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Local Government Academy Podcasts| Status of County Comprehensive Plans and the Development of a Regional Plan for Southwestern Pennsylvania by Lew Villotti Episode
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Lew Villotti is the Planning and Development
Director for the Southwestern
Pennsylvania Commission (SPC),the ten county regional commission
responsible for transportation planning and local development in southwestern
Pennsylvania. Villotti talked about the status of the county comprehensive
plans as well as the status of the new regional comprehensive plan. Villotti
began by explaining that there are different types of regional planning, from
city and county planning, to multi-municipal planning, and multi-county
regionalism. Municipal comprehensive plans should be generally consistent with
county comprehensive plans, which according to Villotti had been either very
old or nonexistent until recently. Three counties had recently adopted
comprehensive plans or amendments to their comprehensive plans at the time of
the 2004 conference, and the other seven counties in the ten county region were
not far behind. Villotti anticipated that all ten counties would have
comprehensive plans within three years for the first time in the history of
southwestern Pennsylvania.
Villotti discussed the role of the SPC in the region and explained that they
are âthe forum for regional consensus in public decision-making.â They receive
state and federal funds for regional decision-making. SPC had a requirement to
develop a 20 year regional plan, which is the ânewâ regional plan since the
region became ten counties. The planâs purpose is to empower the new ten county
region, focusing on the positive qualities. Villotti noted that seventeen
states have populations less than the southwestern Pennsylvania region making
it comparable to a state as far as population goes, so developing a new
regional plan for the ten-county region was important as far as coordinating
transportation and economic development and responding to industry demands and
market realities.
The new plan built on the past two regional plans, while emulating successful
strategies from comprehensive plans across the country, or the use of
technology for a stronger, more thorough approach to public participation in
forming a comprehensive plan. Visual presentation of information, expanding the
use of the internet to reach people, and visioning processes to identify
communitiesâ wants and needs are all part of this. The three goals of the plan
are to empower the region, transcend boundaries, and build on what came before.
Empowering the region includes involving all members of communities in a
transparent planning process, while identifying common goals among different
sectors within the region by transcending boundaries. The SPC holds many public
meetings in addition to collecting information from the public via internet. Click here to read the SPC's 2035
Transportation and Development Plan for Southwestern Pennsylvania, which
was adopted June 28, 2007.
[ Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:27:00 GMT ]
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