MUMCIPALPLANNINGEN _ . _ . MiDDLE SIZE WCHIGAN CSTIES‘AND; .1 . f . , . -. . masma MUNICEPAL .PLANfileGACTLgf ', Thesis for the Degreeof M. U. P - momma STATE-UNEVERSEW ‘ ‘ - RAYMOND 6:535 GUERNSEY ‘ ' ‘ 1974. ' --..-'-.--.—o- .. N..,oo.q~ ”paced. :1 '1’.‘ -. 71‘ v.00- “q”---Oo~.~ Lian—'- _, HUME & 800K BtNDERY INS. , .. BRARY BINDERS .1._-.-.~_::;r.pon.mulsu i. \l M J WWI/WIWkTWUW/WIW 3 1293 01085 9811 - 'WM "mu“??? 1‘? n A ”‘3 o- . ? All 35925 19951 ABSTRACT MUNICIPAL PLANNING IN MIDDLE SIZE MICHIGAN CITIES AND THE STATE MUNICIPAL PLANNING ACT By Raymond Case Guernsey This research has as its subject an analysis of the Michigan Municipal Planning Commission Act and its impact upon the state of contemporary municipal planning practice in Michigan. The study involves the history and review of contemporary comprehensive city planning legislation in the United States and a review of the history and status of Michigan's municipal planning enabling legislation. The research then focuses on general standards that are now being employed in the practice of municipal planning in the United States. The final parts of the research includes an examination of contemporary municipal planning in eleven (ll) Michigan cities in the lower peninsula. The conclusion of this work identifies certain Michigan contemporary muni- cipal planning enabling legislation needs. An attempt has been made to analyze the intent of the state municipal planning legislation and evaluate how well the goals of that legislation are achieved in todays' practice of municipal planning. Individual cities are examined to determine the adequacy of state legis- lation in the past, the present, and finally what it should be in the future. Raymond Case Guernsey The research methodology included a survey of planning staffs in the eleven (ll) cities, the activities of the planning functions in these same municipalities and participant observation by the author of more than ten years working as the director of planning for a Michigan city of l30,000 persons. The interviews were conducted in the summer of l972. History has shown that municipal planning legislation has not kept pace with todays' municipal planning needs. It is also clear that municipal planning is in a state of flux and evolution--partly brought about by the fast rate of technological change and growth of the state and nation. A movement towards state control of certain land use deci- sions is evident. This movement is spurred by inadequacies in the function of municipal planning today. Michigan's Municipal Planning Act evolved in the late 1920's and is based upon a l928 model planning act. The most important deficiencies of this enabling statute is that it: permits a poliferation of independent advisory bodies; does not consider planning as a necessary part of contemporary city admin- istration; does not consider adequately the environment; or social or economic community planning needs; and does not clarify zoning and other "tools" of planning implementation. This research revealed that the trends in the larger Michigan cities indicate increasing structural blight, a loss of population-- mostly upper and middle income persons, a declining tax base in many communities, and an increase in social "problems.“ The municipalities were also found to have generally ineffective planning functions because Raymond Case Guernsey of limitations on their organization, their responsibilities, and because they are not organized so as to best relate the public inter- est to growth and/or the change that is taking place. Chapter IV and V of this research document these findings and note several approaches that Michigan can utilize to meet municipal planning needs. MUNICIPAL PLANNING IN MIDDLE SIZE MICHIGAN CITIES AND THE STATE MUNICIPAL PLANNING ACT By Raymond Case Guernsey A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER IN URBAN PLANNING School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture 1974 (/SLDNS’T‘ 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS From many persons, educators and fellow associates, I have these years past gained much in knowledge and human understanding. All cannot be done justice here. Professor Keith Honey provided thoughtful and useful advice throughout the research, and I am grateful for his counsel. The survey was made possible by cooperation and time willingly spent by many busy public officials. Katherine Guernsey has provided patient and steady support. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. II. III. IV. CONTEMPORARY COMPREHENSIVE CITY PLANNING LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES--AN OVERVIEW ............ Contemporary comprehensive city planning in the United States .................... Review of city planning legislation - state and national ...................... Significant trends in contemporary comprehensive city planning legislation ........... . . . THE MICHIGAN PLANNING ACT - HISTORY AND PRESENT STATUS History of enactment ................. Relationship to the Standard City Planning Enabling Act ......................... Discussion of provisions of the Municipal Planning Commission Act .................... GENERAL STANDARDS FOR CONTEMPORARY COMPREHENSIVE CITY PLANNING ........................ Contemporary American scene and its effect upon city planning ....................... Elements of the city planning process ........ The city planning agency ............... CONTEMPORARY COMPREHENSIVE CITY PLANNING IN A REPRE- SENTATIVE GROUP OF MICHIGAN CITIES ........... Selection of representative cities and methods of analysis ..................... Research methodology ................. Part I. Overview of Representative Cities ...... Physical characteristics .......... Economic characteristics .......... Social characteristics ........... Government planning ............. iii Page 22 25 25 26 30 35 35 43 51 55 Chapter Page Part II. Organization and Operations of the Planning Functions in the Representative Cities ................... 99 Legal requirements ............. lOl Local government structure ......... l05 Powers, functions and duties ........ ll4 Administrative history ........... ll6 Municipal master plans ........... l2l V. MICHIGAN CONTEMPORARY CITY PLANNING ENABLING LEGIS- LATION NEEDS ...................... 127 Direction for planning legislation .......... l27 Approach to planning enabling legislation ...... l3O Powers to governmental units ............. 134 The city planning agency ............... l35 The planning process ................. 135 The comprehensive development plan and policies . . . l36 The procedures for deriving po icies and making plans ........................ l37 Comprehensive plan and policy effectuation . . . . . . l38 Administrative authority and appeal procedures . . . . l39 Conclusion ...................... 140 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................... l4l APPENDIX ........................... l46 iv Table —l I OmVOfiU'l-DOON _.| _| _.| _| _.a __a 0'! h (A) N —-' O O O O . . . 16. 17. 18. 19. LIST OF TABLES Selected Michigan cities and their population changes . . Population change - county or S.M.S.A. ......... City land area in square miles ............. Changes in total number of dwelling units ........ Major export industries - 1950 . . . .......... Manufacturing establishments (twenty or more employees) . Total retail trade establishments ............ County equalized assessed valuation . .......... Michigan population by age: 1960 - 1990 (April 1 of each year) .............. . ........ Per cent of total population non-white ......... County rural and urban population and migration ..... Hospital admissions per 1,000 persons .......... Health and mobility ................... Grade completion-median number of years ......... School district assessment - Decile distributions of basic skills composite achievement scores ........ Public safety expenditures and known crimes - 1970 Index crime rates per 100,000 persons .......... County deaths from accidents, suicide, and homicide in 1969 ......................... Township commissions .................. Page 57 62 63 65 75 78 79 81 82 82 84 85 88 89 91 92 95 97 Table Page 20. Legal powers and duties of the eleven cities researched ...................... 104 21. Planning function - structural organization and governmental form .................. 107 22. Planning agency level in local governmental hierarchy ....... . . . ............ 109 23. Planning commission membership ............ 112 24. Conclusions from questions relevant to compliance with planning agency recommendations ......... 117 25. Effect of statutory powers on planning function relations ...................... 118 26. Adequacy of financial and personnel resources . . . . 120 27. Expenditures for municipal planning (thousands of dollars) ........ . .............. 122 28. Status of master plans ................ 123 29. Master plan contents ................. 124 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Planning Process Linkages--Vertica1 and Horizontal . . . 9 2. Characteristics of Change ............... 36 3. Total U. S. Population 1790 - 1960 and Estimated 1985 . 37 4. Geographical Location of Selected Cities ........ 58 5. Mean Minimum Temperature - January ........... 67 6. Mean Maximim Temperature - July ............ 68 7. Annual Growing Season ................. 69 8. Classification of Land in Michigan ........... 71 9. Non-Disease Deaths, 1969 ................ 94 vii CHAPTER I CONTEMPORARY COMPREHENSIVE CITY PLANNING LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES--AN OVERVIEW Contemporary comprehensive city p]anning in the United States To obtain an overview of contemporary comprehensive city planning in the United States, it is helpful to first scan the current state of the art and science of city planning that is in common prac- tice. Next a look at the history of the development of planning legis- lation provides a good understanding of how the present system of statutes has evolved. For clarity, the definitions of the basic pro- duCts and functions of city planning, as used in this research, are included. The overview concludes with a look at the significant trends in contemporary planning legislation that are evolving on the national scene. Contemporary city planning in the United States has its roots deep in the western culture and architectural planning of four centur- ies of continuous urban development. The nation's earlier century of colonization and settlement was closely related to traditional European patterns. The later times have witnessed the modification and change of these patterns to the evolving contemporary North American scene.1 1John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 1. 1 Contemporary life, particularly in the United States, has been dominated and distressed by the revolutionary effect of exponen- tial technological change rates since the nineteen forties (1940's).2 These and other life~effecting alterations are bringing a change in planning activities as a result of efforts to improve the traditional planning process. With these changes has come a great deal of confu- sion concerning the role of the city planning function in government, the activities that should be included, and the nature of planning priorities. Schon has commented: Planning is a profession in transformation. The settled technolo- gies associated with city and regional planning have come to seem increasingly inadequate. Roles currently associated with planning require skills, techniques, and theory of a different order. There is increasing dissatisfaction, for example, with our inabil- ity to integrate physical and social planning. Urban renewal and public housing have failed because they are unable to anticipate or confront the social consequences of certain changes in the physical environment. And the most recent nationwide effort to link physical and social planning, the Model Cities program, demon- strated our inability to formulate sensibly and in detail the relationship between physical and social change. Most Model Cities plans are inventories of "programs" without a framework of theory to connect physical to social change or one program to another. The long-standing dissociation of planning from "implementation," in which the planner sees himself as producer of a planning product to be handed on to others for action, separates planning from political and interpersonal skills. Planners become, then, servants or victims rather than shapers of the political process. There is a rising level of discussion about forecasting or designing "alternative futures," particularly with respect to technology and its consequences. But we do not have effective ways of forecasting and planning for events twenty-to-thirty years hence. Most planning 2Robert Propt, The Office-A Facility Based on Change (Elmhurst, Illinois: The Business Press, 1968), p. 12. is short-term and crisis oriented. We have not, however, learned to deal with crisis in a way that would improve our processes and tools for anticipating and working toward longer term futures. Most planning reflects the departmentalization of health, welfare, housing and the like. But the issues about which we are coming to care the most--issues of environmental management, for example, or of social and economic inequity--resist departmentalized solutions. Others have commented that the art and science of city plan- ning has been enlarged to consider the role of art, spirit, science and technology. between the planning environment and identity roles in it for citizens, 4 In addition, uncertainty exists over relationships politicians and planners.5 An indication of this changing nature of the practice of planning can be gained by comparing the Definition of Planning and Related Professions, listed in the American Institute of Planners (known as A.I.P.) membership roster for 1962-1963,6 with the Areas of Concentration, contained in the A.I.P. roster for 1970.7 Both comparisons are concerned with membership qualifications. The 1962- 1963 A.I.P. membership roster listed the following: Employment by or consulting services to a governmental comprehens- ive planning agency. 3Donald A. Schon, "Comments on Educating Planners," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4 (Baltimore, Maryland: Port City Press, 1970), p. 220. 4William R. Ewald, Jr., Environment for Man (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 4. 5Walter K. Johnson, "Review Forum," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXXV, No. 4 (Baltimore, Maryland: Port City Press, 1969), p. 285. 6American Institute of Planners, Membership_Roster 1962-63 (Washington, D.C.: 917 Fifteenth Street, N.W., 1962), pp. 6-7. D.C.: 7American Institute of Planners, Roster - 1970 (Washington, 917 Fifteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., I970), p. 11. 3 Professional instruction in a recognized planning school. Employment by or consulting services to a governmental or private agency in connection with comprehensive planning analysis or design, concerning the location, character and extent of major public improvements or private developments in relation to overall commun- ity development. Research of a character that relates directly to the above types of planning activity. Similar work with civic or educational bodies. The 1970 roster described the parameters of planning as the A.I.P. interpreted them in at that time: Administration for planning and development Comprehensive physical planning Resource development Social planning Transportation planning Urban design Research methodology Economic planning Environmental sciences planning Renewal planning Planning law Programming and budgeting. In relatively short time it can be seen that the practice of community planning has changed in the officialdom of the planning pro- fession. Clearly, its scope, role and concepts are expanding. The major directions that will be receiving the attention of the practice of city planning in the future are beginning to emerge. Does Michigan's city planning enabling statutes provide the direction, flexibility and authorization essential for city planning to effectively help correct our urban problems? This concern and the nature and trend of these directions will be examined in the body of this thesis. Contemporary comprehensive city planning, as used in this research, has been ably defined by Chapin as: . . . a means for systematically anticipating and achieving . adjustment in the physical environment of a city consistent with social and economic trends and sound principles of civic design. It involves a continuing process of deriving, organizing and pre- senting a broad and comprehensive program for urban development and renewal. It is designed to fulfill local objectives of social, economic and physical we 1-beings considering both immediate needs and those of the foreseeable future. It examines the economic and physical characteristics both as an independent entity and as a component of a whole cluster of urban centers in a given region; and it attempts to design a physical environment which brings these elements into the soundest and most harmonious plan for the develop- ment and renewal of the urban area as a whole.8 The effectuation of comprehensive city planning that is implied in the above definition has, unfortunately, in practice been more of an ideal rather than of common practice. The reasons for disparity need to be examined. But it is necessary to pursue this subject later and to continue this overview to establish a context necessary for under- standing the analysis and findings of this research. There are a variety of tools and practices utilized in the conduct of city planning. Foremost, and the principle manifesto of comprehensive city planning, has been the Comprehensive Plan or General Plan. This plan is an official document created under the authority of state and local legislation and adopted by a local governmental plan- ning commission to guide decisions for the physical development of the community. Kent defines the General Plan as: . . . the official statement of a municipal legislative body which sets forth its major policies concerning desirable future physical development; the published general-plan document must include a single, unified general physical design for the community, and it must attempt to clarify the relationships between physical- 8F. Stuart Chapin, Jr., Urban Land Use Planning_(2nd ed., Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1965), p. vi. ‘ development policies and social and economic goals."9 Notable is Kent's insistence on the General Plan being adopted by the legis- ‘lative body. In practice, the legislative bodies required adoption of the Comprehensive Plan is only embodied in aBproximately one- third of the nation's state enabling statutes. Examining the uses of the master plan as envisioned by the enabling statutes it is found, as Harr finds, that: . . An analysis of the planning enabling laws discloses a dicho- tomy in the ends sought to be achieved through a master plan: one is largely didactic and deals with the virtues of planning; another-- and quite distinct--portion moves away from speculation and is con- cerned with directing the application of human energies in land development. Recognition of this split may lead to understanding the difficulties of making any practical application of the pure theory of the master plan. Again, it may help reshape the enabling acts to emphasize the processes by which the master plan manages to get itself realized. The larger share of the typical enabling act concerns itself with the making of plans. The uses to society of this mechanism are envisioned as six broad ty es: (1) a source of information; (2) a program for correction; (3) an estimate of the future; (4) an indicator of goals; (5) a technique for coordination; and (6) a device for stimulating public interest and responsibility . . . . . A second set of functions allotted to the plan by most of the planning enabling laws deals with the plan's effects upon local egislative controls of land use. It is this second broad group of uses of the plan which concerns the interest groups affected by planning. These uses seem to divide into five broad types: (1) a prophesy of public reaction; (2) a tool for the planning commission in making reports; (3) a guide to effectuating procedures and measures; (4) an ordinance regulating the use of land; and (5) a guard against the arbitrary. 9T. J. Kent, Jr., The Urban General Plan (San Francisco, California: Chandler Publishing Company, 1964), p. 18. ' 10Beverly J. Pooley, Planning and Zoning_in the United States (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Legislative Research Center, University of Michi- gan, 1961), p. 19. HCharles M. Haar, The Master Plan: An Impermanent Constitution, Law and Contemporary Problems, V61. 20 (Durnham, Nbrth Carolina: DUke University, 1955), pp. 355-356. The use of the master plan obviously requires other planning tools in the conduct of the planning process. The most noteworthy of the tools are: (1) land subdivision controls; (2) land use zoning; (3) capital improvement budgeting; (4) urban renewal plans and programs; (5) architectural and historic plans; (6) policies, plans and goal objective statements; and (7) socio-economic measures such as: educa- tion, economic, and housing programs and/or plans. An additional and important implementation function, vital in the planning process, is the planning agency. An administrative func- tion, the planning department is part of local government, usually a line-staff agency that retains professional planning staff. Adminis- tratively and technically responsible for the city's planning effort, today's planning agencies organizationally have been shifting toward the function of aiding the chief executive and toward the development of strategy and guidance of the total community development function-- quite often formalized and known as community development departments. The principle functions of the planning agency are generally understood to include: the making and maintaining of the master plan; helping to establish community objectives; provide consultation; and to educate the public concerning planning and to coordinate and administer functions which lead to implementation of the community's development objectives. A trend toward including socio-economic programs, as a part of normal agency functions, is clearly detectable. Dennis O'Harrow has appropriately concluded that: Planning strives hard to be a science, but it will always remain fundamentally an art. Which is to say that while techniques are important and constant improvement desirable, the personal skill of the planner-—of the artist-—is paramount. What he does is not nearly as crucial as how he does it.12 Review of city planning legislation - state and nationaT Further understanding of the activity and legislative rela- tionships of contemporary comprehensive city planning can be gained if it is conceptually linked to the national hierarchical government structure. City planning is placed at the lower (local) level of four broad government levels consisting of national, state, district, and local governments. Within each of these levels of government, compre- hensive planning should function as a horizontal process and should interlink policy, coordinative, and integrated functional planning processes in a vertical manner. The three lower levels of these rela- tionships are portrayed in Figure 1. Historically, the first legislation permitting the establish- ment of a city planning commission was enacted in 1907 by the Connecti— cut legislature through an amendment to the Hartford City Charter.13 Some states followed Connecticut's lead. In 1913 the Massachusetts legislature formulated legislation requiring all cities of over 10,000 population to create official planning boards.14 The legislation of 12International City Managers Association, Principles and Practice of Urban Planning(Washington, D.C., 1968), preface. 13Mel Scott, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley, California: University of CalifOrnia Press, 1969), p. 80. 14International City Managers Association, Principles and Practice of Urban Planning, p. 22. Figure 1. Planning Process Linkages--Vertical and Horizontal. "---‘~ " / . . . STATE ‘\ “In”! (and: sum LEVEL — - , POLICY 1 1==..... 5:... I . ’ mom I k «N :E O 1’ N O 2! .q > I'- Lw HO RIZO NTAL IF RAI ~77. NOMTON 1, 2 ('1 .< ,1' O f DISTRICT LEVEL VERTICAL INFORMATION FLOW VERTICAL POLICY FLOW 10 the states permitted a poliferation of independent "citizen planning bodies." They soon proved to be uncoordinated and insufficient to properly provide for the function of city planning. A model state enabling act was therefore drafted and submitted at the 1913 National Conference on City Planning.15 Notable among the authorizations in the act were the provisions which: (1) permitted the establishment of a city planning department and its staffing, responsible to the planning commission; (2) authorized consultation to advise city government and private companies on matters concerning the physical environment--as related to the city plan; and (3) empowered and required the city plan- ning commission to accept responsibility for the city plan. Three years later the National Municipal League published a Model City Charter16 containing provisions for the establishment and function--as a part of city government--of a city planning commission. The U. S. Department of Commerce, in 1924, published "A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (S.Z.E.A.)."17 The Act required a zoning plan, designed to lessen congestion on public streets, promote public health, safety and general welfare, to be prepared. The plan is not, however, clearly related by statute to the comprehensive master plan. A great deal of confusion concerning this relationship continues to this day, on a national level and within the State of Michigan. 15National Conference on City Planning, Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on City‘Planning_(Chicago, Illinois, 1913), p. 248. 16National Municipal League, A Model City Charter and Munici- pal Home Rule (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1916), p. 51. 17U. S. Department of Commerce, Advisory Committee on City Planning and Zoning, A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (Washington, D.C., 1924 . 11 These and similar reform actions all became a part of the evolving city, state, and legislative basis for city planning and led to the promulgation of the "Standard City Planning Enabling Act" (S.C.P.E.A.).18 This Act was distributed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover in 1928. The provisions of the Standard Act expanded upon previous legislation, and it was an attempt to provide a uniform approach to the role of city planning in the United States. In sub- stance the Standard Act was constructed of five titles. The first title (title one) established the importance of the city planning com- mission and charged it with the preparation, maintenance and sole adop- tion of the master plan. The Standard Act further provided for mandatory referral to the planning commission of all public projects affecting the physical development of the city. Disapproval of the character, location, and extent of a proposed public improvement could be overridden only by a two-thirds vote of the legislative body or of the board of the agency proposing the improvement. Powers previously vested in a zoning commission were to be transferred to the planning commission. The master plan was not concretely defined, but was to be drafted to include a zoning plan for both public and private land usage and plans for public streets, grounds, building sites, public works and utility constructions. 18U. S. Department of Commerce, Advisory Committee on City Planning and Zoning, A Standard City Planning Enabling_Act (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1928). 12 Titles two, three, and four concerned land subdivision controls with extra territorial powers, reservation of future street right-of-ways, and outlined a permissive procedure for regional plan- ning, respectively. Title five contained miscellaneous provisions. Problems caused by the S.C.P.EgA. have been outlined by Kent as: 1. confusion between the zoning plan 13d the working-and-living areas sect1on of the general plan, 2. piecemeal adoption of the general plan; 3. lack of a specific definition of-the essential physical ele- ments to be dealt with in the general plan; 4. basic questions as to the scope of the general plan; and 5. distrust of the municipal legislative body.20 Across the United States the criticism of the S.C.P.E.A. is intensify- ing. Recently the American Law Institute summarized the following problems of the S.C.P.E.A. and the S.Z.E.A.: 1. The attempt to guide development of land by prohibitions and restrictions, without using the power of public acquisition and disposition of land and the power of Bublic spending to secure desired development, is likely to e an ineffective method of ordering land development. The unrestricted grant of power to the smallest unit of local government (town, village, city) has produced a distortion in metropolitan growth and almost impotence in attack on regional problems such as pollution, inadequate supply of decent hous- ing, proper management of the environment, transportation and the like. The unrestricted grant of power to local governments has pro- duced, in many cases, incompetent planning and, in many others, 19 20 The General Plan as used here is the same as the master plan. Kent, The Urban General Plan, p. 33. 13 an administrative process which runs counter to many concepts of fairness and orderly procedure. 4. The idea of a "static master plan" that is a map representing optimum civic design in its ultimate form has not only failed to guide land development because no legal significance was attached to that plan by S.Z.E.A. and S.C.P.E.A., but the idea is itself faulty because the forces of urban growth and decay are too dynamic to be ordered in such ridged fashion. 5. Ordinances enacted under existing laws by a host of small but growing urban communities at the periphery of a large metro- politan complex have been unable to deal effectively with large-scale development of viable new communities, "industrial parks," "residential subdivision," "regional shopping areas," may result from existing zoning districts but the relation of industry to housing of the work force and the relation of each to a whole complex of urban services such as schools, hospitals, day-care centers, neighborhood shopping areas, and the like, are often ignored; in part because the unit of government regu- lating developmgqt is too small to plan comprehensively for ese serv1ces. In application, the S.C.P.E.A. has instigated and influenced reform reactions that carry into the present-affecting state and local legisla- tion. This is particularly true in Michigan. In the 1930's, while many states including Michigan, were adopting legislation based on the S.C.P.E.A., the great depression brought the accelerating expansion of planning to a halt. There was little concern for planning legislative needs when very little planning was being done. The revival of activity and interest came about in the later 1930's and early 1940's as the result of activities of the National Planning Board and a few universities.22 The Board encouraged and 21The American Law Institute, A Model Land Development Code, Draft No. 2 (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1970), pp. XIV-XV. 22Edward M. Bassett, Model Laws for Planning Cities, Counties and States, Vol. VII, Harvard City Planning Studies, 1935. 14 aided state planning endeavors which, in turn, stimulated local governments by promotion and by assistance of an educative, legislative and technical nature.23 Increasing concern for deterioration in the older inner cities and the movement of the urban population to the suburbs was then notable. This revival was short-lived as World War II soon absorbed the nation's energies and resources. The nation put aside the majority of planning activities until the war's conclusion. Legislative excep- tions occurred in 1943 when the American Society of Planning Officials (ASPO) introduced a model Urban Redevelopment Law.24 A strong interest in such activities was evident as a number of states enacted redevelop- ment legislation in the next few years. The end of World War II saw the evolvement of hotly contested national debates over housing and redevelopment legislation. The Hous- ing and Development Acts of 1945, 1947 and 1948 were of importance as they generally had a direct effect on state legislation and the housing and redevelopment activities of the local planning function. In addi- tion, they set the stage for the 1949 act-—a planning milestone. Peace time adjustment saw great movements of people, business and industry. Urban sprawl soon created monotonous physical environments, blanketed open spaces, and fed the fires of real estate speculation. Advancements in science and technology weakened the necessity for a 23Russell Van Nest Black, Planning and the Planning Profes- sion - The Past Fifty Years 1917-1967, American Institute of Planners (Washington, D.C.: October, 1967), p. 9. 24 Scott, American City Planning, pp. 425-465. 15 compact urban pattern. Grabbing and vying for property tax base, the city and its suburbs established one of the chief obstacles to compre- hensive areawide planning. Like an incoming tide came the increasing flow of low-income and minority persons to the inner city and simultan- eously occurred a correspondingly steady outward flow of the more affluent predominately white population to the suburbs. There evolved the "city with a city" conditions that exist today in the major urban centers of the nation. These conditions are clearly evident in Michi- gan's major cities. The Housing and Development Act of 1949 required, as a national policy, that all redevelopment plans conform to the general community master plan. This helped to avoid some confusion, but the growing trend for housing, redevelopment and similar agencies within a single local government to go their own way emerged as a deterrent to coordin- ated and harmonious community development activities. The Housing and Development Act of 1949 created a tremendous impact on city planning, an impact which recent history has shown has influenced the metropolitan scale of planning, while at the same time provided local governments the aids to "go their own way." It focused on the rebuilding of blighted areas; placed housing needs and concerns in the forefront of national attention; and challenged the planning approach to community development.25 The Act was unquestionably ahead of the nation's ability to properly and fully execute. Leadership was established. Universities moved to develop planning programs to train qualified city planners; a 25Scott, American Citnglanning, pp. 464-465. 16 number of state governments, who had not already done so, adopted enabling legislation; and many cities were stimulated to seek closer organization and relations between public housing, planning and redev- elopment agencies. Continued refinement occurred in the housing acts of the next several years. The next important city planning legislative milestone occurred in 1954. Section 701 of the Housing Act of 195426 has proved to have a wide impact on small cities, metropolitan areas, and state planning. This section: (a) defined comprehensive planning and the minimum contents of the general plan; (b) authorized planning grants to cities and communities of less than 50,000 population and to regional planning agencies with the purpose of encouraging planning coordination among governments and otherwise acted as a strong leadership and econo- mic impetus for community planning. During the sixties two national laws were enacted which were particularly important to city planning. The Demonstration Cities and 27 Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 and the Housing and Urban Devel- 28 have both set goals and provided assistance which opment Act of 1968 will influence city planning functions and legislation throughout the seventies and beyond. The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan 26U. 5., Congress, Senate, Housing and Urban Development Act of 1954, Pub. L. 83-560, 83d. Cong., lst sess., 1954, S. 590. 27U. 5., Congress, Senate, Demonstration Cities and Metropol- itan Development Act of 1966, Pub. L. 89-754, 89 Cong., 2d sess., S. 3307. 28U. 5., Congress, Senate, Housing_and Urban Development Act of 1968, Pub. L. 90-448, 90 Cong., lst sess., S. 3497. 17 Development Act is commonly referred to as the Model Cities Act. This Act authorized grants and technical assistance to cities to carry out comprehensive demonstration programs to reverse blight trends and improve the physical and social well-being of the residents of a defined neighborhood. Block grants were authorized and priority pro- cedures established to concentrate and coordinate existing programs. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 contained the most important revisions to the Housing and Urban Development Acts of the sixties. The Act affected city planning in the following areas: 1. Title IV provided additional technical and economic assist- ance for new communities. 2. Title V provided established financial assistance for Neigh- borhood Development Programs (NDP), an improved urban renewal approach. 3. Title VI extensively revised section 701 of the 1954 Act by: a.' Authorizing grants to state planning agencies for assistance to small "district" planning for rural areas. b. Authorized direct grants to regional and district councils of government; to regional commissions and economic development districts; and to cities for which planning is a part of metropolitan planning. c. Broadening the definition of comprehensive planning to include planning for governmental services and for the development and utilization of human and natural resources. d. Requiring the inclusion of a housing element as a part of comprehensive land use plans when federal aid is involved in their preparation. e. Authorized supplementary grants designed to encourage areawide planning. f. Broadened the definition of eligibility of the advance acquisition of land program. 18 In reflecting on federal action, it is clear that the atomic age has focused the nation's resources on defense and world diplomacy. The implementation of the subsequent Housing and Urban Development Acts have clearly provided national leadership but not the economic resources to accomplish enumerated goals. In addition, the lack of national policy in certain related areas has contributed to metropolitan problems. The examination of national, state, and local legislation indicates the role of the states in the development of contemporary city planning legislation has usually been that of a reluctant follower, rather than a dynamic leader. National and local government have generally been the leader and impetus, respectively. All states but Arizona and Texas had established provisions relating to community planning by 1961.29 A review of these Acts re- 30 veals that the S.C.P.E.A. has, in substance, provided the basis for the greater number of these provisions.31 Certain notable exceptions to both the traditional leadership role and the use of the Standard Planning Act have evolved during the last two decades on the state level. In 1961 the State of Hawaii established the first step toward centralization of land use regulatory controls.32 Known as the Hawaiian 29Polley, Planning and Zoning in the United States, p. 13. '30U. S. Department of Commerce, S.C.P.E.A., op. cit. 31Charles M. Haar, The Master Plan: An Impermanent Constitu- tion, pp. 377-418. 32Ira Michael Heyman, "Planning Legislation: 1963 Annual Legislative Review," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXX, No. 3 (Baltimore, Maryland}. Port CifyuPress, T964), pp. 247- 252. 19 Land Use Law,33 the law establishes minimal state-wide land use regulation requirements and provides a guide for state-wide planning through the use of a state general plan. 'Detailed regulation and plan- ning for micro location, character and extent of land uses remains the responsibility of local island governments. The macro area planning is shifted to state government. In 1969, Oregon and Maine also estab- lished state zoning controls.34 Oregon's Act authorized the governor to prepare comprehensive land use plans and establish zoning ordinances for all land not subject to city or county zoning laws. Maine's Act establishes a Land Use Regulation Commission which is authorized to establish land use regulations for all land outside incorporated town- ships and within a prescribed distance--five hundred feet, of public roads, and the shoreline of most lakes and ponds. This commission is also empowered to establish subdivision control regulations. One of the main intents of the regulations is control of population around bodies of water in the state. In practice, nearly one-half of the land in the state is so zoned. The State of Indiana adopted legislation in 1965 affecting counties having a first class city which abolished the powers and duties of all existing county and city planning commissions and transferred them to a metropolitan planning commission. (Currently only 33Act 187 S.L.H., 1961, Title IIF, Chapter 98H, Rev. Laws of Hawaii, 1955 (1961 Supl.) as amended by Act 205, S.L.H., 1963. 34Norman Beckman, "Planning and Urban Development: Legisla- Review - 1968-1969," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXVI, No. 5 (Baltimore, Maryland: Port City Press, Sept., 1970), pp. 345-359. 20 Indianapolis--Marion County).35 The legislation placed all land use control and planning authority in‘a county-wide agency. The Kentucky legislature in 1966 adopted a complete revision 35 The revised Act includes provi- of its local Planning Enabling Act. sions for the preparation, adoption and content of comprehensive plans; official map regulations; capitol improvement program budgeting; sub- division regulations; and zoning regulations. Important aspects of the Act require that: 1. Goals, objectives, and land use elements of a comprehensive plan be completed and adopted by the planning commission prior to the adoption of any zoning regulations; 2. Transportation and community facilities plan elements be completed and adopted prior to the adoption of an official map or subdivision regulations; 3. Once a county-wide planning function is established, no city can form an independent planning unit; 4. Counties with a population over 300,000 and counties contain- ing a first-class city are required to establish a county-wide planning commission; and 5. Cities under 3,000 cannot adopt land use control ordinances. County-wide legislation is provided for these cities. The passage of Public Law 86-380 by Congress in 1959 provided for the establishment of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. The purpose of the Commission is to give continuing study to the relationships among local, state, and national levels of govern- ment. Since 1961 the Commission has annually compiled its recommenda- tions for legislature actions by translating them in the form of draft 35Indiana, Revised Statutes, Annotated, H.A. 1538; Act, 1965. 36Kentucky, Revised Statutes, H.B. 390, 1966. 21 bills and policy statements. The 1966 State Legislative Program37 related county-municipal planning and zoning relationships by suggesting state legislation which contained three important innovations. First, the Act would empower the county to review and approve, for consistency with county-wide planning objectives, certain planning and zoning actions of existing cities between 5,000 and 30,000 population. Second, the county is empowered to exercise its planning and zoning authority in all cities incorporated within the county, until their population exceeds 30,000 after the passage of the Act. The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations noted that: Not only do states have a responsibility for coping with urbani- zation after it has taken place, but they also have a responsi- bility to plan for urbanization to come. The states need to act rather than merely to react. For states to fulfill their key role in the development of urbanization policy, they must have a planning process that will develop the policies needed to channel and guide the growth of the state. The states, through their constitutions and statutes, determine the general outline and many of the details of the specific structure, form and direction of urban growth. They should supply guidance for specific local government, metropolitan, and multicounty planning and develop- ment programs. They should establish a link between urban land use and development oriented local planning efforts and broader regional and national objectives. Although the evolution of effective state planning can be seen in a few states, it is doubtful if planning in any state government has arrived yet at a stage adequate for assuming its appropriate rol§8in the devel- opment of state land use and urbanization policy. 37Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 1966 ngjslative Program, M-27 (Washington, D.C., October, 1965), pp. 250- 262. 38Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, New_ Proposals for 1969, ACIR State Legislative Program, M-39 (Washington, D.C., June, 1968), p. 405-1. 22 Significant trends in contemporary compre- hensive cityyplanning legislation Reviewing the significant overall trends in legislation for contemporary comprehensive city planning, there is a clear and growing recognition by federal and state governmental units that the tradition- ally fragmented local government control of urban development and plan- ning is not capable of resolving the problems of environmental, renewal and development changes. This recognition has led to changes and pro- posals for change in legislation at all levels of government. On the state level, changes in enabling legislation aimed at local government indicate a strong focus on the expansion of the plan- ning function to metropolitan and larger geographical areas. The trend has taken the form of the extension of land use and planning controls to metropolitan and larger geographical distances from the central city. (This extension is much the same as envisioned in the S.C.P.E.A.).39 Other forms taken by this trend are by the state enabling joint programs on a metropolitan-wide basis and by specific acts consolidating planning responsibilities for metropolitan areas. Action within state government has taken the form of creating state planning functions close to deci- sion makers often in the form of a State Department of Community Devel- opment. There has followed a number of related activities such as: control of municipal incorporations; establishment of state-wide land use goals, policies, and regulations (sometimes with the power to supersede local government, particularly in the areas of historic 39U. S. Department of Commerce, A Standard City Plannigg_ Enabligg_Act, pp. 24-25. 23 preservation, environmental concerns and housing for low income families); and direct state involvement in development activities by the creation of state-wide planning and‘development agencies with independent financing, and broad developmental powers or by financial aid and enabling legislation for basic urban“facilities. Federal changes affecting planning in general also have direct impact on curbing fragmentation of state and local planning. The establishment of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968, the Natural Housing Acts, and the proposed National Land Use Policy Act are but a few of the more important changes. The-1971 National Land Use Policy Act, for example, induces states to assume landeuse planning and regulation for environmental and historical concerns. Concern has been raised by 40that federal prOposals threaten their spokesmen for local government traditional control.“ While this allegation is truthful, such steps apparently are necessary. There are also moderate trends toward the adoption of new legislation and the revision of older legislative acts to be in tune with current planning practice and changing times. These trends have taken the following forms on the state level: 1. Enabling legislation which recognizes the desirability of flexible land-use controls and enables local regulations to include planned unit development (P.U.D.) and cluster development options, or similar devices permitting flexi- bility based on design in siting; 40Robert W. Knecht, "Land-Use Planning at the Crossroads," National League of Cities, Nation's Cities, Vol. 9, No. 6 (June, 1971), pp. 30-31. 24 2. Official recognition of the need and the requirement of comprehensive planning as a basis for land use control regulations--particu1arly zoning; 3. The broadening of the legislative content, definition and comprehensiveness for city planning requirements. Example can be identified pertaining to the definition of content requirements of the comprehensive plan, for the expansion of the varied kind of functions authorized in the planning process, and for the involvement of the local decision makers and legislative body directly in the planning process. It is clear that the current state of the art and science of comprehensive city planning is in a state of flux, partly brought about by the rate of technological change and growth of the nation. History has shown that legislation has evolved quite slowly and not kept pace with the nation's contemporary planning needs. 'The significant trends in city planning legislation recognize the needs of the state and nation to change to meet contemporary challenges. But yet no clearly adequate solutions have been universally accepted and applied. Local control of urban development has been seriously inhibited by competition among fractionalized local governments. There appears to be movement toward state control of certain planning and land-use decisions--with some of the impetus coming from increasing federal pressure. What is the form and content of the present city planning legislation in the state of Michigan? What is its history and what are the trends in Michigan's city planning law? These questions are answered in Chapter II of this research. CHAPTER II THE MICHIGAN PLANNING ACT - HISTORY AND PRESENT STATUS History of enactment The enabling statute in Michigan which provides for: city, village and municipal planning; the creation, responsibilities and function of planning commissions; and for planning relationships of the regulation and subdivision of land, is known as the MUNICIPAL PLAN- NING COMMISSION ACT, Act 285 of the Public Acts of 1931, as amended.1 Looking back in history one finds that Act 285 was first introduced in the Senate by the Honorable James E. Lawson, Michigan Senate, on April 23, 1931. The pr0posed Act was given its first and second reading and referred to the Senate Committee on Cities and Villages. This Committee reported the Act to the Committee of the Whole with a favorable recommendation and without amendment. On May 11, 1931 the Senate read the'Act for the third time and passed it--without amend- ment and referred it to the House. The House acted quickly; on May 12, 1931, after reading the Act for the first and second times, the Act was referred to the Committee on City Corporations where the only amendments of record were made. The Committee recommended that the authority of 1Michigan, Municipal Planning Commission Act, Act 285 of the Public Acts of 1931,_as Amended, Compiled Laws, Revised, Annotated (1948), p. 471. 25 26 the designated officer to appoint members of the planning commission always be subject to the approval by a majority vote of the legislative body. The House concurred and on May 21, 1931 the Act, with this amendment, was read a third time and passed. The Honorable Wilber M. Brucker, Governor, signed Act 285 into law on June 9, 1931. Formal legislative consideration of the Act thus took less than seven weeks. Little controversy surrounded the Act's legislative journey and only one formal amendment was offered. It passed without difficulty. The records2 indicate the Act was strongly supported, with few dissenting votes, by both houses. This should not be construed as the full acceptance by citizens of the state as strong support for city planning. It appears that limited use of all the powers of the Act reflects an inadequacy of will, understanding, and acceptance. This is evaluated more completely in Chapter IV. Relationshjp_to the Standard City Planning_Enabling Act Michigan's Municipal Planning Commission Act was clearly 3 based upon "A Standard City Planning Enabling Act.“ Its legislative 2Michigan, Journal of the Senate, Regular Session, Vol. I (Lansing, 1931), pp. 633-634. Michigan, Journal of the Senate, Regular Session, Vol. II (Lansing, 1931), pp. 871-872. Michigan, Journal of the House of Representatives, Regular Session, Vol. II (Lansing, 1931), pp. 1211, 1368, 1460. Michigan, Jourgel of the Senate, Regular Session, Vol. II (Lansing, 1931), pp. 1137-1138, 1233. 3U. S. Department of Commerce, A Standard City Planning:§nab- ling Act. 27 intent must, therefore, be closely related to that of the Standard City Planning Enabling Act. In the forward of the Act the Honorable Herbert Clark Hoover, Secretary, Department of Commerce, U. S. Govern- ment, commented that: In several hundred American cities and regions, planning commis- sions are working with public officials and private groups in order to obtain more orderly and efficient physical development of their land area. They are concerned partly with rectifying past mistakes, but more with securing such location and develop- ment of streets, parks, public utilities and public and private buildings as will best serve the needs of the people for their homes, their industry and trade, their travel about the city, and their recreation. The extent to which they succeed affects in no small degree the return, in terms of practical usefulness now and for years to come, of several hundred millionidollars of taxpayers"money spent each year for public improvements, as well as the value and serviceability of new private construction costing several billion dollars each year. It is clear that the intent as so described was economic, efficiency and future oriented. It was meant to have a strong influence on both public and private construction. Comparing Sections one (1) through fifteen (15) of the "Michi- gan Municipal Planning Commission Act" with similar topic Sections one (1) through fifteen (15) of "A Standard City Planning Enabling Act," a substantial correspondence is found to exist. Exceptions to this similarity are noted in Section 10 (10) of the Michigan Municipal Plan- ning Commission Act,5 an added section, which governs recession of action previously taken by the legislative body--including referral 4U. S. Department of Commerce, A Standard City Planning Enab- ling Act, p. III. 5Michigan,Municipal Planning Commission Act (M.S.A.5.3000) 125.40, Section 10. 28 procedures. An additional exception or difference is found in Section twelve (12) of "A Standard City Planning Enabling Act,"6 where sub- division control territorial jurisdiction is established. This section, discussed later, is omitted from the "Michigan Municipal Planning Com- mission Act." The S.C.P.E.A. contained additional powers and authorizations which were not included in the "Michigan Municipal Planning Commission Act." This is regretable in that several of these provisions could have done, and still could do, much to improve the quality and effi- ciency of community development in Michigan.' The most notable of these exclusions pertains to the ability of the commission to effectively implement the Master Plan by land subdivision control. Section one (1) definitions in “A Standard City Planning Enabling Act" contains the following definition of "subdivision":. . . . . the division of a lot, tract, or parcel of land for the purpose, whether7immediate or future, of sale or of building development. . . As previously mentioned, Title II, Section twelve (12) contains the following authorization for subdivision jurisdiction: The territorial jurisdiction of any municipal planning commission over the subdivision of land shall include all land located in the municipality and all land lying within five miles of the corporate limits of the municipality and not located in any other municipality, except that, in the case of any such non-municipal land lying within five miles of more than one municipality having a planning commission, shall terminate at a boundary line - ‘- 60. S. Department of Commerce. A-Standard'City P1anning_ Enabling Act, p. 24. 71bid., p. 6. 29 equidistant frog the respective corporate limits of such municipalities. Finally, a third section--Section'l9--authorized the prohibition of the issuance of building permits, unless the street giving access to the lot upon which such building is proposed to be placed (a) shall have been accepted or opened as, or shall otherwise have received, the legal status of a public street prior to that time, or unless such street (b) corresponds with a street shown on the official master plan or with a streeg on‘a subdivision plat approved by the planning commission. . . Had these provisions been incorporated in the "Michigan Municipal Planning Commission Act" and effectuated during the last forty years, a substantial reduction in the large amount of existing wasted land created by poor land division practices could have been realized. 'Another important difference between the two Acts exists. An amendment to Section one (l)--Definitions, of the "Michigan Munici- pal Planning Commission Act," effectuated in September of 1952, expanded the definition of municipality to include townships and charter town- ships. The Standard Enabling Act, in its descriptive footnotes, expressly excluded townships and counties because they are administra- tive subdivisions of the state rather than separate urban uncorporated communities. Such amendments can only contribute to the multiplicity of small overlapping, duplicating and oftimes competing governments 80p. cit., pp. 24-25. 90p. cit., p. 33. 30 which characterizes the average urban community in Michigan and in the nation.10 Discussiongofprovisions of the Municipal Planning Commission Act Michigan's Municipal Planning Commission Act (M.M.P.C.A.) was adopted with the stated purpose to provide for municipal planning and for the regulation and subdivision of land.' It contains fifteen (15) sections. A sixteenth (16th) section, a severing clause, was repealed in 1945. Section one (1) establishes definitions for terms and defines municipal to include cities, villages, townships, charter townships and other incorporated political subdivisions. Thus, as noted before, differing political units within a metropolitan area are permitted to plan independently. Section two (2) authorizes and empowers a municipality to create and carry out a municipal master plan and to establish a planning commission. The Michigan Act varies slightly from the S.C.P.E.A. in that the planning commission powers may be extended by ordinance and specifically in that the Act does not modify or affect the powers of a commission established under a charter except to enlarge or add to such powers. It has been noted11 that the S.C.P.E.A. (and thus the M.M.P.C.A) assumes that decisions to acquire land and to develop land are made 10U. 5. Congress, House, National Commission on Urban Prob- lems, Buildiog_the American City, House, Doc. No. 91-34, 9lst Cong., lst sess., Washington, 016?, December, 1968, pp. 323-324. 11The American Law Institute, A Model Land Development Code, p. xii. 31 without relation to planning laws and that the focus of local laws is to prohibit undesirable development and not to foster desirable devel- 0pment.' It was also noted that, as worded; permissively, the Act did not relate the public interest of the state to the actual performance of planning, to require development in accordance with a plan, or to the reasoned benefit of the local community and to larger governmental areas. Sections three (3), four (4), and five (5) set forth the planning commission; membership; rules; and permits employment of staff and/or consultants, and provides for contract and expenditure authority. The master plan is the subject of sections six (6), seven (7), and eight (8).' The planning commission is required to make and adopt a master plan for its area of authority. The sections do not clearly define the content and form of the plan, but certain indications of content are stated. It is required that the master plan be based on careful surveys and studies, and that it shall be made with the follow- ing purpose: . of guiding and accomplishing a coordinated, adjusted and harmonious development of the municipality and its environs which will, in accordance with present and future needs, best promote health, safety morals, order, convenience, prosperity, and general welfare, as well as efficiency and economy in the process of development; including, among other things, adequate provision for traffic, the promotion of safety from fire and other dangers, adequate provision for light and air, the promotion of the healthful and convenient distribution of population, the promotion of good civic design and arrangement, wise and effi- cient expenditure of public funds, and the adequate provision of public utilities and other public requirements. 12Michigan, Municipal Planning Commission Act, No. 125.37, Sec. 7. 32 Amendments in 1943 and 1962 to Section six (6) expanded the contents and requirements of the master plan to include recommendations for the general location, character and extent of community centers, neighborhood units and flood plains; for the general location, char- acter, layout and extent of the replanning and redevelopment of blighted districts and slum areas. * The implementation of the master plan and powers and respons- ibilities of the planning commission are set forth in Section nine (9) through fifteen (15). '1 'Sections nine (9), ten (10), and eleven (11) procedures requiring mandatory referral of a proposed public develop- ment project to the planning commission, by the municipal council or by the board, commission, or body that has jurisdiction, are established. Powers to promote public interest in the plan, to attend conferences of city planning institutes, to make studies and surveys, are also established.' These sections further place responsibility upon the planning commission to prepare reports and to consult and advise var- ious agencies and organizations in the community. Amendments to Section nine (9) in 1943 expanded the planning commission's responsibilities to include the annual preparation of a coordinated and comprehensive six-year program of public structures and improvements. Specific authorizations to effectuate the implementation tools of land subdivision regulation and land use zoning are the topics of Sections twelve (12) through fifteen (15). In these sections the powers of the zoning commission are delegated to the planning commis- sion; the filing or recording of a subdivision plat is prohibited 33 until approval is granted by the planning commission; and authorization for the adoption and effectuation of land subdivision regulations is established. Now to view Michigan's Municipal Planning Commission Act from an overall perspective; Records show the Act was formally adopted approximately forty years ago. It is further found to be based upon-- with some modifications and in an incomplete form--"A Standard City 13 Planning Enabling Act," an act spurred by a government reform movement and rooted in the technology and planning principles of the 1920's. As such, the M.M.P.C.A. contains the flaws found in the application of the S.C.P.E.A. discussed in Chapter I. Notably that: 1. The Act permits a poliferation of independent advisory plan- ning bodies not directly related to the administrative or legislative functions of givernment, within metropolitan or larger areas. 2. The public interest was not considered for: a. the actual requirement for a community to engage in community-wide planning; b. community growth to be developed in accord with a plan; c. the utilization of the planning process to, in fact, further the public interests of the local and area-wide community or the state; and the use of the powers of public spending as well as land acquisition and dis- position to provide an effective ordering of land development. 3. Community development decisions were not required to consider planning laws directed toward improving design and systems and adverting the spoiling of the environment, but only toward regulations which restricted, or attempted to prohibit, unde- sirable development. 13U. S. Department of Commerce, A Standard City Planning EnablingoAct. 34 4. The concept of a ridged "plan," with a lack of definition or scope, fails to recognize the dynamic nature of growth and decay; and 5. The Act confuses the relationship of zoning to the plan and permits piecemeal adoption of the plan by an independent plan- ning commission. 1 6. The planning commission is purely advisory, coordinative and promotive in nature and based primarily upon policy power as delegated by the state, thus not meeting the challenge or needs of the 1970's and the future. These, among other faults, clearly state the need for revising and redesigning the State of Michigan's City Planning enabling legisla- tion to reflect the state's contemporary needs and technical state of city planning in the 1970's. What are these needs and what is the technology? These are reviewed in Chapter III. CHAPTER III GENERAL STANDARDS FOR CONTEMPORARY COMPREHENSIVE CITY PLANNING Contemporary American scene and its effect upon city planning Today the American scene is strongly affected by certain transitional characteristics which directly influence comprehensive city planning. One of the most important of these characteristics is the revolutionary causing exponential rate of change. Propst has noted that: Our ancestors could deal with change as an evolutionary factor. Change could be digested in small steps or ignored for a working lifetime. Today change is the dominating reality. It is our new natural state of affairs. Our physical environment must learn to adopt to new value requirements at a high rate.1 Figure 2 illustrates some of the key characteristics of this change. Among these important characteristics is the steady growth in U. S. population which, since 1790, has slowed notably only once-- 2 Figure 3 demonstrates this during the depression of the late 1920's. population growth as projected into the 1980's. An increasing rate of urbanization has accompanied this population growth. Since 1920 the 1 2U. S. Congress, House, National Commission on Urban Problems, Building the American City, pp. 40-41. Propst, The Office - A Facility Based on Change, p. 12. 35 1780 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 Figure 2. 36 Characteristics of Change. 37 Millions — 260 / -’ 240 I. /. 220 4 200 / .190 / 180 1790 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980. Figure 3. Total U.S. Population 1790 - 1960 and Estimated 1985. Source: U.S. Congress, House, National Commission on Urban Problems, Building the American City, pp. 40-41. 38 United States has steadily become more and more an urban nation with seventy per cent of the population living in urban places by 1960.3 Society's influential characteristics include several addi- tional but important factors which affect the contemporary American planning scene. These characteristics are all interrelated. They include: a high degree of complexity which often generates forces beyond direct control; an expanding degree of individual mobility; a span of scale that ranges from the smallness of the atom to the infin- ity of the universe; and a tendency toward violence and disorder, partially caused by an emerging "social change."4 While these factors directly or indirectly affect the ability to plan and the effectiveness of a planning program, there are additional characteristics of major importance that must be mentioned. The nature of city politics is one of these. The nature of city politics and its corollary--the nature of decision-making in communities of the United States--can perhaps best be approached by accepting a model that arranges decision-making pat- terns along a continuum and structures them so as to vary in form from pyramids to pluralism.5 The activities and interactions that evolve from these decision-making processes can be considered as games, and 3U. S. Congress, House, National Commission on Urban Problems, Building the American City, p. 42. 4Matthew Holden, Jr., The Quality of Urban Order, The Quality; of Urban Life, Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, Vol. 3 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1967), pp. 437-440. 5Francine F. Rabinovitz, City Politics and Planning, Atherton Press (New York, New York, 1970), pp. 17-18. 39 the continuum can be considered operational in a local territorial system.6 If the planning function and its processes are to be effec- tive, it appears that they must be structured and must operate in such a manner so as to influence the decision-making games that are operative within the planning function's territory.‘ It follows that there will be less agreement concerning what planning goals are acceptable to be considered in the “public interest" when contrasted to the goals and interests of the individual levels of pyramids or of plural politic groups. The changes evolving in the game of city planning politics are stated by Adrian: In typical American fashion, land-use decisions were, until recently, made by private businessmen; the realtors, land devel- opers, and bankers in particular. 'Characteristically, nineteenth- century Americans did not believe that a greater community interest stood above that of the profit motives of these men. Planners were thus concerned with their profit-and-loss statements rather than with making Ackroyd City an attractive community with an imaginative physical design. It would be difficult to exag- gerate the effect of their short-range concerns upon the face of urban America. Because bankers decide who gets loans and realtors decide, through their realty boards, who is to be allowed to buy where, their decisions determined, within the limits of cultural values, the face of American cities. They decided the areas in which negroes would live and the quality of housing they would have. They determined when deteriorating areas were to be per- mitted to switch from single-family dwellings to multi-family apartments and rooming houses. They selected sites for parks (if anY). business areas, and factories and established a basic policy of urban growth through exodus and conversion, so that home con- struction took place for the higher-income persons only (except in tenements), others taking the vacated property according to their status positions. It was a game of providing according to ability to pay with little concern for the decaying ugliness at the center. 6Norton E. Long, The Local Community as an Ecology of Games, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LXIV (November, 1958), pp. 251-261. 40 But as American cities began to mature, this pattern changed. Persons in the community began to become concerned with the growing blight around them. Property owners began to fear for the income value of the older sections. ‘The retreating upper middle class began to run into rural and fringe-area slums. Attitudes toward the uninhibited activities of private business began to change. It is necessary to understand that the attitudes of the U.S. public toward the functions of city planning have generally been those of an indfifferent spectator. The trends noted in the sixties, if con- tinued in the seventies, indicate that broad changes in the public's attitudes are taking place. The concern for the social problems of racial conflict, poverty, and crime, and the physical problems of the environment are indicative of the nature of this change. Unfortunately, these changes are brought about by crises situations. In examining more fully the attitude of the U.S. public towards contemporary city planning, the Englishman Delafons8 has keenly observed the context in which land-use (planning) controls in the United States are applied. Delafons points out that despite rampant growth, it is rare to encounter any antipathy to new development. There exists a general unconcern for the rate of land consumption by new development, fostered by the confi- dence that land supply is unlimited. He further notes that a character- istic attitude in the U.S. is a distrust of politicians which exercise a fundamental influence on the methods and scope of land-use control. Delafons further attends to the existence of a basic assumption--that 7Charles R. Adrian, GoverningeUrban America, 2nd ed. (New York, New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1961), pp. 457-458. 8John Delafons, Land Use Controls in theAUnited States, Second Ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T} Press, 1969), pp. 1-15. 41 the American economic system is founded on adherence to the tenets of the free market and the private enterprise system. There exists a strong prejudice against control over any aspect of the economy by government. In a closely related way Altshuler9 argues that the most serious barrier to planning success has been this prejudice and/or fear of governmental power. These values certainly must be considered as processes for contemporary city planning are developed. A yet broader understanding of the nature of city politics and its effect on city planning can be gained by viewing various re- sponses to similar demands. Williams has stated that: . . different political regimes make difSerent responses to widely experienced, but similar problems. He characterizes four different roles for local government: 1. promoting economic growth; 2. providing or securing life's amenities; 3. maintaining (only) traditional services; 4. arbitration among conflicting interests.11 Reflecting on this typology, Adrian has written: Rarely would a community larger than a small town demonstrate such total agreement that a single type would stand in unrivaled control over the minds of policy makers. In most cases, a variety of images serve as frames of reference for office holders and for citizens as they vote on referendum matters. These ideas about the proper role of municipal government serve to channel 9Alan A. Altshuler, The Cit Plannin Process (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, I967i, p. 360. 1001ivert, Williams, A T 010 for Comparative Local Govern- ment, Midwest Journal of Politicai Science, Vol. V, No. 2 (May, 1961), p. O. -—l HIhid., p. 151. 42 the kinds of decisions that are made and thezway in which they are made 1n the contemporary American c1ty. The influence of the contemporary American scene, its nature and its politics, is thus found to contain a number of important factors which directly affects the creation of a better community through the process of city planning. When considering the required elements of a contemporary comprehensive city planning process, it seems obvious that we must incorporate an ability to adapt to change and to deal effec- .tively, and democraticly, with the complex nature of man's economic, physical, and social activity within the planning territory. We must be able to establish relationships between these activities in geo- graphic, scale and time horizons, and be able to achieve a reasonable and non-violent response and results from the political process. In Michigan, and in much of the United States, it is apparent that the knowledge, capacities and resources of communities exceed the present character and function of the political process. In all attempt should be made to utilize the contemporary comprehensive planning process as a flexible non-inhibiting instrument serving to implement the choices of a democratic society. Here there is agreement with Dyckman that: For planning to become an important societal tool, the society using it must be (a) technically competent, and (b) politically well organized and enthusiastic about applying planning. Ours is a technically advanced society that increasingly demands planning. The second condition has been more seriously in doubt, and a task of planning theory in America is to accommodate to 12Charles R. Adrian, Governing Urban America, p. 89. 43 this reagity, rather than to warp reality to the conventional theory. Elements of the citynplannjng process In the United States the city planning process involves the continuing systematic and democratic selection of development and renewal priorities from the values of the community's citizens for the purpose of anticipating adjustments for an integrated design of man's physical environment. In relating the types of planning appropriate to be consid- ered as elements of the city planning process, the first need is to discuss the broad types of planning communities might choose. Gruen14 defines three main planning types: 1. laissez-faire-planning whose advocates believe that things should grow according to individual wishes, needs, and requirements, with only essential policing measures of control; 2. autocratic p1anning--by which large parts of cities or new towns can be rebuilt or built in short periods of time by strong-willed men or autocratic governments; 3. democratic planning--that requires the establishment of aims and goals, requires unified coordination, and a use of humanistic principles as well as philosophical thought. Gruen concludes that the hardest, most difficult, and the most lengthy time-wise type, democratic planning is the only logical and successful way. 13John W. Dyckman, "The Practical Uses of Planning Theory," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXXV, No. 5 (Balti- more, Maryland: Port City Press, Sept.,1969), p. 300. 14Victor Gruen The Heart of our Cities (New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), pp. 35-40. 44 Agreeing with an observation is one step. Establishing in practice a contemporary process of city planning is a more difficult effort. A start can be made by profiting from a backward glance, for the past certainly has some foundations for the future. Hancock dis- cusses this when reviewing the planning profession's development of basic premises and relationships up through the 1940's as part of our nation's democratic evolution: 1. In a massing democracy, communities built for social and personal well-being take precedence over mere economic- technological-physical growth. 2. The city's reorganization in these terms can be partially guided, unified, and enhanced by comprehensive planning which informs but does not inhibit the future. 3. Planning, the art and science of environmental development, iS‘a process in which democratic choice can become meaning- ‘ful and capability can approach desire by identifying needs, amenities, minimum standards and so on and by implementing them in numerous designs for new communities in town and countryside which preserve and extend the most desirable features of each as appropriate to time and place. 4. Such planning requires collaboration of trained talent, coordination of means, continuing reallocation of resources, full public empowerment and intelligent human subscription-- a slow and gradual process whose success depends largely upon education to its human purposes--for layman and planner a ike. The planner's role herein is analyst, creative designer, critic, and coordinator, at the very least. 5. Planning of the "natural region," not the urban one alone. seems the ideal democratic context for coordinating the flow of national and local priorities, resources, and initiative, because cities overlap in geeds but are deficient in means as presently constituted.1 15John L. Hancock, "Planners in the Changing American City, 1900-1940," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (Baltimore, Maryland: Port City Press, Sept., 1967), p. 301. 45 It is logical, then, that the elements of the contemporary comprehensive city planning process, described in the following pages, be consistent with these basic premises. But these are not only the premises that the planning process must be founded upon. The term city-planning implies that the planning function must be in the "public interest," or for public purposes. 16 identifies: amenity, convenience, economy, health, and safety Chapin as the five principle land use planning purposes. Morals is identified as a less important purpose. In a contemporary comprehensive city plan- ning process, the following purposes are considered to be legislatively important: amenity, convenience, efficiency, economy, general welfare, health, morals, and safety, order and prosperity. The term "process" implies continuing procedures involving changes. Relating the definition of planning synonymous with the func- tions of coordination, adjustment, projection and designing for future objectives, it is possible to identify certain of the basic activities that must be among the elements of the city planning process. To under- stand a complete planning process, further review of the existing theory and practice concerning the project is in order. The Interim Report of the Planning-Policy Committee on Plan- ning Enabling Legislation of the American Institute of Planners stated: The levels of government should instill a process suitable to each by which the planning agency suggests sets of alternative long-range goals. The role of the planning agency is to (1) provide broad and specific advice and (2) illustrate the impli- cations of alternative courses of action, including public 16F. Stuart Chapin, Jr., Urban Land Use Planning, p. 41. 46 debate and review, so that a wise course of action may be recommended by the agency. The planning process should help to discover and to encourage the enactment of sound legisla- tive poligies with respect to both private and public develop- ment. . . 7 The design of a process which adequately accomplishes imple- mentation must, of necessity, be carefully constructed. Branch identi- fies three normal phases of the planning process: I. Current (Operational Plans): 1. Integrating current, continuing, and short-range action ' ' programs . ' 2. 'Incorporating the coordination and projection possible ' at the required time of decision and stabilization. 3. Derivative of intermediate plans and incremental in the realization of the long-range plan. 4. Answering immediate needs, current objectives, and desires; orientation toward obtaining longer range satisfactions. 5. Specifying quantities and schedules of materials, energy, skills, and cost; precise methods of effectuation. '6. More limited in the range of alternative possibilities. 7. Progressively inflexible after the necessary commitment to proceed. II. Medium Range (Intermediate Plans): 8. Embodying projections of operation plans and retrojections of the long-range plan. 9. A conceptual, analytical, procedural, and action-program "bridge“ between the concrete present and more distant future. 10. Intermediate in its specificity between operation and long-range plans. 17American Institute of Planners, Interim Report of the Plan- ning Policy Committee on PlanningAEnabling_Legislation (Washing, D.C., April, 1963), p. 7. 47 III. Long Range (Long-Range Plans): 11. A composite projection to that point in future time beyond which present efforts toward established objec- tives are not worthwhile. 12. An extension of existing realities, trends, and projec- tional judgements. l3. Representing the realization of feasible objectives which fulfill long-range needs and desires. l4. Appropriate to the available resources and environmental situation forecast for the time period of the long-range plan. 15. Periodically modified in the light of significant devel- ' opments. 16. Incorporating a range of possible alternatives or other- wise maintaining greater flexibility of adjustment. One planning process in constant systematic adjustment is part of the essence. What Branch19 labels "circular" in a procedural way, is the nature of the interaction of the current, medium-range and long-range functions. Although not clearly placed or defined in Branch's concept of the planning process, the notion of democratically defined, ration- ally determined societal goals and objectives is implied. In planning theory these goals and objectives are of fundamental importance. In practice they are extremely difficult to establish. Dyckman comments that planners: . .have qualified their interpretations of the public interest by pointing out that (1) they cannot conduct all the trials of 18Melville C. Branch, Planning Aspects and Applications (New York, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1966), p. 304. 19Ibid., p. 305. 48 alternative futures necessary for calculation of the optimum state, and (2) diversity of values in a large complex commgBity makes determination of optimality prohibitively difficult. Broad agreement for this point of view is found as suggested by Goodman 21 22. and by Altshuler. But this is not to say that there is 23 and Freund, general concurrence among professionals in the planning field. Gans believes that a new approach as well as a new profession is evolving. He calls the new approach "policy planning"--which relates long-and- short-range systems of interrelated policies. Gans suggests that the new professionals will be concerned with the activities of goal formu- lation and the development and cataloguing of many effective policies 24 agrees with and goals for all subjects of interests to cities. Fagin "cataloguing" and suggests a loose-leaf compendium comprising many interrelated documents which describe policy for a changing community. He implies an end to the concept of "the Master Plan," and espouses the periodic involvement of many interests and skills in the policy formu- lation process. In a more sharply defined and operationally formulated 20John W. Dyckman, "The Practical Uses of Planning Theory," . Journal of the American Institute of Architects, Vol. XXXV, Sept., 1959, p. 300. 21International City Manager Association, Principles and Practice of Urban Planning, pp. 327-328. 22 23Herbert J. Gans, "From Urbanism to Policy-Planning," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4 (Baltimore, Maryland: Port City Press, July, 1970), pp. 223-225. 24Leo F. Schnore and Henry Fagin, Urban Research and Policy Plannin , Vol. I (Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications, Inc., 1957), pp. 310-328. Alan A. Altshuler, The City Planning_Process, p. 311. 49 way, Rothblattzs suggests a multitier rationality decision model that may be a means to resolve differences. This model is structured to achieve articulation and operationalism of goals through agreed trade- offs between goals for different decision units through the use of a two-tiered decision model. In addition to both of these approaches, Friedman26 suggests a total reorientation of planning process theory by replacing the rational decision model with an action-planning model. This approach involves the evaluation of society's performance and identifies the inadequacies and failures of its guidance system. Then the planners role is to try to mobilize resources for intervention at strategic points. ‘The model places great importance upon the planners' skill in managing interpersonnel relations to bring about responsible change. The action model theory and the difficulty in determining optimumality are pointing out that the comprehensive planning process has not functioned as its participants indicate it should. Is it because of inadequate abilities of law, staffing, or administrative or policy organization? One suspects that, at the very least, all these factors are involved. Regardless of the model or theory espoused, the comprehensive city planning process--and the legislation through which it operates-- 25Donald N. Rothblatt, "Rational Planning Reexamined," Journal of the American Instjtgte of Plenners, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1 (Baltimore, Maryland: January, 1971), pp. 27-36. 26John Friedman, "Notes on Societal Action," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXXV, No. 5 (Baltimore, Maryland: Jan., 1969), pp. 311-317. 50 must permit reform, innovation and progress as society and the "real 27 that three world" changes. One must agree with Marris and Rein crucial tasks face reform in our American society. First, one must establish a coalition of power sufficient for the chosen purpose; second, one must respect the democratic tradition which requires every citizen to participate in the determination of his own affairs; and third, acceptable policies must be demonstrably rational. The opera- tion of the contemporary planning process and its legislative base must provide freedom for the function of reform and adjustment. The contemporary comprehensive city planning process is thus found, of necessity, to be based upon the theory of city planning and on the seven purposes: Amenity, convenience, economy, general wel- fare, health, morals, and safety. Further, that in the United States the process must be formulated from democratically derived goals and policies, conceived in the "public interest,“ the continual determina- tion of which must be a deliberate part of the planning process. These goals, used to guide public and private development decisions, must be founded on rationality. The process also involves establishing alter- natives for decisions--decisions which extend or span from a broad to a detailed level. It can be additionally concluded that the process must provide for constant systematic adjustment through interaction of the processes of the comprehensive planning activities. 27Peter Marris and Martin Rein, Dilemmes of Social Reform (New York, New York: Atherton Press, 1967), p. 7. 51 The Citynplanning_agency The state, through enabling legislation, has a strong and direct influence upon the organization and function of comprehensive city planning at the metropolitan and local level. As previously 28 the present nature of the planning commission and the pointed out, local planning agency grew out of the governmental reform movement of the twentys (20's) and thirties (30's). The "Standard City Planning Enabling Act"29 established a somewhat autonomous planning commission and permitted the retention of professional staff--responsible to the commission. In Michigan, and in a majority of the states with their planning enabling legislation based on the Standard City Planning Enab- ling Act, a history of performance and organization has existed for some time upon which planning has matured. This history and maturity, together with the understanding that planning is also a political pro- cess, is basic to the development of enabling legislation for local planning. But these are not the only basics that must be considered. The form of local government and its formal organizational charter,30 as well as the scope, functions, relationships, and role assigned to 31 the planning agency, are also important formal situational factors that enabling legislation must accommodate. 28See Chapter I, pp. 6-22. 29See Chapter I, p. 8. 30Charles A. Joiner, Organizational Analysis - Political, Sociological,,and Administrative Processes of Local Government, Insti- tute for Community Development and Services, Michigan—State University, East Lansing, Michigan (1964). 3IAmerican Institute of Planners, Policy Committee on Plan- ning EnablingoLegjslation, p. 7. 52 One of the first appraisals of the city planning commission as a political entity in local government was accomplished by Robert A. Walker32 in April of 1941. Walker maintained that the independent, unpaid, citizen planning commission was not functioning satisfactorily and that a staff agency--with a full time executive head and responsible to the city's chief executive--was the proper organizational approach. Walker's position was founded upon the belief the planning function must be closely linked with the decision-making political process. This concept was expanded and amplified during the fifty's. Donald H. Webster33 noted that the value of planning depended largely on the planning agencies' relationship to policy making, public involvement, and administrative function of local government. Webster identified the direct relationship of the form of local government to the function of a separate commission or responsible to the chief exe- cutive and emphasized the importance of carefully defining the role and administrative position of the planning agency. Robert Daland34 dis- cussed the incompatibility of staff and administrators, noted the need for public understanding and debate of alternatives, and restated the need to relate the planning agency to the form of the local government. 32Robert A. Walker, The Planningfunction in Urban Government (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press,71941). 33Donald H. Webster, Urban Planning and Municipal Public Pol- icy (New York, New York: Harper Brothers, 1958), pp. 77-133. 34Robert Daland, "Organization for Urban Planning Some Bar- riers to Integration," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXIII, No. 4 (Baltimore, Maryland: Port City Press, 1957), pp. 200- 206. 53 By the sixties (60's) planning had matured greatly. But the discussion concerning the organization for local planning continued. 35 surveyed planning directors working within Rabinovitz and Pottinger different governmental forms. Their findings revealed that the wholly technical definition by which the independent planning commission was originally conceived was obsolete. The suggestion that organization is often not pivotal in assuring planning agency effectiveness was noted and attributed to a basic principle concerning planning agency organization that requires that its structure has to allow planning to influence political actions. The Planning Enabling Legislation Committee has noted that:36 The planning agency's scope and role should be clear; and, rela- tionshi s to other functions of the overnment prescribed so that (l) a planning process ensues, T2) a comprehensive plan has impact on development policy, and (3) the procedures, methods, authority and coordinative provisions are established to satisfy the functions assigned the agency. It appears that the seventies (70's) will see continuing discussion and adjustment. The increasing trend toward combining depart- ments that are broadly responsible for either/or social, economic, and physical development into what has been termed "the Community Develop- ment Department" will no doubt continue. This organization improves coordination and the other functions of planning, particularly in a 35Francine F. Rabinovitz and J. Stanley Pottinger, "Organiza- tion for Local Planning: The Attitudes of Directors," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXIII, No. 1 (Baltimore, Maryland: Port City Press, January, 1967), pp. 27-31. 36American Institute of Planners, Policy Committee on Planning_ Enabling Legislation, p. 7. 54 weak administrative form of local government, such as the strong council-weak mayor form. The objective both on a national scale and on the state level in the seventies must be to strengthen the ability and capacity of local general government. Beckman has stated the need for this objective quite well: A primary objective of federal and state governments must be to develop, support, or restore the managerial and fiscal vitality of urban government. Without such capability, local initiative, creativity, discretion, choice, and decision-making exist only in the older text books, and responsible elected officials have little or no discretion to alter things more than trivially.37 How well can, and how well do, Michigan's municipal planning functions affect the actions of governmental and nongovernmental acti- vities? Is the legal scope of the municipal planning function adequate to meet the planning needs of today's Michigan municipalities? These and other questions that arise are the subject of the next chapter of this research. 37Norman Beckman, "Legislative Review 1970," Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Vol. XXXVII, No. 3 (Baltimore, Mary- land: Port City Press, May, 1971), pp. 157-158. CHAPTER IV CONTEMPORARY COMPREHENSIVE CITY PLANNING IN A REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF MICHIGAN CITIES Thus far the research has reviewed the development of city planning in the United States, studied the history and nature of Michi- gan's city planning enabling legislation, and examined the general standards for contemporary comprehensive city planning. The purpose of this chapter is to look at the current practice of comprehensive city planning in a representative group of Michigan cities and relate the trends and future needs of these cities to the state's enabling . legislation. The actual impact of municipal planning as it is prac- ticed in Michigan must be examined and-discussed in order to obtain an understanding of just how well the planning enabling legislation, and the theories it embodies, are applied. This examination is, therefore, intended to aid the basic purpose of this research--to determine the adequacy of the state's municipal planning enabling statutes. The chapter has been divided into two basic parts. The first part is an overview of the trends and characteristics of the represent- ative cities selected for this research. The other is an analysis of the organization and operation of the planning functions in the repre- sentative cities. 55 56 Selection of representative cities andTmethods of analysis Understanding the nature and function of contemporary comprehensive city planning in Michigan cities and then to relate it to legislation required the selection of a representative group of cities and research into the state of their municipal planning functions. A universe of eleven cities were selected--cities geographi- cally located throughout the more heavily populated southern part of the lower peninsula. These cities and their 1950, 1960 and 1970 popu- lation are listed in Table 1. Geographical distribution is illustrated in Figure 4. The eleven cities were selected because they are central cities of metropolitan areas containing approximately one-third (1/3)1 of the state's urban population and all have relied upon the Municipal 2 for their basic planning legislation. In Planning Commission Act addition, they are representative of the history, the present, and of the trends of Michigan's urban conditions. These trends include growth and urban sprawl, decay and loss or change of population, overlapping governments and segregation of minorities and the poor.3 All of the selected cities were incorporated at the time of the legislative enact- ment of the Michigan Municipal Planning Commission Act.4 1U. S. Bureau of the Census, op. cit., pp. 59-61. 2Municipal Planning Commission Act, op. cit. 3The reader should review pages 54-90 of this chapter and Chapter III for supportive background for these trends. 4Municipal Planning Commission Act, 09. cit. 57 Table 1. Selected Michigan cities and their population changes. a b c Percentd e City 1950 1960 1970 Change 1960-1970 1950-1960 1 Ann Arbor 48,251 67,340 99,797 39.6 48.2 Battle Creek 48,666 44,169 38,931 - 9.2 -11.9 Bay City 52,523 53,604 49,449 2.1 - 7.8 Flint 163,143 196,940 193,317 20.7 - 1.8 Grand Rapids 176,515 177,313 197,649 0.5 11.5 Jackson 51,088 50,720 45,484 - 0.7 -10.3 Kalamazoo 57,704 82,089 85,555 42.3 4.2 Lansing 92,129 107,807 131,546 17.0 22.0 Muskegon 48,429 46,485 44,631 - 4.0 - 4.0 Pontiac 73,681 82,233 85,279 11.6 3.7 Saginaw 92,918 98,265 91,849 5.8 - 6.5 Source: U. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of P0 ulation: 1950 (Washington: U. 5. Printing Chapter 22, Mich. , pp. of Population: gan, ppITl79- 180. CU. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Population: 1970 (Washington. U. S. Printing gan, pp. 59- 61. dU. S. Department of Commerce, County BUreau of the Census, U. S. Printing Office, Washington, D. C. pp. 504 and 514. eOp. cit., 11-12. bU.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau 1960 (Washington: U.S. Printing of the Census, U.S. Census Office), P-A22, Vol., of the Census, U.S. Census Office), PC(l)-24C, Michi- of the Census, U. S. Census Office), AC(1)- 324, Michi- and City Data Book 1967, 1967, U.S. Census of Population, pp. 59-61. HOUOH‘I'ON ' _I ommcou I- I '_I I BAMGA I can“ I I I_ __ _ If“ Tofu ~~\ I T '1 I—D-l-CIKITSO-N-I 58 mama-rt “a“ . I CHWA um I own I t I ' 1 ml -—--'.-—- ' -— ----- S.— mm' anerni l—a-scooa I 111.com mvense - I . ! . I i i ! I" """°" ocw' lemch unicorn! ISABELLA I .moumoi B. 'y 0 I___ I __“_”__.__ I I I I 'I_C Tuscou I smuc _. L_,__.L__ _L___ : 1-"1- I mum I—énmw ' . umw -I I II . MuskeIgplL I ISagi nawI “N7 I -I until) ‘5 onxwaGrandI-m ' I—ELIm—o? IWI. Guess! I I.— si. cum IRapidB '0 I £11711: I._ - '—'L°I_i— I___|.I1_nsirig_ iIaa‘IMJ max—no "I'JA I we» mm urou I new 'Iuv . I I I I Pontiai v -~--I-..-.......-—I -—.-—-.+..— ' me..- tr...- "IVAK‘SgnIazoo ”3512114 If“ I'Ann - :etroit ICreek'Eacksog_ArborI , IEIIIENr—CASO In. 40:79"! emu qusoAteI LENAWEE I monies Figure 4. Geographical location of selected cities. 59 The City of Detroit, the urban area which is the domicile of approximately sixty (60) per cent of the state's urban population,5 is not included because of Detroit's reliance upon a legislative basis 6 as well as other other than the Municipal Planning Commission Act, considerations of size, organization, and governmental functions. An overview of the eleven cities is developed through a review of certain characteristics which provide a framework for understanding their distinctive qualities and status. The characteristics examined are concerned with economics; physical state; social and historical concerns . Research'Methodology The survey research reported here was conducted in the eleven selected Michigan cities during the summer of 1972. The research meth- odology included personal interviews with the planning or planning- related staffs in each municipality. In order to preserve the anony- mity of the respondents they shall not be identified. The survey was pretested in the spring of 1972, utilizing the planning staff of a city whose population ranked with the smaller cities of those surveyed. Modifications were made based upon pretest experience and suggestions of the respondents. The interview survey was then utilized to obtain a substantial part of this research. A copy of the interview survey is contained in Appendix A. Other data concerning the selected cities was 5U.S. Bureau of the Census, op. cit., p. 59. 6Michigan, Municipal Planning Commission Act, op. cit. 60 obtained from a variety of sources, sources which are credited in the text as the particular data are introduced. In addition to the survey research, a benefit to this work is derived from the author's work experience of more than fourteen years as a professional community planner. This experience, including staff as well as city planning director responsibilities, was for the most part spent in Michigan. Part I. Overview of Representative Cities The character of the eleven (ll) representative cities and the constant changes through which they are evolving will have a pro- found effect on the quality of life of Michigan's urban population in future years. The following analysis examines certain economic, physi- cal and social characteristics of these cities, identifies the nature of these changes, and thus places in context the city planning needs of Michigan cities. Hopefully, this kind of knowledge should also help in planning and guiding the urbanization of the state toward improving the quality of life of these cities' inhabitants. The selected cities are generally within a population group ranging from forty thousand to two hundred thousand persons. They can, therefore, be classed as middle-sized cities. Six of these cities have experienced a decline in population in the last ten years, as shown in Table 1. Only Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Lansing have demonstrated a population increase of more than ten per cent in the last ten years.7 7Computed from Table 3. 61 In contrast the population of the metropolitan areas within which these cities are located have all increased, as indicated in Table 2. In the two decades from 1940 to 1960 the population of the metropblitan areas of the eleven cities increased an average of twenty nine (29) per cent each decade.8 This increase slowed in the l96O to 1970 decade, 9 as shown in Table 2. averaging approximately seventeen (l7) per cent, Only four metropolitan areas--Battle Creek, Bay City, Jackson and Muskegon--grew less than ten per cent in the 1960 to 1970 decade. The original municipal planning legislation was aimed mostly at growing communities. In the face of decline, legislation of differing concerns is necessary. Physical characteristics Land Area In the face of the steady population change and growth, what has happened to the land area of these established cities? In Table 3 the land area in square miles for the eleven cities, over the last two decades, is presented. Of these cities, only three--Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Lansing--have demonstrated an increase in land area of more than ten per cent in the last ten years. Correlations between the changes in land area and population increase and changing domiciles indicate that only the cities that have annexed additional territory have continued to increase in population significantly. 8Computed from Table 3. 9Computed from Table 3. 62 Table 2. Population change - county or S.M.S.A.a 1950b 1960c 1970d Per cent change Per cent change . Per cent change 1940-1950 SMSA 1950-1960 SMSA 1960-1970 SMSA Ann Arbor 66.6 134,606 28.1 172,440 35.8 234,103 Battle Creek *28.2 120,813* 14.9 138,858* 2.2 141,963* Bay City 18.0 88,461 21.0 107,042 9.6 117,339 Flint 18.9 270,963 35.7 416,239 19.3 496,658 Grand Rapids 17.0 288,292 27.6 461,906 16.7 539,225 Jackson 15.9 107,925 22.3 131,994 8.5 143,274 Kalamazoo 26.6 126,707 33.9 169,712 18.8 201,550 Lansing 32.4 172,941 22.4 298,949 26.6 378,423 Muskegon 28.6 121,545 23.4 149,943 5.0 157,426 Pontiac *55.9 396,001* 74.3 690,259* 31.5 907,871* Saginaw 17.7 153,515 24.3 190,752 15.2 219,743 * County - not an S.M.S.A. Source: aSMSA is the U. 5. Census Bureau's abbreviation for Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. bU. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Count and City Data Book 1956 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Officel, 1957, pp. ’ 9 9 352. CU. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Count and City Data Book 1967 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office), I967, pp. 432, 440, 448. dU. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, General Population Characteristics - 1970, PC (i)-824 Mich., Nash: U. S. Gover - ment Printing Office), 1970, pp. 59-62. 63 Table 3. City land area in square miles. 1950a 1950b 1970C:d Ann Arbor 6.6 13.6 21.8 Battle Creek 10.5 11.8 11.8 Bay City 9.6 10.0 10.0 Flint 29.3 30.3 32.8 Grand Rapids 23.4 27.0 44.9 Jackson 10.2 10.8 11.0 Kalamazoo 8.8 23.5 24.5 Lansing 14.1 21.2 33.4 Muskegon 8.9 10.9 16.3 Pontiac 19.8 19.5 19.7 Saginaw 16.6 16.3 17.3 Source: aU. S. Department of Commerce, County and City Data Book 1956, Bureau of the Census, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1957, p. 388. bU. S. Department of Commerce, County and City Data Book 1967, Bureau of the Census, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1967, p. 591. cU. S. Department of Commerce, Population and Land Areas: 1970 and 1960, Bureau of the Census, U. S. Government Printing Office, Wash- ington, D.C., PC (SI)-6, 1972, pp. 76-84. dU. S. Department of Commerce, County and City_Data Book 1972, Bg;gau of782e Census, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., ’po 0 54 Housing A quick look at housing unit additions by comparing the changes in the total number of dwelling units is shown in Table 4. Findings indicate that four cities have actually lost dwell- ing units in the last ten years. Five of these cities have experienced an increase in the number of dwelling units by approximately twenty thousand or more. One of the remaining two cities increased by approxi- mately ten thousand dwelling units and the other by a little more than two thousand units. In summary, the population, land area, and housing changes that are now in progress show: (1) a migration of the population away from the older core of the state's central cities; (2) a status quo of no or little change in the land area of a majority of the cities; (3) a continuing expansion in the urbanization around the state's central cities; and (4) a loss of dwelling units, or a filling up of open- developed land, outside the city core through dwelling unit construction. Michigan's basic municipal planning enabling legislation must address squarely these changing conditions. Climate Michigan is located in the humid continental climate char- acterized by hot summers and cold winters. There are certain micro- climate factors which have a moderately differing effect on the environment and on growth, change, and the quality of life in most of the Michigan cities studied. The state's climate is, of course, broadly affected by: its latitude; the large fresh water lakes surround- ing it; and variations in land elevation. 65 Table 4. Changes in total number of dwelling units. 1940, Bureau of‘the Census, Vol. II, Part 3, U. S. Government Printing 1940a 1950b 1960° 1970d Ann Arbor 9,634 11.723 20.752 32,541 Battle Creek 13,415 15,609 15,762 14,604 Bay City 13,120 15,826 16,692 16,622 Flint 41,728 49,258 62,275 64,245 Grand Rapids 49,154 44,362 59,030 68,206 Jackson 15,183 16,451 16,843 15,746 Kalamazoo 15,423 17,514 25,499 27,160 Lansing 23,269 28,887 35,468 45,300 Muskegon 13,787 15,626 15,598 15,925 , Pontiac 17,618 20,519 24,754 26,810 Saginaw 23,100 27,321 29,918 29,787 Source: aU. S. Department of Commerce, Housing-General Characteristics Office, Washington, D.C., pp. 577-578, 602, 604, 610, 616, 622. b U. S. Department of Commerce, U. S. Census of Housin : 1950, Vol. I. General Characteristics, Chapter 22, Michigan, U. 5. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1952, p. 3. cU. S. Department of Commerce, Citygand County Data Book, 1967 (A Statistical Abstracts Supplement), U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1967, pp. 506, 516. dU. S. Department of Commerce, U. S. Census of Housing: 1970, H C (1)-A24, Michigan, General Housing Characteristics, U. 5. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1971, pp. 7-8. 66 In the southern part of the lower peninsula, where the cities selected for this research are located, the land form is comparatively flat. The average elevation of this same area is about 800 feet above sea level, and the prevailing wind which blows across it is from the southwest.10 The prevailing wind, blowing across Lake Michigan, cooled by winter, tends to hold back the growth of vegetation in the spring deter- ing the effect of damaging frosts. These winds in the fall, warmed by lake water which has been heated throughout the summer, tend to eXte"ch¢» the growing season. The result of this phenomena has created conditions which have produced the fruit beit of Michigan, located along the south- western and western border areas of the lower peninsula on Lake Michigan's shore. Muskegon is located in this belt and is surrounded by blueberry, peach and other fruit crop lands. The effects of this phenomena extend eastward, almost to Kalamazoo. Lakes Huron, St. Clair, and Erie have a similar effect, but limited to the land areas immediately adjacent to the eastern boundaries of the state. The same conditions produce a reduction in the per cent of sunshine, particularly in the winter months. In the lower part of Michigan's lower peninsula, the annual average temperature in January and July, and the annual growing season--from which the influence of the surrounding lakes can be discerned-~are shown in Figures 5 through 7. These factors can be related to precipitation amounts, topographic 10Charles M. Davis, Readings in the Geography_of Michigan, Ann Arbor Publishers, Ann Arbor, Michigan, September, 1965, pp. 41-42. 67 Figure 5. Mean Minimum Temperature - January. AVERAGE ANNUAL GROWING SEASON 1931-60 140 IN DAYS 170 MILES 68 Figure 6. Mean Maximum Temperature - July. / 64 AVERAGE JULY TEMPERATURES 1931 '60 69 70 IN DEGREES F. 71 72 73 73 74 O 20 40 MILES 69 Figure 7. Annual Growing Season. AVERAGE JANUARY TEMPERATURES 1931 '60 16 15 IN DEGREES F. 27 27 MILES 70 states and soil conditions, and similar factors to identify the agriculturally important areas of the state. Agriculture The southern one-half of the lower peninsula, the territory in which the cities examined in this research are located, is the area containing Michigan's best agricultural land for the growing of food- stuffs. Figure 8 illustrates the classification of land in Michigan as determined by the Michigan Department of Agriculture. The first class and second class lands are the better agricultural crop producing lands. This same territory is subject to intense urbanization from the urban Detroit area to the urban Chitago area.]] Looking into the future--to the year 2000 A.D.--the Michigan Department of Agriculture in a February, 1973 report projects a conservative need of 7,951,256 acres of harvested, pastured and grazed crop lands. The department indicates that only 6,592,620 acres of suitable agricultural land were available in 1969 for the growing of foodstuffs.12 The department's report, in its concluding paragraph, states in part:13 It is of absolutely critical concern that conversions of agri- cultural crop lands stop immediately. . . , '. . . land use plans for Michigan must not further reduce land available for intensive agricultural production in the state. . .' nDoxiadis and Associates, Emergence and Growth of an Urban Region (Volf~14.0etroit, Michigan: Detroit Edison Company, 1966), pp. 12Michigan Department of Agriculture, Michi an A ricultural Land Requirement§,_A Projection to 2000 A.D., February, '973 (Lansing, Michigan , pp. 8-9. 13Ibid., pp. 10-11. Figure 8. 71 Classification of Land in Michigan LEGEND FIRST CLASS DO....:O ....... ..... ....... Q00. THIRD CLASS 72 . . a state-wide land use plan must be adopted which will ensure the continued availability of these lands for agri- cultural production. The present state of city planning--its laws, functions, and duties--were found, in this research, to have no consideration for important state or regional interests in the conservation of agri- culturally important land as urban development takes place. Economic characteristics The economic functions of a city are one of the principle reasons people come to live together in urban centers. It, therefore, stands to reason that guiding urban growth or solving urban problems must take a city's economic health and capacity into account. It is further recognized that the economy of Michigan has a dominant and determining impact on all of the political subdivisions of the state. Looking at the state's economy, one projection indicates that:14 . . . The economy of Michigan will continue to grow through the 1970's. But the immediate future calls for adjustments that will not be easy or automatic. For example, if the expected population increase is to be accommodated in the labor force without increased unemployment, approximately 860,000 new jobs will have to be created in Michigan between 1960 and 1975. And the automobile industry will contribute far less to the adjustment than is commonly supposed. To provide the needed jobs and fill them with capable workers is the great challenge facing Michigan in the 1970's. If the demands of employment and education are not met, the burden of the failure will fall most heavily on unskilled work- ers, most of whom are negroes; this group is destined to become unemployed or unemployable in increasing numbers unless correct- ive action is taken. 14William Haber, W. Allen Spivey, and Martin R. Warshaw, Michigan in the 1970's, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1965, introduction. 73 The state's population statistics are currently showing a slower rate of increase than previously projected. But clearly the number of jobs needed because of the births during the postwar era of 1946 to beyond 1953 are now having-a major impact. When this is con- sidered against the needs for adopting to change and other influential characteristics, discussed in Chapter III of this research, the impor- tance of education and training which will permit the guiding and mold- ing of a labor force which can respond to new jobs is readily apparent. Michigan's labor force reflects the trends and changes that are taking place in the state's economy. In the years 1958 to 1968, Michigan's total labor force increased from 3,074,000 to 3,525,000 15 employees. During this same time, as well as today, shifts are taking place which provide us further knowledge of Michigan's economy. Louis A. Ferman has commented that:16 The labor market patterns of Michigan reflect an economy that is shifting from commodity production to non-commodity production, with relative declines in blue-collar employment and increases in opportunities for white-collar workers. The percentages of employment by industry are going to show relative declines in the commodity-producing industries--such as agriculture, mining, and manufacturing--and large increases in trade, services, and to a lesser extent construction and government employment. These shifts will certainly have an effect on Michigan's cities. In regard to the labor participating patterns for the 1970 decade, Ferman points out that:17 15Michigan Department of Commerce, Handbook of Economic Popu- lation Statistics, 1970, Lansing, Michigan, p. 76. 16William Haber, W. Allen Spivey, and Martin R. Warshaw, Michigan in the 1970's, p. 242. 171bid., pp. 256-258. 74 The competition from younger workers will reduce the participation rates for all male groups over 50 years of age, but non-white males at these ages wil be particularly affected. . . . Current patterns of more participation by women in all age groups should continue. . . . There is a strong possibility that the trend toward decreased participation by non-white males in all age groups will continue. The participation rates for young people should continue to decline, since this group will increasingly seek post-secondary education and training. . . . Relating these patterns to the economy of each city, the beginning of a better understanding of what the future has in store for Michigan's cities becomes more identifiable. . History, transportation, available skilled labor force, and other factors all have a differing impact upon each of the state's individual cities that cause them to vary from the economic norm of the state. The exports of the cities examined in this research are a good indicator of significant economic growth and vitality characteristics. These exports, when examined, are found to primarily result from the labor services of the city's inhabitants. Table 5 indicates the major export industries of the eleven cities researched for the year 1950.18 Specialization to the extent that one-fifth or more of their workers produced for export in a single industry existed in the cities of Flint, Lansing, and Pontiac.19 A similar relationship existed in Ann Arbor with education, and in Muskegon with machinery. 18W. Paul Strassmann, The Urban Economics of Southern Michi- §%n, The Institute for Community Development and Services, Michigan ate University, East Lansing, Michigan, 1958, pp. 9-10. 191bid., p. 9. Table 5. 75 Major export industries - 1950. City Population Industries employing various fractions of the Gain- 1950 fully employed population in production for export. 20.0% or more 10.0-19.9% 5.0-9.9% Ann Arbor 48,251 education medical services, motor vehicles Battle Creek 48,666 food machinery products Bay City 52,523 motor primary metal vehicles products Flint 163,143 motor vehicles Grand Rapids 176,515 furniture, machinery, motor vehicles, fabri- cated metal products Jackson 51,088 motor vehicles Kalamazoo 57,704 paper chemicals Lansing 92,129 motor vehicles education, government Muskegon 48,429 machinery primary metal pro- ducts, motor vehicles Pontiac 73,681 motor vehicles Saginaw 92,918 motor vehi- cles, primary metal products 76 The production of motor vehicles and parts for export employed five per cent or more workers in: Ann Arbor, Bay City, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Muskegon and Saginaw. Only Grand Rapids was so diver- sified that export industries did not employ up to one-tenth of the labor force.20 The important forms of imbalance are found, in most of the cities researched, to be a lack of diversification, an over dependence upon motor vehicle and related manufacturing, and the dependence of many of the cities upon one principle industry. A look at the number of manufacturing establishments with twenty (20) or more employees indicates, in Table 6, that some cities have had a reduction in the number of establishments. A few have gained from one (1) to four (4) establishments. All of the cities face the problem of aging establishments that have a tendency to move to open land outside the city when they modernize--if they stay in Michigan. The export industries economic functions help a community through a demand for locally producéd goods and services. These goods and services are indicated by the retail trade establishments and assessed valuations. Table 7 presents the retail trade establishments in 1958, 1963, and 1967 for each of the cities. The Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Pontiac central business district (CBD) figures are an accurate example of the decline in the number of retail establish- ments in the CBD's of all the eleven (11) cities. Only Ann Arbor and Lansing, two cities that have annexed additional land, show an increase 201bid., p. 9. 77 Table 6. Manufacturing establishments (twenty or more employees). City 19533 1963a 1967b Ann Arbor 21 25 37 Battle Creek 40 34 37 Bay City 35 36 4O Flint 47 50 56 Grand Rapids 223 209 233 Jackson 64 57 59 Kalamazoo 88 9O 90 Lansing 59 61 56 Muskegon 45 47 53 Pontiac 25 19 23 Saginaw 55 59 63 Source: 6U. S. Department of Commerce, City and County Data Book, 1967, pp. 507-517. bU. S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, 1967 Census of Manufacturers-Michigan, MC 67(3)-23, pp. 23: 5-6-7. in retail establishments for the entire city in the last ten (10) years. The overall statistics indicate that the small retail businesses in Michigan have been steadily diminishing in numbers. Relating these same economic factors to the taxable assessed valuation of the eleven cities, a clearer picture of the differences in certain cities emerges. Table 8 provides the amount of assessed valua- tion for the last thirteen (13) years. Six cities--Ann Arbor, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Pontiac and Saginaw--show an increase in valua- tion since 1960 of fifty (50) per cent or more, a city-wide increase that indicates economic growth. 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It is noteworthy that only two (2) of the eleven (11) cities have the planning staff report to, and responsible to, the planning com- mission as intended in the original municipal planning commission enab- ling legislation. William I. Goodman and Eric C. Freund have noted that: The evolution of city planning over the past half century reveals two lines of emphasis. The first is the dominant influence and emphasis upon physical development; the second--be inning much later and growing in strength today--is the emphas s on urban 37 planning as an aid to the chief executive of the muniCipality. The creation of the community development agencies and other recent organizational changes identified in the previous chapters of this research indicate the emergence of such an approach as being consistent with contemporary municipal planning effectiveness. The composition and function of the Municipal Planning Commis- sion can also shed some light upon the effectiveness and influence of municipal planning. The membership composition of the planning commission is to ". . . represent insofar as possible different professions or occupations."38 Table 23 presents the planning commission membership of the eleven cities researched. The predominate membership or composition ; of the commissioners is found to be persons of a middle-class male pro- fessional or business background. Few females or persons from other segments of society are represented. Certainly this kind of 37International City Managers Association, Principles and Practice of Urban Planning, p. 524. 38 Section 3. Michigan, Municipal Planning_Commission Act (M.S.A. 5.2993), 112 . n plume-r1: Ob-\u a a c a .. .flv lLfiwhfln.-F~¢.hl . 1.. 1. 11,4 mchrPru 5 Use .me03 omensa mo Loyomsro on“ .Lozoz wcu i mLonEmE m mucoowmoe ppm 1 memosos m mucoo -Pmog ogo poo; osu 1 Fowo_mwo o>wpogpmwcw5oo zumo _ .Loxoz on» .coEFPocoou p . memosoe m moonwpwo ogo.umog . cospwocsou o m Go F .:o_mmwseoo LooEoE-m Uh hv‘-¥ I11 \Ail.!~\‘ fl... ucrru zpwo sum xaeeo a_peem Loog< cc< mooNVuPu Go ocaogmxoom cowpwmoosoo Auto .owsmgooeos cowmmwesoo mcwccoFo .mN oFooh 113 .opsm 1=zop gooo sop» ogoom mcpccopa op oopppssoo zoomp>o< .coeppo 1::ou — .Lmoppwo o>ppogpmpcps 1cm _ .opopmmo1xo m .Lomocoz appu .mcoNPppo o 1 mgooeos m mcoNpppo n .opopwmo1xo coeppo 1==oo _ oco ooze: 1 mgooeos m moonpppo w .coEFpocaou F 1 meooEoE m moeooo F_o opopmmo1xo .Lvoz opopmmo1xo .coeppoczoo N .mpcoopmog m 1 moonsos w mpcoopmog m 1 memosos m mcoNpppu m oco .Lwocpmcm opp 1mogp one .meocoz osp .Loxoz 11..) 0:52.. .).:J\J\J u 1 n .05....”2— h. zucpmom ooppcoa :omoxmsz mcpmcop ooNoEopox comxooo 03.16C 326.5 114 representation has an effect on the decisions, concept of the public interest and sensitivity to social issues that are infused in the actions of these planning commissions. Powers, functions and duties What powers are delegated to the local planning agencies and commissions? What duties are they required to perform? The answers to these, and similar, questions provide a clue to the operating require- ments the planning agency must accomplish in the process of planning implementation. Michigan's Municipal Planning Commission enabling legislation is by structure permissive.39 In the application of these powers and duties all of the eleven (11) cities researched were found to have created municipal planning commissions. None of the planning agencies that have been created operate solely in a staff capacity. All operate in princi- pally an advisory role. Exceptions can be considered when the functions of research, development coordination, and the administration of land use controls. In some of the agencies these exceptions would also include redevelopment, housing and code enforcement functions. In all instances, formally or informally, the planning agencies provided advice to the legislative body-~usually when asked, to the chief administrator and to line substantive agencies, the latter being inconsistent and varied de- pending upon the community. This aspect will be discussed in Chapter V. 39Refer to pages 64-70 of this chapter for an identification of the legally sanction powers and duties set forth by the Michigan Muni- cipal Planning Commission Act. 115 It had been noted that the municipal planning agencies existing in eight (8) of the eleven (11) cities researched were respons- ible, directly or indirectly, to the city's chief administrator. It has also been pointed out that only two (2) of the planning agencies staff were found to be responsible to the municipal planning commission--as intended in the Municipal Planning Commission legislation. This has a bearing on the ability of the agency to require compliance with the advice it render, if it can convince the chief administrator his powers may be applied. If the staff agency can convince the Municipal Planning Commission, then the powers of the planning commission may be used to gain compliance. The chief administrator and the Municipal Planning Commission both have the powers to demand records and task compliance. However, it is the chief administrator who most often can demand that specific standards be followed. His powers, of course, only relate to non-legislative functions within the city's municipal and corporate juris- diction. The Municipal Planning Commissions have the authority to request records from and advise all institutions which affect the devel- opment of the greater community on matters which relate to the master plan and its areas of jurisdiction. Of course, neither can make demands of private Citizens outside established legislative enactments--outside of what they may rightfully perform. The municipal planning agency functions which it may rightfully perform are described by Charles A. Joiner as being determined and limited by factors which include: 1. The general legal limits that are always placed upon govern- mental power and particularly upon local governmental power; 116 2. The framework of powers and functions assigned by the state government to local governments and to planning organizations of local governments; 3. The functions assigned to the planning organization by the local government; 4. The regulations concerning those functions required by the federal government when it provides grants and other forms of assistance to the planning agency; 5. The rules and regulations concerning functions that are mags by the governing body and director of the planning agency. Additional limitations of the planning functions' powers and duties exist because of the resources allocated to it. The ability of the planning commission and/or planning agency to obtain resources for the retention of professional staffs, consultants, and to develop policies 41 Further limitations are found to exist because and plans are examples. of the performance by the planning agency of functions not officially assigned to it, and by the procedural requirements of officially dele- gated functions such as hearings, public notices, etc. Administrative history How well have Michigan's municipal planning functions coped with the limitations placed upon their legal and formal functions and their resource allocations? Just what have been the historical relation- ships with internal and external institutions? The answer to these and 40Charles A. Joiner, Organizational Analysis-Political, Socio- logica1,_and Administrative Processes ofTLocal Government, p. 22. 41The reader should refer to Chapter III of this research for an examination of standards and trends concerning contemporary compre- hensive city planning. 117 similar questions were gained by research in each of the eleven (11) cities previously identified. The administrative heads of each of the planning functions of the eleven (11) cities were asked to subjectively indicate the history of compliance with their planning agency recommendations and decisions by specified institutional categories. The conclusions are presented in Table 24. Table 24. Conclusions from questions relevant to compliance with plan- ning agency recommendations. Concurrence from institutional area Good Fair Poor Little contact City Council 45% 55% Private utilities 25% 45% 30% 90% Board of Education 30% 40% 30% 40% City departments 70% 30% County or state agencies 45% 45% 10% 50% Adjacent townships 20% 10% 70% 40% Planning commission 100% Citizens 45% 55%' Perhaps the most important finding relating to internal institu- tions is that more than one-half received only fair support from the muni- cipality legislative bodies and that the same "fair" level of support was found to exist between the planning agency and citizens of the communities. The municipal planning agencies support from the local planning commissions was universally good. These findings tend to identify a gap between 118 community-politics--legislative decisions-~and the successful implementation of municipal planning. To determine the impact of the existing enabling legislations statutory powers, each agency representative was asked to subjectively indicate the Municipal Planning Commission Act's effect on the relations of the planning function with other internal and external institutions. The results of this approach, shown in Table 25, tend to indicate that Table 25. Effect of statutory powers on planning function relations.* (Per cent) Institutions Good Fair Poor Other departments of city 10 36 54 City legislative body 10 18 72 Non-governmental -- 18 82 Adjacent governmental -- 10 9O *Note: Statutory powers referred to are those granted through the authority of the Municipal Planning enabling legislation and the city's legal charters. the role of the staffed department or other factors are more a determinant than statutory power. The existence of an operating professional planning staff that continually coordinates, communicates and otherwise aids in the implementation of the municipal planning process was long ago recognized.42 In a related manner the effectuation of municipal planning is manifested 42Robert A. Walker, The Planning Function in Urban Government. 119 through the actions of all municipal departments and through the cooperation and regulation of other public and semi-public institutions. The relations that exist between these institutions on a day-to-day basis are an indication of the effectiveness of the planning process. The municipal planning enabling legislation attempted to.prov1de mandates for these relationships. The findings here indicate that the intent of this part of the legislation has not been achieved in practice. The adequacy of resources in terms of finance and personnel available to the planning function provides further insight into the ability to properly perform its responsibilities. Each planning repre- sentative was asked his opinion of the adequacy of resources available. Table 26 presents the results. The only activity among those questioned that received substantial agreement concerned the support for the admin- istration of subdivision regulations. The preponderant opinion is that only fair to poor resources are available for adequate planning activit- ies. The conclusion could logically be drawn that there is a preoccupa- tion of planning staffs and commissions with zoning, subdivision and other short-range planning matters, at the expense of long-range planning Inatters. Just what kinds of resources for planning have been spent in 'these Michigan cities? Since the adoption of state enabling legislation resources for planning have been allocated very slowly. This has been true on a national as well as a state level. In June of 1952 the Ameri- can Society of Planning Officials reported that:43 43American Society of Planning Officials, Bud ets of Community_ lgannin A encies, Information Report No. 39, Chicago, linois (June, 52 , p. l. Table 26. Adequacy of financial and personnel resources. 120 Function (Per cent) Good Fair Poor Contracting for con- sultant needs Revisions to the Master Plan Preparing the Master Plan Conducting compre- hensive surveys Review of character, location, and extent of public works Administering sub- division regula- tions Promoting publicity and education of the public 4.4 33.3 22.3 22.3 33.3 100.0 .2 11.2 22.3 11.2 33.3 33.3 44.4 44.4 44.4 66.5 44.4 33.4 44.4 121 The number of cities with planning bud ets of $20,000 or over per year has increased from nine n 19 6 to forty-eight in 1949 and to at least fifty-eight in 1951; whereas in 1936 only thirty-nine cities had planning budgets in excess of $5,000, by 1949 this figure had increased to 140, and by 1951 to a new high of 160. These increases cannot be completely accounted for by the rise in the price level. More cities are engaging in sus- tained planning activity and more cities are supporting these planning activ1ties by sizeable budget appropriations. In addition, a number of community planning agencies have had additional funds made available to them for planning over and above the regular appropriations. Special appropriations and bond funds have been made available for special studies. In some cases, city planning agencies have been delegated the responsibility for redevelopment and have received advance funds from federal agen- cies. In other cases, the planning commission has received funds directly from redevelopment and housing agencies for assistance rendered to these agencies. Since 1952 the trend towards the use of federal funds has in- creased. In addition to funds from federal redevelopment assistance, other federal programs such as the City Demonstration Act (Model Cities) and the 701 Planning Management Program have provided added financial support. Table 27 presents the expenditures for planning by the eleven (11) cities researched. Of course, national inflation accounts for a certain portion of the increase, but a steady trend towards increased allocation of resources in support of municipal planning is evident. The poor opinion of those participating in the delivery of planning services is perhaps an indication that a gap still exists between needed support and proper resources. Municipal master plans One of the principle charges to the Municipal Planning Commis- sion is to: ". . . make and adopt a master plan for the physical devel- 0pment of the municipality, including any areas outside of its boundaries 122 .op1p .aa .Ampm_v mpeepppp .omeepeo .owN .ez peoaam .mape 1com<.mopccopa mo mopgopom oco wwopm .mogsppoconxm .mpopupmpo mcpcco—a Go xpopoom coowgoe< x x x x x x 20 x Kalamazoo X X X X X x x 20 Jackson X x x x x x x x x x Lansing x >( X x x x x x x x x 20 x Muskegon Pontiac x x x x X x x x Saginaw X x X X X x x x 20 x *1960 plans or later. 125 considered development of various forms of land use and attendant functional needs. The consideration for the interrelationship of econo- mic and social plans have slowly evolved to where the more recent plan- ning activities of the municipal planning agencies are now focusing on these other aspects of life in attempts to develop a more complete plan- ning process. One can conclude that the concept of a master plan for the physical development of the municipality and the maintaining of that plan has not fully and successfully been adhered to nor accepted. The United States' culture is a product created by the inter- action of the American people upon one another. Citizens have utilized their freedoms of choice to seek associations with others of their choos- ing and with institutions of their choosing. Abstention of social con- tact with antagonistic environments, apathy, and a lack of understanding of local political processes are symptomatic in this culture. Thus, there are many changing variables involved in each community and their impact through time on the policies, the functions of government, and the decisions which are the outcomes of the workings of this United States system. These characteristics are very influential when attempt- ing to conduct a planning function supported by and based upon the rational and orderly accommodation and guidance of change in a community. The success of planning in any Michigan municipality, urban area or region in the present and in the future will depend upon the planning agency's ability to function within this culture. This phase of this research strongly indicates that the current practice of city planning in the state of Michigan has not achieved intended results, does not 126 comply with the existing municipal planning legislation, and is failing ‘to cope with the changing factors that planning should influence-- ‘factors which affect the quality of life of the city's inhabitants. The concluding chapter of this research, which follows, dis- cusses the Michigan Municipal Planning Commission Act, as related to contemporary city planning, and suggests alternate approaches. CHAPTER V MICHIGAN CONTEMPORARY CITY PLANNING ENABLING LEGISLATION NEEDS Reflecting on the matters presented in this research, there should now be a certain amount of insight into the nature of local plan- ning legislation on a state and national scale, how it has evolved, and how it has been applied. There should also be an awareness of the condi- tions affecting the lives of Michigan's city dwellers and of the general standards required to utilize planning as an instrument of our republic serving to implement the choices of our democratic society. Now to turn to an evaluation of directions Michigan's municipal planning legislation can be aimed in order to better relate to the needs of Michigan's city dwellers. This evaluation is not intended to be a thorough analysis. Such an analysis could well be the topic of a thesis requiring detailed and specific study. The intent here is to express directions which appear valid as the result of the research accomplished here. Direction for planning legislation This research has sampled and briefly explored the nature of the economic, physical and certain social conditions which affect the quality of life of the citizens in eleven (11) Michigan communities. The flavor of the exploration can be summed up as: 127 128 Physical Urban growth in the suburban areas of the state is continuing to increase in a sprawling manner and to require more resources at the expense of the rural areas and the older inner cities. The "core" cities, upon which this research is focused, are increasingly becoming worn out or blighted, are losing residents and dwelling units, and are not being redeveloped with necessary living amenities at a rate which can turn around their decline. The existing municipal planning enabling leg- islation does not contain authorizations and responsibilities that permit the cities' contemporary social-environmental problems, and their changing nature to be effectively corrected. Economic The changing nature of the state's economy and its over- dependence upon motor vehicle production--particularly in the face of changing supplies of energy--are tending to further complicate and to cause problems of decline for the state's municipalities. The municipal- ities are experiencing losses in the retail vitality of their central business districts, a loss or status quo of their aging manufacturing tax base--for some their entire tax base-- and a definite need to train and retain a labor force to meet the conditions of "change." Social The influence of "change" is perhaps the greatest upon American society and social behavior. The population is changing with an increase in the number of elderly and the young, and a decrease in the birth rate. The minority populations are also increasing in many of the cities and, 129 thus, the entire urban population is influenced by the tensions of racism. The "health" of city dwellers--influenced greatly by local economic conditions--is not as well cared for, or apparently as adequate, as it could be. The formal learning system in the cities does not appear to create student achievement levels as high as the achievement levels of the students in their urban fringe and many of the smaller Michigan communities. City dwellers are the victims of more criminal acts when compared to their suburban and rural neighbors. Against this background, the success of municipal planning has been severely hampered by a lack of public support and/or apathy, by state enabling legislation which permits and encourages overlap, fragment- ation, competition, etc., by a multiplicity of planning units, and by a general lack of support and responsibility of, and by, the state. The direction in which municipal planning legislation should be broadly aimed is to correct its present deficiencies and permit, nay place the responsibility for, cities to carry on a consistent planning process which functions as a part of the planning for a "natural region" tempered by political realities. It has been found, in Part II of Chapter IV of this research, that neither the present level of support nor the current practice of municipal planning meet the goals and requirements of the existing muni- cipal planning legislation. There are also indications that the support of both a financial and legislative nature have been weak or inadequate. This is partly the result of a gap between community, politics, and leg- islative decisions and planning acceptance. 130 Approach to planning enabling legislation It is suggested that the approach of Michigan's municipal planning enabling legislation should be grounded on the basis of how well it permits Michigan cities to meet current needs and conditions and how well it provides latitude for changes in the future. The ade- quacy of this legislation can be measured in at least five ways: 1. Planning Principles and Technical Competence. An enabling law should indicate that standards be concerned with human life applied toward the planningfofra natural region. If the natural region extends beyond municipal boundaries, then the planning for this region should be coordinated by a planning authority which has jurisdiction throughout the natural region. The manner of application should simply permit, with consideration for political needs, a profes- sional and rational process which can continually adjust to changing needs in a systematic way. The articulating and ' detailing of principles has often been excessive and tended to freeze the process of enabling acts. ”I Lpgal Structure and Nomenclature. The enabling law should be founded upon at least the purposes of: amenity, conven- ience, efficiency, economy, general welfare, health, morals, and safety, order and prosperity. The nomenclature should be brief, clear and orderly construction in the law to help 131 establish an understandable, continuing planning process. It has been suggested that]. . . Procedures should be free of ambiguities. Laws should be sufficiently detailed and comprehensive in basic procedure so as to ensure due process and relatively uniform application among municipalities, particularly in a metropolitan complex. . . and that there are I'five general standards for planning enabling acts": (1) The language should group related features and eliminate provisions which belong in local ordinances; (2) Terms, definitions, and organization should be in simple format; (3) Each jurisdiction should be granted authority to determine its own organization for planning consistent with broader goals; (4) The planning agency should be provided a more vital role in advising the legislative body and chief executive on policy matters; (5) A clear separation of responsibility for plan making and legis- 1ation action implementing recommendations should be established. While each jurisdiction should be granted self-determination, all should be reggired to meet certain planning goals for the natural region. 3. Democratic in Function. The enabling law must permit the com- prehensive municipal planning process to be formulated from democratically derived goals and policies which are conceived in the "public interest," and the continual determination of which must be a deliberate part of the planning process. These goals and policies must also enable the municipal planning process to rationally guide public and private decisions linked by inter-governmental relationships. The enabling law must also permit this process to overcome jurisdictional difficulties concerned with responsibilities 1American Institute of Planners, Interim Report of the Plannipg_ Policy Committee on Planning Enabling Legislation, p. 5. 132 and regional interests. The law or laws should, therefore, prescribe policy which will establish such procedures. Related laws for inter-governmental cooperation, and policies which establish incentives encouraging such cooperation, should be a part of the state's responsibility. State respons- ibilities, in support of local planning, also require state- wide comprehensive plans, a planning input as a part of state departmental budget reviews, and state provided local planning financial assistance. Jurisdictional relationships should perhaps be mandated with final authority related to prescribed areas of responsibility. These areas should function with a unified system of planning administration encompassing all the levels of government.' The establishment of such a unified system--for both administration and political authority--must be established only after a care- ful analysis of natural, economic and social regions, geographic areas and political jurisdictions, etc. The system should oper- ate to provide for appropriate review and approval by the various levels of government based upon the nature of the plan- ning decision and upon established standards. The enabling law must also provide for consistency of various plans of special functions (such as mass transit agencies, solid waste agencies, and public utility companies) with the plans and policies of the region. When conflicts arise, the planning authority for the natural region should have the final decision power, subject to appeal by a local body to the state. 133 Permit the Influence of Chapgg, Legislation should recognize the political involvement necessary to deal effectively with change. The freedom for the planning process to relate to coalitions of power, to mobilize resources for intervention at strategic points, and to incorporate current, medium, and long-range plans to policies, should be established in the law. Lastly, the law should offer some "bonuses" to development that occurs in harmony with public policy as opposed to relying solely on punitive measures for enforcement. In addition to bonuses, grants of authority and coordination requirements for financing authority, tax incentives and/or tax deferral and land taking authority can be teamed with municipal planning legislation to accomplish agreed upon plans. Beyond the adequacy of the enabling legislation, it is best to turn attention to the elements that make up its content. The essen- tial part of planning enabling legislation should consider at least the following: 1. The powers of the various governmental units must be estab- lished. Included in these powers should be clearly defined responsibilities and coordinative relationships between gov- ernmental units so that jurisdictional problems are prevented. The planning agency must be prescribed. The elements of the planning process must be established. The basis for comprehensive development plans and policies of record must be clear. The procedures for deriving policies and making plans of record must be clear and constructed so as to easily accommo- date change. 134 6. The methods for effectuating the policies and plans must be available, thorough, and equalized in the use of planning tools. 7. The administrative authority and responsibility for the effect- uation of legislated plans and policies must be precise. 8. Appeal procedures must be defined and specified to insure timely and equitable solution to problems of an administrative and legal nature. Powers of_governmental units Earlier in this research, findings2 that pointed out that jurisdictional overlap which can cause fragmentation, duplication, and competition between various levels of local government were presented. It has also been noted that Michigan's Municipal Planning Enabling Leg- 3 currently is permissive in nature and does not define all the islation responsibilities, authority and coordination functions that must be undertaken to meet the challenge caused by change. In summary, enabling legislation should contain both administrative and legislative authority and requirements for: l. Definite areas of responsibility and coordination of plans and policies for and among the various levels of government; 2. Definite areas of responsibility and coordination of plans and policies among line departments within a given level of gov- ernment; 3. Long-range program and budget plans and review of related pro- posals and priorities; 4. Arrangements for technical assistance; and 5. Participation in federal and state programs. 2Refer to Chapter IV, pages 93-99. 3Refer to Chapter 1, pages 12-13. 135 The city_p1anning agency It can be found, in other parts of this research,4 that the form of local government and the role assigned to a planning agency are important formal situational factors that enabling legislation must accommodate. The Michigan enabling statute should require the establish- ment of a staff level agency with a clearly defined scope and role, an agency with its relationships to other functions of the government pre- scribed so that: V 1. It advises the chief executive, the legislative body and has the ability to influence political actions; 2. A planning process is established; 3. A comprehensive plan and policy has direct influence on the community's development policy; 4. The necessary procedures, methods, authority and coordinative provisions are established to accommodate the functions assigned the agency; and 5. The agency organization can utilize alternative formal adminis- trative arrangements. Thepplanning_process A planning process that is based upon a democratic approach, that requires the adoption of goals and objectives, requires a unified coordination, and the utilization of humanistic principles as well as philosophical thought, is the desired goal. The enabling statute should assure that the levels of government instill a process by which the plan- ning agency suggests alternative medium-range and long-range goals and 4The planning agency is discussed in Chapter III, pages 51 through 54 and in Chapter IV, pages 105 through 121. 136 objectives. The process must allow for design, economic, physical and social elements to be interrelated. The comprehensive plan should per- mit the “cataloguing" of policies and plans which allows for continual updating and revision. The manner of "officially recording" the changes should be simple and as direct as possible. The legislation should permit, as a part of the planning process, the mobilization of resources for intervention at strategic points. The legislation should emphasize continuity in the process for both continuance and for coordination within the political and natural region. Not to be overlooked, the following purposes, again, are those upon which the legislation for the planning process must be founded: amenity, convenience, efficiency, economy, general welfare, health, morals, safety, order and prosperity. The comprehensive development plan and pol icies The comprehensive development plan and policies must be clearly defined and their purposes clearly stated in the enabling legislation. The definition should permit statements in words, charts, maps, illus- tration or other media, and include goals, policies, objectives, plans and standards to guide public and private physical development actions. The statute should require that one comprehensive development plan and policy be adopted by the legislative body and utilized as the basis for community development control regulations. Further, the comprehensive plans and policies should be maintained in a current state. They should be a public record and utilized as a guide by the planning agency and 137 the community in general, and should provide the bases for local regulations such as public improvement priority determinations and urban design controls. They should provide an outline suggesting a suitable balance between types of services offered by various levels of local government. The time horizons that should be considered are short-range, medium-range, and long-range objectives, policies and plans. The comprehensive plans and policies should be professionally prepared for the local government unit, considering the units, role in the natural region, its sophistication, and its major problem priorities. The legislation must require a method, to be established by local govern- ments and institutions, for absolving differences in a metropolitan area and require consistency with the plans and policies for the "natural region." The enabling act should further authorize the appropriate levels of local government to acquire and dispose of land and land "rights" to provide an effective ordering of land development. The procedures for derivipg_ policies and making plans The procedures for deriving comprehensive development policies and plans should permit the local government to determine the agencies that are to prepare the plans and develop the policies. The overall purpose of the comprehensive policies and plans is to obtain an under- standing of the local conditions and factors relevant to development, 138 identify problems and to recognize the economic and social effect of development. Thus it has been suggested that:5 For each of the levels of government, the making and refining of a plan is of greater importance than its adoption. This process should involve: (l) fact-finding (by inventory of conditions); (2) projections of trands and analysis of the possible implica- tions of various courses of action; (3) development of "sketch plans" to convey a public image of their consequences- (4) the involvement of citizen participation in plan making; (5) the holding of public hearings; and (6) the recommendation and certi- fication of the comprehensive plan. . . Certainly the policies and plans should be available and understandable to the public and comprehensible to the average citizen. The procedures for updating and maintaining the comprehensive development plan and policies are as important as the procedures for adoption. These procedures should be specified in local legislation, and the enabling act should assure that they be a part of local govern- ment routine. Comprehensive plan and policy effectuation With the required use of the comprehensive development plan and policies as a basis, the enabling legislation should authorize local governmental units to adopt flexible land use controls. Decisions made locally which have a major impact on the natural region should be reviewed at the regional planning level and at the state level-~with powers vested at these levels for voiding local decisions if they are found to be adverse to the "natural regions" plan and policies. 5American Institute of Planners, Interim Rgport of the Plannipg Policy Committee on Planning Enabling‘Lpgislation, p. 8. 139 The land use control authorizations should be supplemented by the requirement that local government and other public institutions consider and relate their public spending activities in accord with, and on the basis of, the comprehensive development plan and policies. The state can, and should, make it its business to require utilization and implementation of local comprehensive plans and policies by requiring their development prior to the authorization of the use of state resources, or federal resources under state control. Consistency of the local regional plan with state plans and policies is necessary. Further, it is necessary that state actions also be in accord with these plans and that state funds be made available to local municipal govern- ment for municipal planning use. The municipal government should use direct and indirect influ- ences in support of the plan and policies. Construction of public facilities, regulation of semi-public and private buildings, and the maintenance of those buildings, the use of incentives and concessions, should be authorized and utilized in an equally comprehensive way. Administrative authority and pppeal_procedures Administration of the plans and policies should be vested in an agency, the structure of which should be left to the local government unit. The enabling act should encourage the agency to be as close to the local decision making process as possible. The agency should have the power and responsibility to coordinate the planning process. Some line functions should be the responsibility of the admin— istrating agency, but care should be taken to assure that this action 140 part of the process does not utilize most of the planning resources that are allocated to the administrating agency, as is the case in most Michi- gan communities at this time. Administrative authority should be vested, by the state com- prehensive development act for municipalities, in the administering agency to require it to be a part of, and close to, the municipalities budgeting and managment functions. The state enabling act should include provisions authorizing a board of adjustment within each planning jurisdiction to relieve hard- ships to individuals which will occur in the implementation of the plans and policies. Controls within such legislation can prevent emasculation of the comprehensive plan and policies by such an independent body. In a similar fashion, it is suggested that the implementation of many of the land control regulations be authorized by a board or commission. The board or commission must operate in accord with the comprehensive plans and policies adopted by the legislative body, and in accord with standards also adopted by the legislative body. Conclusion The intent of state municipal planning enabling legislation should be to establish public policy for the rational development of Michigan's communities. This research has lead this author to conclude that both professional and legislative attention on this subject should be a high priority effort on the part of Michigan's Governor, State Legislature, and the Citizens of the State. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Adrian, Charles R. Governin Urban America. 2nd Ed., New York: McGraw- Hill Book Co., 96 . Altshuler, Alan A. The City Plannin Process. Ithaca New York: Cornell University Press, i967 ’ Black, Russell VanNest. Planning and the Planning Profession-The Past Fifty Yegrs 1917-1967. American Institute of Planners, Wash- ington, D.C., October, 1967. Branch, Melville C. PlanningnAspects and Applications. New York, N. Y., John Wiley and"Sons, Inc., 1966. Chapin, F. Stuart, Jr. Urban Land Use Planning, 2nd Ed., Urbana, Illi- nois, University of Illinois Press, 1965. Davis, Charles M. Readings in the Geography of Michi an. Ann Arbor Publishers, Ann Arbor, Michigan, September, 965. Delafons, John. 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Respondent Interviewer City Call Back Record Date Reason 146 Interview No. Date: Time Date Reason Time Interview Complete Incomplete 147 Questionnaire for the Purpose of Assisting to Determine the Reiation Between the State of Municipal Planning in Middle Sized Michigan Cities and the State Municipal Planning Act I. Dynamics of City and Governmental Form. City 1. Population: City Area ........... 1940 , 1950 ,1960 ,1970 Metropolitan Area...l940 , 1950 ,1960 ,1970 2. Type of City (physical change): a. Growing b. Not growing c. Growing and Blight expanding d. Not growing and Blight expanding 3. Type of Metropolitan Area (physical change): a. Growing b. Not growing c. Growing and Blight expanding d. Not growing and Blight expanding 4. Form of Government: Strong mayor Commission ' Manager-Council Weak Mayor-Council Other 5. Do you have a chart describing the exact position of the existing planning function within your government? Yes No 6. Where in the City organizational structure is the planning function located? II. 7. 148 How many and what type of planning agencies exist in your metropolitan area? Regional Township Planning Commission City Planning Comm. Economic Districts These questions request information about your planning function's past history, present organizational form and financial support. 1. Can you identify the year the planning function first came into existence? Can you tell why the planning function came into existence? Can you name who was responsible for the creation of the planning function? Can you identify how, by what legislative acts, the planning function came into being? Can you identify the date of any formal changes in the planning function's organizational form? Date and explain each change using questions 2,3, and 4. Can you identify the date of the first planning staff appointments?(if any) Can you identify the date of the first master plan adoption by the Planning Commission? Date of major revisions? Organizational Form and Financial Support 149 marking the one from each column which most closely applies for 10. 11. 'Independent' planning commission without professional planning staff................. b. 'Independent' planning commission with professional planning staff; staff reports directly to commission; commission, not 1940 .——-— staff, is the official planning agency......... c. Planning Department responsible directly to chief executive; commission advisory to staff........ d. Planning Department responsible directly to chief executive; there is no planning commission. e. Combined planning and development department; planning commission is advisory............ f. Planning is part of combined planning/develop— ment department; there is no planning commiSSionOOOOOOOO......OOO.........OOOOOOOOOOO g. Joint city-county planning commission with professional planning staff; staff reports directly to commission.. h. Joint city-county planning commission without professional planning staff................. i. Other arrangement(explain): 1950 ——-—— -- Please read all choices before each year. 1960 1970 j. There is (was) no central planning agency, commissirn or If your.planning unit has a professional staff, how many planners were authorized in:. Staff ..... ...... .......... 0.0... Please indicate the following financial data for years specified to the right. a. Total budget for planning ..... ............ ...... Amount spent on staff.............. c. Amount spent on outside professional planning ser- vices................. d. Per capita expenditures............ ....... ... Do you know if your city utilized outside professional planning services in: _’1_ ......OCOOOOOOOOO. III. IV. 150 These questions request information about the legal requirements, sanctioned powers and duties assigned to your planning function. 1. What is the existing legal basis of your planning function? a) What State Acts: Act 285 of 1931; Municipal Planning Commission Act Act 7 of 1967; Urban Cooperation Act Act 8 of 1967; Intergovernmental Transfer of Functions and Responsibilities Act 35 of 1951; Intergovernmental Contracts between Municipalities Other (explain) b) What local City Acts: Charter Ordinance Other (explain) 2. Was the City's legal basis the same in 1930 , 1940 , 1950 , 1960 , 1970 ? 3. If the answer to question number 2 indicated change, what was the previous basis? (From—to) (Can copies of wording changes be obtained?) 4. Can a copy of the local acts providing the legal basis for the City's planning function be obtained? 5. Has the planning function adopted an official 'Rules of Procedure'? yes no The following questions request information concerning the activities of the planning function. For each of the ordinances (a) and governmental programs (b) listed following, please check one or more spaces on each line indicating the activities of the planning function. Part A Lh—loJ'CD-hCDQOU'D’ Part B ”Good-3'0 -h¢‘D 0.0 U93 0 o o o o o o o o o 0 Building Code Historic Regulations Housing Code Mapped Improvements Code Flood Control Soil Sedimentation Code Subdivision Regulations Zoning Code Architectural Control Capital Improvements Prog. Community Action Program Community Renewal Program Health Planning Manpower Program Planning Model Cities Planning Public Works Projects Urban Redevelopment Plng. Workable Program Public Housing Planning 151 Planning 0rd. Ordinance Ordinance Has No City Prepar- Review & Enforce- Responsi- Does Not ation Comment ment bility Environmental Control Have Master Plan This question has two parts, C in column l, please check those functions which are performed by the planning function; and D in columnt2, please estimate the per cent of time spent by the professional in the planning function on the acti- vities listed in column 1 during your last fiscal year. Part C Column l (Check functions performed) m-hmancrm Functions and Activities Area wide planning (planning outside municipality) City wide planning (municipal preparation) Project planning Community renewal program preparation Public and low-income housing planning Capital improvement planning Zoning administration (Whole numbers only.) Part D Column 2 (% of pro- fessional time spent) 152 Subdivision administration and enforcement Building code enforcement Housing code enforcement Model cities program planning Relocation planning Economic development planning Social services or human resource planning Central data system planning and development Health planning Parks/recreation planning Planning for parking Public works review c-Hn “LOUD: a—axu._a.:- Utility (communication, water power, etc.) planning and/or review Community center planning Transportation planning and/or review Public property review and/or planning Environmental quality Publicity for planning program u v w x. y. General agency and staff administration 2 aa . Education of public for planning objectives bb. Coordination with regional planners cc. Formal goal and policy planning dd. Other Has your legislative body adopted the Master Plan? How many referrals do you have from the following area wide functions on an annual basis? Estimated No. of Institutions Referrals Annually A. Utilities l; gas 2 electricity 3; steam 4 other B. Communication C. Public Works I) water 2) sewerage 3) other (indicate) D. Education 1; local Board of Education 2 local Community College E. Transportation 1) highways 2) mass transit 6 153 The following questions relate to the evaluation of the activities of the planning function. Please evaluate the work of the planning function and its external relationships according to the following features on a 5-point scale by circling the appropriate rating (circle one only for each feature). I. a. Relations with elected officials. mNOIUT-bQJN-d o o o o o o o 0 City Council Mayor Board of Education County Commissioners State Representatives Congressional Representatives Boards or Commissions Township Trustees of Adjacent Townships Weak (Poor) NNNNNNNN b. Relations with physical development and human of government. l. _l—l—l—l wm—aoxoooummhwm o o o o o o o o o o O 0 Regional or County Planning Commission Public Works Traffic Parks/Recreation Education Health Model Cities Human Relations Housing Redevelopment Building Inspection City Manager Welfare c. Relations with citizens and community groups. 1. Real Estate 2. Citizens 3. N.A.A.C.P. 4. Chamber of Commerce 5. Economic Development 6. Downtown Business Association 7. Community Chest 8. News Media d. Relations with private utility functions. l. Communication 2. Power —l—l—J—J—l—l—l—l NNNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN wwwwwwww #h-h-h-b-b-h-h Strong (Good) 0101010101010101 resource departments wwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwww h-b-h-b-D-b-b-b-h-h-h-hh h-bh-h-b-k-h-D mmmmmo‘lmmmmmmm 0101010101010101 l54 Flexibility and responsiveness 1. Changing Needs Implementation of plans. Sensitivity to political trends of the city. Sensitivity to social problems of the city. Encouragement of strong planning staff capabilities by city officials. Reco nition of areawide implications of p anning. Willingness of planning staff to innovate. Willingness of commission to innovate. Willingness of policy officials to innovate. Overall relations of staff to planning comm1551on. Overall relations of staff to city manager or city administrator. Coordination with adjoining planning groups. Please comment on the following: 2. N N N N NN N N N N N MN on 0) DJ to woo OJ 0) (A) (A) (A) 000.) h -h -§ h h-b h h h h h h-b 01010101 01 010101 01010101 Does the planning agency have a history of compliance with its recommenda- tions and decisions regarding: a. Planning implementation to City Council? Private utility companies? Board of Education? Private citizens? City line agencies or departments? County or state agency units? Contiguous townships or cities? 155 h. Planning matters to the Planning Commission? Does the legislative body backstop planning functions recommendations and decisions? Does the city manager backstop planning function recommendations and decisions? Have statutory power aided or hindered or had no affect on the relations of the planning function with: Other Departments of the City? The legislative body? Nongovernmental institutions? CLO U‘m Adjacent governmental units? Have budget requests of the planning function been supported by and resources allocated by the legislative body? Are personnel and financial resources adequate to permit a complete planning function able to carry out legislative requirements and responsibilities for: a. Contracting for consultant needs? b. Revisions to the Master Plan? c. Making of the Master Plan? d. Conducting comprehensive surveys? e. Review of character, location and extent of public works? f. Adminstering subdivisions (plats)? g. Promoting publicity and education of the public concerning plans? What are the backgrounds of your planning commissioners? H-D‘OQl-hIDD-OO‘m 156 9. Do the Planning Commission members take active roles in the planning program (explain)? 10. Does the Planning Commission delegate much responsibility to the Planning staff? VI. The following questions relate to the working environment and operations of the administrative staff of the Planning function. 1. Where is the planning agency housed? In City Hall In separate quarters, not related to other City departments Together with related departments Other (explain) 2. Were the planning agency's quarters built: 0-10 years ago; lO-25 years ago; prior to 25 years ago? 3. When were the planning agency's quarters last remodeled? 4. How do you rate the quarters: ______excellent _____ good adequate ______inadequate 5. How many of the professional staff, which is , hold: Bachelor degrees in planning______ Masters degrees in planning_____ Bachelor degrees in related fields_____ Masters degrees in related field;_____ 6. Does the planning staff operate on the basis of a work program? 7. If so, who approves the work program? 1n 10. 157 What professional personnel - other than community planners — are employed? (list) Does the planning staff have the confidence of the City Manager? Do you believe the total planning function, commission and staff has effectively established a decisive role in improving the quality of physical environment? In other words, do you believe the planning function has been successful? VII. These questions pertain to Planning enabling legislations. 1. Do you find the Municipal Planning Commission Act - Act 285 of the Public Acts of 1931 to: a. Relate the municipal plan to implementation tools in a direct way? b. Clearly define the essential elements to be dealt with in the municipal plan? c. Require a clear and orderly procedure for municipal plan adoption? d. Clearly identify the scope of the general plan? e. Lead to effective planning relationships with the legislative body? f. Authorize effective methods to secure desired development: 1) in the city? 2) in the suburban areas? 158 g. Provide that the municipal plan be maintained as a flexible guide? h. Provide for adequate public involvement in the Planning process? 1. Provide coordinative authority to relate other jurisdictions and departments? j. Clearly relate to other Acts and ordinances which have an impact on planning? k. Contain provisions which permit the designing of amenities? 1. Over emphasize a particular tool or tools of planning? m. Contains brief, clear and orderly language construction in its statutes? n. Requires planning in all governmental units? 0. Adequately places the planning function so as to influence community decision development decisions? p. Permit the use eminent domain or purchase to achieve Master Plan objectives? q. Contain adequate referral requirements? -12.. 159 VIII TECHNICAL PLANNING WORK Function (Study, analysis. program) Plan to do start date Revised date n draft rev. dates whole part date ann n not respons ble not programmed Population: a. characteristics b. projection by areas c. overall projections Economic: a. economic base b. land use marketibility d. housing. commercial. industrial Environmental Quality Central Data Base System Land Use: a. survey b. forcast space requirements c. specialized studies Transportation: a. streets and highways b. mass transit c. terminals d. parking e. airport Community Health Open Space Recreation Governmental and Community Facilities Special Studies Blighted Districts and Slum Areas Flood Plain Study City Design analysis Historical Site Study Social Welfare Planning Study Policies and Goal Study Master Plan: a. major street plan b. community facilities plan c. utility plan d. neighborhood unit plan a. policy plan f. open space plan 9. working and living area plan h. civic design I. historic district plan Code Enforcement analysis Implementation Programs a. planning function organization plan b. mapped improvements program c. subdivision regulation d. historic district program a. redevelopment plan (CRP) f, zoning ordinance 9. capital Improvements h. public housing plan l. model cities plan j. workable program k. economic development Typed and Printed in the U.S.A. Professional Thesis Preparation Cliff and Paula Haughey 144 Maplewood Drive " East Lansing, Michigan 48823 Telephone (517) 337-1527 i‘lICHIGQN STQTE UNIV. LIBRQRIES 3129301085981 1