Summary Report for the Lansing Metropolitan Area - Tri-County ...

Two Potential Regional Growth Scenarios
After data was gathered concerning regional growth trends, this information was applied to
develop future options or scenarios for regional growth. These options were evaluated using
travel forecasting models and other tools to assess their impacts on transportation, costs of public
services, environmental and land use impacts and other criteria. Two future growth scenarios
were considered: “Business as Usual” and “Wise Growth.” In the “Business as Usual” scenario,
future regional growth was depicted assuming present trends will continue without changes to
current zoning and land use policies that guide and shape development. Alternatively, a “Wise
Growth” scenario was also presented. This scenario assumed policies would be implemented to
encourage that new development be directed to already developed urban areas (infill
development), clustering of new development in proximity to developed areas and limited
development in rural agricultural and open space areas. These two scenarios were modeled in a
way to compare their impacts in the year 2025 and at some future point when the entire region
reached the maximum “build out” permissable under existing zoning for all jurisdictions in the
three counties. Table 2 shows results of this analysis.
Selection of the Wise Growth Scenario
Both the “Business as Usual” and “Wise Growth” future development scenarios were presented
at the town forums and potential impacts on the region’s quality of life were described for both
2025 and at regional build out. After the information was presented, real-time computerized
voting was conducted on both scenarios. In these votes, it was determined that the “Wise
Growth” scenario was preferred by 79% of the town forum participants. With these
overwhelming results, local officials on the advisory committee and the Tri-County Regional
Planning Commission felt confident and adopted the “Wise Growth” scenario as the preferred
alternative.
Table 1 shows a summary of the impact analysis. Greater detail comparing performance
measures for each scenario is shown in Table 2.
Table 1: Summary of Impacts by Scenario
Adopted
Trend
Forecast Wise Growth Build Out
Wise Growth
Build Out
Measure
Community
Services Good Fair Poor Good Access to jobs, parks, housing
Environmental 33,742 21,339 70,977 21,339
Acres of agricultural land and
open space consumed
Environmental
Justice 44% 90% 21% 26%
Percent of minorities with
access to transit
Average percent of households
in existing water/sewer service
areas
Utilities 43.5% 68% 15.5% 68%
Cost of Public
Police, fire, emergency service
Service $ 23,695,000 $ 31,597,000 $ 173,997,000 $ 271,388,000
costs
Costs to improve capacity
Transportation $ 45,800,000 $ 91,800,000 $ 1,690,700,000 $ 136,500,000 deficient roads
Land Use 201,098 191,002 239,770 191,002 Acres total developed land area
Parks, open space, agriculture
lands, other intangibles
Quality of Life Fair Good Poor Good
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