come to fruition.
61
3. How strategic planning is done in the U.S.
3.1. Strategic planning as a tool
Perhaps as a result of the historic precedents, the use of strategic planning as a
community planning and management tool has become more prevalent. Once
thought of primarily as a business tool, strategic planning has become popular in the
public realm, especially for local communities faced with ever-tighter fi scal resources
while trying to maintain or enhance the quality of life (Hinţea, Hamlin and Hudrea,
2013).
In an environment that is increasingly complex and dynamic, communities are
constantly facing the two predominant policy exercises – problem solving and
opportunity creation. Both demand a ention and resources. How best to address
both of these, o en at the same time, requires tools, skills and a defi ned methodology
that can address what are essentially both sides of the same coin. While there are
numerous opinions and thoughts on this topic – the one methodology that has
demonstrated its utility is strategic planning.
Strategic planning is an action-oriented process and methodology that can
bring together four very critical elements of any problem solving or opportunity
creation situation: what to do, how to do it, what to do it with, and fi nally, when,
or by when. It provides for a disciplined focus on the issue at hand, and creates the
right environment for developing an appropriate strategy. Strategic planning is a
methodology designed for results.
3.2. The relationship to community planning and management
Early endeavors at wide spread community planning and management in
America, i.e., the 1950’s through 1970’s, were focused primarily on the comprehensive
plan. The fi rst nation-wide creation of city master plans was the result of funding
by the US Federal Government under section 701 of the Housing Act of 1954. The
comprehensive plan, or master plan as it was sometimes called, is a long-range
vision for the desired development and quality of life for a community. Included in
this vision has been the a empt to look at the needed short and longer term capital
investments that would be required to implement the plan. This has been embodied
in the Capital Improvements Program (CIP), a six-year program that refl ects the type
and level of capital necessary to realize that vision. The CIP has been a formal part of
the comprehensive plan. This comprehensive plan and CIP thus became the principal
planning and management tool for communities for nearly three decades.
The mid-1980’s saw a major shi by local planners and policy makers on how
best to plan for, and manage communities. The 1980’s experienced rapid shi s in
technology, community demographics and community economies. People and
industries were becoming more mobile. U.S. core cities were aging in people and
infrastructure, and technology was changing everything from communication to how
and where things were made. These changes were occurring more rapidly than in
62
the past, and planners and policy makers were facing more rapid changes in their
communities. Just as in the corporate world, communities found themselves in fast-
moving competition with one another as a mobile population and highly mobile
fi nancial capital could move quickly from one to another. It was becoming more
diffi cult to maintain the long view when the short term was changing much more
quickly. Focusing on the short term, and addressing these rapid changes became the
priority. Communities were seeking solutions rather than visions.
Community planners, in response, shi ed their focus from long-range planning
to shorter-range problem solving. Identifying and solving problems in the near term
(three to fi ve years) took precedent over twenty-year-horizon dreaming. Just as in
the corporate case, the strategic planning model, particularly the SWOT version,
became a primary tool for planners and policy makers for the next 15 years. Strategies
replaced visions and problem solving replaced opportunity creation.
While appealing to policy makers, this short-term, problem-solving focus began
raising questions and issues within the communities on the eff ectiveness of the
strategies when done within the vision ‘vacuum’. That is to say, the communities
were beginning to ask ‘is the solution to a problem consistent with where we want to
go as a community?’ Even worse – do we know where we want to be as a community?
There became a growing concern that too much emphasis on short-term, strategic
planning was causing communities to lose sight of a longer-term end game – or
vision. Without the vision did any of this make sense?
In this sense, public strategic planning went through a similar cycle as it did in the
business world. Instead of the overwhelming emphasis on SWOT, strategic planning
returned to its roots of focusing on organizational values, mission defi nition, goals
and objectives. It returned to defi ning the interwoven policies and beliefs that justify
the organizations existence and what holds it together.
3.3. Creating the right tool – the marriage of city planning and strategic planning
While logic might say that combining comprehensive planning and strategic
planning makes sense and should have been the model from the beginning, the reality
is that both management tools were developed with diff erent end games in mind.
Comprehensive plans were meant to create the visionary end game – a community
values document – rather than a road map. Comprehensive plan implementation
was viewed more as a set of activities meant to permit the vision to occur – not
direct it. Likewise, strategic planning was a model designed to address an issue in
the intermediate term – a resource management tool of sorts. Strategic plans may
have had the obligatory vision statement but at the community level they were not so
much visionary as action documents.
Combining both tools into a broader community planning and management
process is the great advent of the new millennium. The process combines the process
of creating not just a vision statement but also, the visible vision of the future
community with all of the interconnected parts and with the necessary road map to
63
get there. A community vision will contain many goals and outcomes that can be
both varied and complex. Creating strategic plans for some or all of these varied goals
and outcomes helps set the agenda and coalesces the resources necessary for them to
be realized. The following sections will off er a glimpse at how strategic planning now
has an important role in what we now call community planning and management.
3.4. The relationship to long-range planning
Long-range planning is embodied in the community’s comprehensive plan. The
plan identifi es a set of community goals and objectives that paint the picture of what
the community will look like or can expect in the next twenty years. On its own, the
comprehensive plan doesn’t cause change – it allows change or encourages it to occur.
It’s the canvass on which the community will be painted.
Strategic planning will help bring the comprehensive plan to life. A specifi c
strategic plan can be created for each community objective that is identifi ed in the
comprehensive plan. Each specifi c strategic plan contains the four answers mentioned
earlier for an objective answering: what to do, the how to do it, the what to do it with
and by when. It is a multi-year community work plan in a sense. The structure would
look something like this:
Community goal;
Measurable objective;
Actions;
with each action describing who, where, what, when, why and how, and identifying
persons and resources needed to succeed (Lyons and Hamlin, 2001).
There can be a strategic plan or plan component for each objective, or for those
having the highest priority at the time the comprehensive plan was prepared. If each
strategic plan is designed to be a three to fi ve years strategy, then every fi ve years
the comprehensive plan can be revisited and other objectives can be placed under a
strategic plan.
3.5. Strategic planning is a community planning process
As a community planning and management tool, a strategic plan is a community
planning process. Like the comprehensive plan, each strategic plan needs to be
created and ve ed by the community through public engagement and oversight. This
can be accomplished in two ways:
1. At the comprehensive plan stage: Generally, the public is engaged in a broad
sense when the comprehensive plan is fi rst prepared. Because there is maximum
community a ention at this stage, it presents an opportunity to take advantage
of that a ention by discussing any or all strategic plans. Sometimes this can be
diffi cult if the discussions and strategies require more time and a ention that
may detract from the overall planning process. What may have greater value
at this stage is to conduct a public discussion that prioritizes the objectives and
64
helps to identify which objectives should be part of the fi rst set of objectives to
undergo a strategic planning process.
2. Following the adoption of the comprehensive plan: A more common approach is
to identify during the comprehensive planning process those objectives that can
be prioritized and then identifi ed as candidates for the fi rst round of strategic
plans. A separate process can then follow and each objective that is prioritized
can be subjected to a more detailed public discussion. O en time this includes
establishing a citizens’ commi ee to work with the planning staff to create each
individual strategic plan.
Pu ing each strategic plan under a separate process is more useful since a strategic
plan is much more detailed and requires a more intense discussion and format than
that typically conducted for a comprehensive plan.
3.6. Preparing a strategic plan
As discussed earlier, a strategic plan is an action plan that is meant to accomplish
a specifi c objective (Lyons and Hamlin, 2001). Working with a well-described and
understood objective, the action part of the plan will address these specifi c elements:
a) Specifi c Metric: what is actually going to be accomplished;
b) The Tasks: what specifi c task will be undertaken and completed;
c) Timeframe: the times required for each task (no more than fi ve years);
d) The Who: what specifi c organizations and/or people will be assigned to the tasks
and will be held accountable;
e) Funding: what amount of capital will be required, the source of the capital and
by when;
f) Measurement: what measurements will be required, and by whom, to make the
determination that the strategic plan was accomplished.
A workable strategic plan needs to contain all of these elements – not some – if
it’s going to be useful and understood. Careful a ention needs to be applied to each
element and avoid any ambiguities. A clear, complete and well thought out strategic
plan helps ensure a successful outcome and accountability.
3.7. Identifying resources
One of the great advantages of a strategic plan over other management models is
the combining of actions with resources. A well-prepared strategic plan will provide
great detail regarding the required resources that will be necessary to successfully
complete the plan. The resources required may be varied or challenging – but the
odds for obtaining them are greatly increased when they are initially identifi ed and
clearly defi ned.
Typically, the resources can be grouped in the following manner:
Capital funding sources: Where funding is involved – either in the planning or
development, the amount and source need to be identifi ed. Included here is the timing
65
of the funds so that a schedule is put in place to acquire the funds as they are needed.
When identifi ed, the capital sources and schedule become part of the community’s
Capital Improvement Program (CIP). This step is a two way validation process: 1)
being a part of the CIP helps to strengthen the role of the CIP in the comprehensive
planning process; and 2) being a part of the CIP strengthens the community support
for the Strategic Plan.
Human resources: Each strategic plan will likely require people for its imple-
mentation. The strategic plan will identify what the human resource requirements
are and by when. This enables community managers to allocate the necessary human
resources where necessary and helps to budget them during the normal budgeting
process.
Public-private partnerships: Not all capital funding can or should come from the
public sector. In many cases a strategic plan will look to the private sector for both
participation and resources. O en times the private sector resources will be sought
a er through a public-private partnership. The nature of the partnership and the
extent of the private resources should be clearly spelled out in the plan.
4. Strategic planning: Case study, East Lansing, MI
East Lansing, Michigan is a small but progressive city that is a part of the Lansing
metropolitan area. The metropolitan area is o en referred to as the Capitol Region
because it contains the capitol building of the state of Michigan and the central offi ces
of the Governor, the court system of Michigan and the headquarters of most of the
state’s bureaucracies. The state of Michigan has a population of a li le less than 10
million (9.91 million in 2014), about the population of Greece, Hungary, Sweden or
the Czech Republic, and approximately twice the size of Slovakia, Norway or Ireland.
The budget of the state of Michigan is approximately $22 billion, not counting local
government budgets or the U.S. Federal Government’s contribution to or activities in
the state (about the same as Slovenia)(The World Factbook, undated).
In 2002 the City of East Lansing initiated the process to prepare a new compre-
hensive plan. Up to that point the city was working off of a series of targeted strategic
plans that focused on a broad range of topics: senior housing; downtown redevelo-
pment; neighborhood revitalization, etc. This shotgun approach, while a empting to
address signifi cant needs, lacked the cohesive vision and consensus that is essential
in arriving at the appropriate solutions. This was becoming a community-wide
sentiment. Likewise, the professional planning staff was encouraging policy makers
to shi away from purely short-term thinking to a broader-based approach of creating
a community vision (comprehensive plan) to include a community-based consensus
on a prioritized strategic planning process. Creating a hybrid approach can, in the
end, provide for a more rational program for community planning and management.
66
4.1. The ‘Big Picture’
The fi rst step in the process was the creation of the comprehensive plan. Dubbed
the ‘Big Picture’, the community and planning staff embarked on an extensive public
process of establishing the long-range (20-year) vision for the city. The city was divided
into seven neighborhood-planning areas. Each planning area underwent signifi cant
analyses, data collection and received the a ention of numerous public meetings
over the course of twelve months. At the end of the process the seven planning areas
were combined into an overall vision, and underwent another year of community-
wide public meetings. Out of this process emerged a community consensus on its
future, and where the community wanted to be in the next twenty years. Included
in this vision was a consensus on specifi c outcomes the community wished to see
occur through a series of strategic plans designed to move the community towards
its vision.
4.2. Strategic plans: East Village and Avondale Square
The ‘Big Picture’ comprehensive plan identifi ed several topics and subject areas
that the community expressed a desire to see put into a strategic planning process.
Two will be mentioned here.
East Village: East Village is a thirty-fi ve acre area bordering the Michigan State
University campus on two sides. Michigan State University is a public university with
an enrollment that fl uctuates between 40,000 and 50,000 students. The central campus
is about three kilometers square of university buildings with an additional 3 square
kilometers of experimental farms. The East Village area initially developed in the
1950’s and 60’s in response to the rapidly growth of Michigan State University. East
Village was subject to signifi cant disinvestment, and became exclusively a student-
rental community. The ‘Big Picture’ document focused on the East Village district for
potential redevelopment as follows:
Vision – ‘This area presents an opportunity for redevelopment to benefi t the City
and the University. The plan encourages the formation of a unique environment that
mixes housing, offi ce, shopping and dining in a university-oriented enclave designed
to a ract not only students but young professionals, empty-nesters and others’.
In support of this vision for the area an objective was defi ned which directed the
creation of a detailed strategic plan: ‘Action 2-12: Provide economic incentives to
support implementation of the East Village Redevelopment Plan’.
With these directions from the ‘Big Picture’ document, the community initiated
a strategic planning process to implement an East Village redevelopment plan. The
process included:
1. The formation of a Citizen Commi ee to oversee the planning process;
2. The creation of a detailed redevelopment plan and strategy;
3. The completion of a process to select a Master Developer through a public-
private partnership;
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4. The delineation of a time line and accompanying responsibilities; and
5. The preparation of a budget – of which the public investment became part of the
Capital Improvement Program (CIP).
Avondale Square: Avondale Square is a redevelopment project located in a
historically student-rental dominated area. Recent new student apartment develop-
ments in other parts of the city and region greatly reduced Avondale as an a ractive
location for students. The housing units were old and small, and landlord disinvest-
ment became obvious. Under the ‘Big Picture’ planning process this neighborhood
received signifi cant a ention. A vision for the city’s future suggested this area be
redeveloped and returned to an owner occupied neighborhood. The document said:
Vision – ‘Creative ways should be pursued to increase the number, sizes, styles
and values of owner occupied single family homes in this area to a ract families with
children’.
Objective: ‘Promote incentives for the conversion of homes from rental to owner-
occupied homes’: Action 1-2.1: ‘Through the City’s Community Development Block
Grant Program, redevelop the 600 block of Virginia Avenue into new owner-occupied
homes’.
Under this direction the planning staff , with community input, prepared a
strategic plan that put into motion the city’s program to create what is now called
Avondale Square.
The strategic Plan included:
1. Specifi c required activities;
2. The persons and organizations necessary to implement the strategy;
3. The required sources of capital (funding) and the timing of that funding;
4. The process for selecting private partner and capital; and
5. The preparation of a budget – of which the public investment became part of the
Capital Improvement Program.
4.3. Strategic planning as a human resource planning and budgeting tool
The use of strategic planning in community planning and management is helpful
in establishing municipal staffi ng and budgeting. Because strategic plans are resource
based – people and funding – this approach allows for determining the appropriate
staffi ng levels and funding required over the next three to fi ve years. Strategic planning
becomes a ‘Work Program’ in the sense that the sum total of the pre-determined
strategic plans provides managers with the guidance that is helpful in determining and
managing their resources. The evolution of city planning in America has changed the
way planning departments work today. Most agencies, while periodically preparing
a comprehensive plan, are focused on the action-oriented activities that a plan now
dictates. Strategic plans therefore have become the tool that helps planning agencies
best allocate its resources.
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5. Conclusion
Strategic planning started in the U.S. as a corporate planning endeavor. By the
1960’s, strategic planning had become a major corporate management tool in nearly
every company in the Fortune 500. At fi rst, strategic planning was seen as a way
of interweaving policies, values and purposes together with upper management,
resources and market information in a way that held the organization together. It was
actually seen by the business world as promoting long-term and synergistic thinking.
By the 1950’s the concept was simplifi ed somewhat to focus on SWOT-type analyses
as a way of keeping the corporation afl oat in a more turbulent world.
The public sector has been under pressure for a long time to become more
effi cient, eff ective and responsive. Many have felt that the adoption of many business
management practices would help to accomplish that. One tool borrowed from the
business world has been strategic planning.
At the local government level in the U.S. strategic planning became popular starting
in the 1980’s. In many communities, the planning offi ce of the community was called
on to lead the strategic planning endeavor, and in many cases, the planning offi ce
was one of the advocates of the process. Urban planning offi ces had been doing long-
range comprehensive community plans for decades, but planners became frustrated
as the speed of change in the economy and the urban social environment required
a more rapid action-oriented response to change. Communities found themselves
increasingly in competition with one another and with counterparts throughout the
world.
Urban planners in the U.S. had always been somewhat less oriented toward
architectural design and physical urban development and more comprehensive in
their outlook than their European counterparts. As such, they worked more closely
with the day-to-day management of the city and immediately saw the benefi ts of
strategic planning.
A er about 20 years of this trend, some communities began to realize that the
visioning process of a strategic plan fi t well with the long-range plans that they had
always engaged in. Increasingly, long-range planning (20 to 30-year time horizon)
combined with more action-oriented planning (5-year timeframe) can be an ideal
community planning, development, and management methodology. The capital
improvement program, fi ve-to-six-year plan for fi nancing and building needed
community infrastructure also fi t well into this system, with all components of the
community planning process being updated annually or regularly and involving
extensive citizen input.
In the city of East Lansing, Michigan, U.S., comprehensive community plans are
the result of a multi-year visioning process and call for action-oriented, strategic
plans to be formulated with respect to targeted parts of the community. These plans
convert the vision to a plan of action including identifi cation of actors, resources and
timelines.
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The conclusion is that local community strategic planning is quite diff erent from
that of a corporation. A full and complete community planning and management
process must start, not with the typical generalized visioning statement, but with a
full long-range, comprehensive plan that provides the citizen’s vision of the 20 to
30 year future of the community, in terms of size, density, economic structure and
quality of life of the citizens. Through the establishment of goals and measurable
objectives, specifi c activities, such as the redevelopment of certain neighborhoods, or
the expansion of certain business sectors, are then targeted for the creation of shorter-
term action plans which in themselves function like strategic plans. The entire process
should be updated regularly with signifi cant citizen input.
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