If We Keep Growing,
How Should We Do It?

The city is embarking on a once-a-decade process to revise a foundational document, one that will set a course for the city development for years to come.

Nope, not the charter.

The city has begun the process of revising its Comprehensive Plan of Development, the document that lays out a vision for how the city should grow and change physically and environmentally.

The Comprehensive Plan establishes a vision for the long-range development of the city over a 10-year period. It covers economic development, the waterfront, coastal planning, transportation, environmental considerations, and housing. It’s a vision that guides a wide variety of planning and land-use decisions in the city.

The Comprehensive Plan itself is not very specific, but it shapes all sorts of other plans, which do get quite specific, said City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg.

All Connecticut municipalities are required to prepare a Comprehensive Plan every 10 years. New Haven’s is set to expire in October 2013.

At Wednesday evening’s meeting of the City Plan Commission, Susmitha Attota, a staffer in the City Plan Department, explained what needs to happen between now and October of next year. Attota is spearheading the effort to create a new comprehensive plan.

Creating a new Comprehensive Plan comes in two phases. The first is the creation of a ​“Data Book” compiling information on a wide variety of indicators about the city, from public safety to population and housing rates. Attota has been working on the new Data Book for some time; she said she hopes to have it complete by end of this year.

Phase two is the development of planning goals. One of the primary tasks in that phase is to create a public dialogue about the plan, to take in ideas from all different parts of the New Haven community. That will take place through the city’s website, through surveys, meetings, focus groups, newsletters, media partnerships, workshops, and a possibly a website called MindMixer, Attota said.

Asked by City Plan Commission chair Ed Mattison to describe anything that stands out in her research to date, Attota said the census indicates a population growth of 5 percent in the last ten years. ​“It’s an amazing increase” considering other towns in the region grew by smaller amounts, she said.

The city could grow in population by as much as 10 percent in the next decade, Attota said. Which begs the question, ​“If we grow, where do we want to accommodate the growth?” she said.

While other towns have seen their poverty rates increase during the recession, New Haven’s has been ​“holding steady,” she said.

Gilvarg said another important recession-related shift is that more people are staying longer in rental properties, delaying the purchase of their first homes.

New Haven has seen a 4 percent increase in housing stock over the last decade, Attota said.

Attota said she will be updating the City Plan Commission regularly in the coming year as she works on revising the Comprehensive Plan.