Community Planning

As community residents and leaders come together to imagine and create a vision for the future, a plan becomes the necessary and important tool to guide the process to successful fruition.

Master Planning (also known as Comprehensive Planning) provides an overall strategy and design to guide a community's total development in a manner best suited to its current assets and future desires.

Recreation Planning (in Michigan) is generally a five-year plan guiding the growth and development of a community's park, recreation, open space, and greenway system.

Environmental Planning involves the study and mitigation of factors affecting a community's natural resources.

Transportation Planning involves local, regional, state, and federal officials working together to create and maintain a complete, comprehensive, and cooperative multimodal system.

Non-Motorized Transportation Planning

Non-motorized transportation plans seek to identify non-motorized routes for people to use as an alternative to traditional transportation methods such as driving a car.  Non-motorized routes allow people to get out of their car and bike or walk to jobs, businesses, and community events.

The Southwest Michigan Planning Commission is also equipped with professional staff capable of a variety of other community-related studies or planning ventures. (Examples are available under "Other Studies and Planning Projects").