A few weeks ago, the City of Urbana released the Imagine Urbana Comprehensive Plan, a master plan for the city that’s been years in the making. The lengthy report is easy to read, but it’s long and a little cumbersome. Despite this, we encourage you to take some time to read through it and offer feedback, per the City’s request. You can leave comments directly in the document.
For those of you who don’t live in Urbana and are curious, or even if you just want a little cheat sheet, we have you covered. We’ve put together some brief takeaways, but let’s first outline the purpose of the document.
Per the document:
Imagine Urbana is the City’s new Comprehensive Plan. It embodies our community’s vision for what Urbana should look like in the next 20 years, and articulates goals, objectives, and strategies to make this vision a reality.
Imagine Urbana also serves as the City’s primary long-range planning document, guiding the future of the community. It gives direction for decisions related to community-wide land use, economic development, transportation systems, social dynamics, the environment, arts and culture, and overall quality of life.
The document later goes on to remind readers (and residents) that a comprehensive plan like this is a living document, and that real-time changes do happen based on a variety of circumstances. We think it’s helpful to use this plan as a framework and guide, one that has identified “problems / goals” and to approach the “problems / goals solving” with curiosity, generosity, flexibility, and resolve. That is to say, the City and its officials, the planning teams, need to be held responsible for meeting those goals and sticking to the parameters established therein, with the understanding that no one knows what the future holds with regard to the economy, political (in)stablity, and weather or public health disasters.
Here are our brief takeaways.
The City is trying
In reading this document, it’s clear that the contributors and writers — Urbana City Council, Urbana Plan Commission, Imagine Urbana Comprehensive Plan Project Team, Staff Working Group, Imagine Urbana Theme Discussion Groups, and Community Partners — have put in the work and have tried to arrive at something that is both reasonable and inclusively forward-thinking. One of the best things about living in Champaign-Urbana is that for the most part, people really do want to make this place better. There is an entire section on vision and values, pictured below, that came out of this comprehensive plan project. It’s essential for a city to have this sort of moral framework. A city is only a city because of the people who live and work there, without acknowledging their humanity and a shared vision of including everyone, the city falls apart.
Urbana’s Vision
A Welcoming Community for EveryoneUrbana’s Values
The City ensures Equity and Inclusion in all City ServicesThis City is a Welcoming, Livable, and Healthy Community
The City has a Thriving, Resilient Economy and Environment
The City celebrates and enriches its Cultural Vitality
The City promotes Growth Within the City’s Borders
Oftentimes, we like to think about doing what is good for or demanded by the majority of people in a community — that’s democracy! — but we believe that it’s essential to prioritize what is good for the most vulnerable in a community. For Urbana to thrive, this needs to be clearly articulated within the plan and within the City’s approach to implementing it.
Organizing by big ideas and big moves makes things more accessible
Imagine Urbana is organized by “big ideas” (there are four) and “big moves” (there are 11). The big ideas are more or less the same as Urbana’s Values, and the big moves are the things that need to be done in order to actualize the big ideas. The big moves are further broken down into “little moves” that not only outline how the big moves will be met, but also which other ideas/ moves are associated, and which city department is taking lead on that particular big move. This is visualized in a chart / graph that marks the big moves and all the little moves that fall underneath, like steps on a ladder to the big move at the top.
Organizing and visualizing information this way is very straightforward and accessible for the average reader. It tells residents who is taking lead on the issue, what is being done (or has already been done), and how each big move is connected to the bigger picture. Because it’s as transparent as something like this can be, it invites further participation and, by default, oversight, into each component of this comprehensive master plan.
There could be a little more for planning for green spaces, especially on the eastern and southeastern parts of Urbana
Within the plan, there is the master map that has a future overlay of projected or proposed use for land. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of land preemptively allocated for green space — this will likely need to be done in partnership with the Urbana Park District. We hope that while not explicit in this document, there are plans to continue to plant trees in and around all other residential, retail, and institutional developments, as we know that trees improve quality of life and mitigate urban hotspots / heat islands.
Budgeted money needs to be spent
Whatever money is budgeted (and approved) should be spent on the designated programs, with particular attention to maximizing opportunities in arts and cultural development. Big Move Five is to “Expand Urbana’s Arts and Culture Program.” The allocated funding should be used to pay employees equitably to ensure minimal turnover, build out the team working with the program, and to spend all of the programmatic funding on supporting artists, creators, promoters, and creatives who are choosing to build, develop, and execute their programs in Urbana.
There are plans for when to assess accountability — the community needs to be vigilant but things take time
Meaningful, lasting change is often very slow and, as we’ve witnessed with projects like the Hotel Royer, construction and property development take time. As we’ve noted in previous editorials about similar topics, we want projects to be done correctly and successfully, which means putting in the time and attention to get them right. It’s hard to balance excitement and frustration — we get it. We encourage everyone to continue to hold elected representatives to account. In this case it is not only essential to ensuring the success of Impact Urbana, but it’s something that must be done with patience and generosity. We’re not sure anyone would accuse us of being too Pollyanna-ish, but we believe that everyone involved in executing this vision has good intentions, and we could all use a little benefit of the doubt sometimes. Maybe with a little side eye, though.
To learn more about Impact Urbana, and to leave comments, visit the project’s website.
The Editorial Board is Jessica Hammie, Julie McClure, Patrick Singer, and Mara Thacker.