Information

Background

The Santa Barbara Region Economic Project's (ECP) primary focus for the next two years will be to create a regional planning process for the South Coast. The mission of the Community Regional Planning Project will be:

To act as a catalyst for creating a regional planning process for the South Coast that will result in the creation of a regional plan and policies supportive of a healthy environment, a sustainable economy, and the preservation of our citizens' quality of life for the future generations.

Regional planning process principles:

-Principles reflect the recently published document "Preserving Our Future: Land-use Principles for the Next Generation.

  1. Recognize the South Coast as a distinctive planning region and integrate the Communities General Plans to facilitate the remaining principles.
  2. Create and enforce a permanent Urban Growth Boundary that focuses development into existing urban areas while respecting existing General Plan growth limits.
  3. Create and fund an integrated regional multi-modal transportation system within and between communities on the South Coast.
  4. Promote responsible, efficient and compact development while preserving green space, utilizing existing General Plan growth limits, and respecting the character of existing neighborhoods.

Previous objectives:

  • Prepared and presented the four land-use principles to the South Coast community;
  • Developed computer modeling tools capable of projecting and assessing growth patterns over time;
  • Testified before various regional governmental bodies about regional land use patterns;
  • Expanded the Board of Directors and strengthened its committee structure; and
  • Developed a baseline of existing data and for the Regional Impacts of Growth Study;

Goals of the next phase:

  • Hire a Project Director;
  • Analyze the current regional buildout according to existing general plans as well as other scenarios using computer modeling tools;
  • Determine information needs that are not provided by the computer modeling tool; and
  • Create alternative regional land-use study scenarios to be researched in more detail.

In the future, pending additional funding, ECP intends to:

  • Apply the data and computure simulation tools to analyze different study scenarios; and
  • Complete the Regional Impacts of Growth Study (ReGIS), similar in concept to the study done for the City of Santa Barbara in 1974.

The study will analyze the environmental, social and economic impacts of various levels of population growth and land-use patterns on specific geographic areas and the region as a whole. Ideally, the result of this effort will provide information necessary for the public and policy makers to develop a formal regional planning process and, ultimately, a regional plan, to address the questions: Should the South Coast grow, and, if so, how, and by how much?

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