Land Use and Planning Resources study

Population growth in the Twin Cities region will boost the demand for vehicle travel substantially in the next 20 years. That travel activity, in turn, is likely to cause a corresponding increase in vehicle emissions, despite improved fuel efficiencies and other favorable trends.

Land Use and Planning Resources Final Report - Jan. 15, 2011 (118 pages, pdf)

The Land Use and Planning Resources Report

identifies the Council-adopted policies and strategies that support transportation and land-use decisions made by local governments in the metro area.
lists an array of planning and implementation tools that can help enable local governments to use land use and transportation, working together, to achieve legislative goals.
includes a voluntary tool that local governments can use to estimate how different land-use strategies for a proposed project or subarea affect travel behavior and air pollutant emissions.
describes the outreach and collaboration efforts that helped shape its content.
highlights the impacts of land use and transportation strategies, brings together lessons learned from those strategies, and features information on transportation infrastructure costs and results.

Recognizing that refining land-use patterns and expanding transportation options may help alleviate future air-pollution impacts, the 2009 Minnesota Legislature directed the Metropolitan Council to assess how land-use and transportation policies and strategies in the seven-county metropolitan area can:

reduce air pollution;
mitigate traffic congestion; and
reduce costs for operating, maintaining or improving transportation infrastructure.

The Study

As a starting point, the Council relied on two regional policy foundations − the Council’s Regional Development Framework and its Transportation Policy Plan.

The Council also examined best practices among transportation and land-use policies to develop a baseline measure of regional and local air-pollution impacts, in order to create a planning tool that communities can use to voluntarily reduce those impacts.

The Council studied the connection between land use and transportation activity with an eye toward measuring the impact of the region’s air pollution caused by vehicle emissions − carbon dioxide and other air pollutants.

Study Participants

The Council collaborated with representatives of local government through two Council advisory committees as well as with other organizations.

The advisory committees:

Land Use Advisory Committee (LUAC) − Membership of 19, with 16 reserved for local elected officials.
Planning Committee of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) which supports the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) – Membership of 22, with 14 being professional staff of local governments.

Organizations consulted: