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Cityscape: Volume 19 Number 3 | Planning Without Agency: Vibrant NEO 2040

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The goal of Cityscape is to bring high-quality original research on housing and community development issues to scholars, government officials, and practitioners. Cityscape is open to all relevant disciplines, including architecture, consumer research, demography, economics, engineering, ethnography, finance, geography, law, planning, political science, public policy, regional science, sociology, statistics, and urban studies.

Cityscape is published three times a year by the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.



Planning Livable Communities

Volume 19, Number 3

Mark D. Shroder

Michelle P. Matuga

Planning Without Agency: Vibrant NEO 2040

Kathryn Wertheim Hexter
Sanda Kaufman
Cleveland State University


Since the 1970s, Northeast Ohio has experienced the ill effects of sprawl, as a declining population exerted pressure to develop previously undeveloped land. Local elected officials, planners, and policymakers have long recognized their interdependence and the need for a strategy to sustain the region. However, structural, political, and administrative fragmentation has challenged efforts to develop and implement such a strategy. With no entity having regional authority to implement plans at a regional scale, efforts had not progressed beyond talk.

In 2010, a newly formed Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium (NEOSCC) obtained a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Sustainable Communities Initiative grant to develop Vibrant NEO 2040, a regional planning framework for sustainable development NEOSCC built a land use map for the 12 counties comprising its area of interest. It collected land use, fiscal, transportation, and environmental data and public preferences. It produced forecasts and constructed four alternative development scenarios, which it submitted to the public for consideration.


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