Project Overview
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The Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, representing Clinton, Eaton and Ingham Counties and the Lansing, Michigan metropolitan area, has initiated a major project known as "Regional Growth: Choices for our Future". This effort has a two-fold purpose:

• to develop a shared regional vision of land use and future development patterns, and
• to establish an action plan to address urban sprawl, which will guide public and private investment decisions for the next two decades

The current Tri-County regional population is approximately 447,728. By the year 2025, the area's population is projected to increase to 549,647 or a 22.8% increase. While this growth rate is less than 1% per year, preliminary analyses of the urbanization of the region show that much of the land conversion is occurring in the more rural areas, outside existing urban service areas:

• Total urbanized land increased 62,287 acres or 342% from 1938 to 1999 to 80,482 acres.
• Total urbanized land increased by 47,945 acres or 263% from 1938 to 1978.
• Total urbanized land increased 14,342 acres or 21.7% from 1978 to 1999.
• Rural residential land increased by 63,930 acres or 97% from 1978 to 1999.
• From 1978 to 1999, for every 1 new acre of urbanized land, there was 5 acres of new rural residential land.

To achieve successful implementation of the project, the TCRPC will need to involve 75 communities and 3 counties, each with a strong home rule form of government, and hundreds of local officials, citizens and non-traditional partners. All are making individual land use and development decisions within their local political jurisdictions with virtually no oversight or coordination on the collective, long-term regional impacts of these decisions.

Consensus, generated through the "Regional Growth: Choices for our Future" project, is the key to successful implementation, and implementation will likely be based on a variety of strategies.

Some of the strategies will require direct implementation by the 78 individual local governments; other strategies may require implementation by transportation agencies, regional actions through the regional transportation planning process, actions by the private sector, utilities, school districts, transit agencies or other community organizations.

In addition to consensus, analysis performed by TCRPC of similar activities conducted in other metropolitan areas nationwide indicates that formulating a specific action plan (based on this consensus), which identifies specific responsibilities for "who is to do what, how and by when", is a second critical determinate of success.

While it is too early in this project to specifically identify these implementation responsibilities, the TCRPC has had a consistent track record in this regard throughout its forty-five year history in arenas other than land use. Examples of similar efforts TCRPC has been involved in over the years have included formulation of an award-winning Regional Groundwater Management Board, the Mid-Michigan Water Authority, the Capital Area Transportation Authority and the Regional Economic Development Team, Inc.

The consensus and specific action plans formulated through this project will improve the transportation system, preserve communities and reduce impacts on environmental systems by linking transportation and other public investments to a shared regional land use vision.