Annual report (1980)

              Long Range Planning
Comprehensive Planning is undertaken primarily by the staff of Long Range Planning.
One of the staff's main responsibilities in the planning process is to evaluate
various development issues so that their impact upon the overall community can be
forecast. Much of the staff's work is, in turn, used by the Fort Wayne City Plan
Commission as an aid in their decision-making process. More specifically, the
Commission uses this information to anticipate the needs of the community and to
guide and adjust development patterns to fulfill these needs.
There were a number of planning projects handled by the staff in 1980. Among
the most significant were the Comprehensive Plan, the Annexation Program, and
the Capital Improvements Program. Below is a brief commentary regarding these
and other programs handled by the staff.
THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN
The cornerstone of any successful long range planning program is a workable
Comprehensive Plan. Since the City's existing Master Plan is seventeen years
old, and therefore outdated, the Fort Wayne Plan Commission and the Long Range
Planning staff have been diligently working on a new Comprehensive Plan. During
the year, the staff completed a preliminary draft of the Plan and submitted it to
the Plan Commission for review. The Commission held four sessions lasting four
or five hours each to complete the plan review. The lengthy sessions proved to
be very beneficial in that several improvements were made to the Plan. The
Commission sent these improvements back to the staff so that they could be
incorporated into the next draft.
The progress made on the new Plan in 1980 should allow for its completion in the
coming year. Once the Plan Commission is satisfied with the final draft, the Plan
will be scheduled for public hearings, and adopted.
SUBAREA PLANNING
With the Comprehensive Plan nearly completed, the Long Range Planning staff began
to develop a subarea planning process. This process is one of the important
implementation tools stressed repeatedly in the Comprehensive Plan. Subarea
planning takes the broader goals and policies of the Plan and refines them to
fit areas of the City that have similar characteristics.
The staff's first step in developing a subarea plan was to divide the City into
twenty-four parts, or subareas. The subareas were derived from natural and
man-made physical boundaries, housing characteristics, land use patterns, and
interviews with long time Fort Wayne residents. Once the subareas were delineated
the staff analyzed a set of predetermined characteristics within each.
During 1981, the staff will prepare a report on the analyses done for the subareas.
This document will be used to identify problems unique to the subareas so that
solutions can be directed in a more efficient manner.
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