1.0 Introduction
Land Use in the City of Sunrise is a guiding public policy document that discusses the regulations of land development to ethically and efficiently protect its community and natural resources. It explains the systematic assessment of zoning, rezoning, sub-division to implement proper land use and prevent conflicts between various land uses. The first part of this assessment focuses on the history of land use and how it uniquely attracted prospective buyers to become part of the community and eventually grow while maintaining its integrity. Additionally the history acted as a springboard for the future of land use growth potential. The second part of this assessment compares the diverse population as the community expanded to acquire its growing needs to the hardships of population density while facing its own sustainability without too much dependency of outside sources.
Comprehensive Planning and the History of Planning interdependent models for urban development has been the foundation for the planning forecast of the City of Sunrise. Just like a building begins by the foundation, a city may begin as a mere settlement or a relay station providing services midway to nearby cities and communities located too distantly to serve each other promptly. Once demands of the said settlement increases, it evolves to the point where it requires expansion and incorporating further services, not just to its neighbouring communities, but to the need of its own growing geographical boundaries as well. Furthermore, when these boundaries touch, or express close proximity with each other, negotiations of established urban divisions have to be decided upon to mark their respective territories. Hence Comprehensive Planning from a historical viewpoint into modern development can lay a significant role in foreseeing the potential or peril of urban planning (Fruend & Goodman 1968).
However, the control of the internal development planning is equally, if not more, mandatory to maintain planning integrity of a city layout and land use. The main concern centered about the population growth and migration in The City of Sunrise. One discernible solution to help adjust was the retention of its historical planning procedure to maintain consistent planning for future land use and development. Hence, it was additionally mandatory to provide accessible archives to identify the pitfalls and promises to comprehensive planning. The City of Sunrise has proficiently outlined a dependent model of development in its comprehensive plan, although with smaller communities, planning requires less scrutiny. Ideally, the concept of land use becomes the vehicle for comprehensive planning, which is not always the case. A major factor that is normally unaddressed in the implementation of land use is population growth, which becomes the driving force behind the internal development of community growth.
Nonetheless, at the earliest stages of city planning, the City of Sunrise acted to endure its own undisturbed development in spite of the rapid growth of its neighbouring communities. Since its boundaries would not remain isolated from its neighbours in the long term, the city had to address its concerns such as zoning map, development procedures, flood plain management and environmental regulations. These concerns could only be raised based on the consensus of the community. In other words, the integrity of the community could only be as good as the people participating in the community public policies.
Another concern by way of the comprehensive plan was to keep site-specific zones within or nearby the City of Sunrise safe and protected because of future repercussions on future developments by city planning, even if acted upon with the best of intentions. Evidently, public policy required input from every zoning representative.
2.0 General Information and History
Whenever a major community becomes too congested or too rapid in urban growth, the residents wish to migrate outwards, but nearby the said community and build anew. The usual driving force is population density, and a reboot of self-regulated land policies require the new community to form its boundaries to protect itself. The prime example of the incentive of urban planning began with Norman Johnson who purchased a large parcel of empty land (approximately 2650 acres) to demonstrate his viewpoint of sustaining long term urban planning with the initial plan of holding this parcel primarily for residential land use. Surely, Johnson already had a vision of making the best use of this land to attract prospective buyers by displaying unusual artistic structures, being an upside house and an automobile. Johnson felt that this demonstration was a unique tactic to not solely provide visually impressive artwork, but as an incentive to lure prospective land buyers to survey the land in question and observe its surroundings. Even if buyers decided against purchasing, because of Johnson’s crafty artistic and design plan, buyers spread the news to others of a former empty parcel with the potential of becoming a settled area. The legacy of the comprehensive plan then integrated the land use policy for the community to dwell upon when it came to improve future development.
3.0 Population Growth Element Impact
Population growth became a major factor as a result of attracting observers who became part of the City of Sunrise community based on Johnson’s essential comprehensive plan. As in any growing community, factors spawning from population increase in residential zones had to be addressed and researched to accommodate commercial and industrial uses while staying focused on community goals and remaining open on public interest on planning. Even if a comprehensive plan did not, or will not forecast the most positive results, a plan regardless was required than not having a plan in place. The reason was because the City of Sunrise’s future plan benefited from past prologues to currently shape its community and identify factors that so far always worked. When the population began to grow, an adjustment to the plan has to be implemented and express a limited yield for the new migrators into the community rather than merely planting them in the most convenient location where development is stagnant.
The implementation became a question of rezoning the land use that, in turn, can affect environmental issues. Hopefully the land in question was historically the city’s first study area on record where possible uses of generic development models can still be practised to adjust to the population increase (Friedmann 1971). The initial factors that concern both the subject land and the existing community are environmental, agricultural, and utility elements, and how in the past were exercised. Following are commercial and industrial elements. Brief descriptions have been documented regarding the impact on population growth on each particular element, and how they affected the growth of the Sunrise community. If the land in question appeared vacant, still, is was still deemed to be in use for some form of other development, although maybe not for physical structures. Typically, the existing land use fell under three major categories: residential, commercial, and industrial. Depending on ownership of the land, other uses could have been categorized under recreation or open space, agricultural, and government (McGraw 1994). As in the vacant parcel example, discussions invited topics of irrigating the land to encourage wildlife habitat preservation.
The environmental elements have been defined by how and where the population is being yielded per acre and how they facilitate the newly laid out plan to regulate waste disposal, green space designation, and power generation, in order to minimize the risk to the existing community. In fact, utility elements were resolved in conjunction with environmental elements and may be documented accordingly to monitor the progress with a growing community. The studies demonstrated how to forecast the existing community and only admit a minimum area and a timely schedule to which these elements (environmental and utility) can be carried out legally without disturbing the environmental conditions. As it progressively played out, related elements such as wildlife and habitats were studied, except the environmental issues needed to be addressed as the parent and driving elements.
Why the historical aspects of development in this case became compulsory was because only so much physical land characteristics were considered as part of development planning; past uses , or lack thereof, also determined how land use was to be enforced since action planning affected community growth.
The City of Sunrise needed an active community when implementing the comprehensive plan for optimum results. City wide programs in forms of workshops and frequent public hearings to keep the public informed made a difference in encouraging strong community growth. The city council could not emphasize enough the importance of its peoples’ interest in their responsibilities therein when it came to city planning. The design, structure, and participation in the comprehensive planning may be material in determining the plan’s success (Kohls 2006). Intense and debatable topics ranged from preserving green space to constructing new buildings, mostly residential, to accommodate city growth. These debates frequently drew the attention of almost every local Sunrise resident as each preferred to keep the integrity of the historical urban plan intact. Each zoning representative received prompt suggestions from its own people and forwarded instructions to council on how each community was very adamant on changing the elements that worked according to plan for many years. As soon as new residents arrived or were announced to migrate to the Sunrise community, they were immediately informed of the importance of resident participation with a brief description of the history and the growth of their new home. The history of planning interested the newcomers since comprehensive planning was already popular in US cities, and the housing budgeting per capita was cited to enhance community welfare. Of course the main question remained if the feasibility to land use planning improved cities (Bryson 1991). As common as it was for all communities, all its residents acquired concern over who these newcomers were and where they arrived from beside what impact their arrival would have on community welfare.
The issues arose when populations from neighbourhood towns planned to incorporate utility and power line services throughout to expand the perimeter power grid within Broward County. Evidently, representatives of neighbouring towns were required to meet on behalf of their own people to resolve shared community servicing. Letters of notification were sent to inform neighbours of proposed developments. The neighbours and the community reps were to provide responses within a certain time to express their feelings of development and services.
Once each community had voiced their opinions on how to maintain their grandfathered territory, the topic came down to the cost and benefits of each community. Regardless of how beneficial the comprehensive plan was enacted, small pockets within the city were impacted. The borders between designated zones experienced re-alignments to accommodate the new land use development. The decisions made by zoning needed a follow-up with those in the vicinity of the re-aligned borders and how they were compensated. However, the Sunrise community being very coherent with council often prevailed over decisions that would have brought abrupt and unfavourable effects. The residents ensured property value was kept at a steady pace to keep the real estate market attractive for potential buyers planning to invest, and residential territory was the most protected domain in city development.
The formulation of the comprehensive plan was generally inputted by the residents of the Sunrise community to maintain its long term projection. The people felt it was only fair to implement growth in a timely manner, as abruptly launching a plan would have negative impacts on the population. Likewise the comprehensive plan had to list in detail in steps and limitations of urban planning regarding which communities are allowed a yield of space, types of buildings constructed, green space, and commercial transportation to adjust to population growth. Similar to receiving responses from notification letters, city planners were required to transition the plans from papers into reality.
Unfortunately and practically, things do not always progress as planned. Neighbouring communities did not end up on the same channel when a plan received approval to proceed, because each community mainly relayed their opinions in writing. The implications ended up revolving around social issues as well as planning issues. Therefore, the comprehensive plan underwent numerous revisions based on public opinion to ensure smooth and steady growth.
As was the case of every successful city plan, the master plan needed to keep its routes planted in the historical implementation of urban planning. A compilation of local regulations always tended to leave space for review and revision.
However the Sunrise community kept up with contemporary urban planning instead of falling into the pit of necessary changes due to population growth. Usually necessary change was a fallacy forcing communities to change impulsively. The people of Sunrise fought to maintain the pace of population growth without allowing external factors have damaging impacts on its growth. Just as long as the major contents of the comprehensive plan have been discussed among all citizens of legal age, and had a vision of how all key factors would only minimally affect urban development, the City of Sunrise always had a potential of being a self-sustaining entity, instead of depending on outer communities for assistance.
4.0 Conclusion
As the City of Sunrise has limited growth land-wise, it has proven strategically its comprehensive plan can sustain itself and its community. The binds within the community assist in contemporary development, provides a positive future planning outlook, and can prepare itself in adjusting to alterations to its surrounding neighbourhood communities if they require shared servicing. Even as developers eye the coherent community for potential growth that they deem necessary, they are made to understand that their plans are only to benefit, not to hinder growth, and must operate within the rigid parameters originally approved by council. The people of the City of Sunrise understands that no one community actually stands alone, but must also grow with its neighbours and research their current comprehensive plans to better their forecasting of what development has in store for them. As a closing statement, the importance of land use for any development of any kind requires meticulous study and proposed urban models to project the vision of how any seemingly and simple change could impact the population growth.
Work Cited
McGraw, H. “A Concise Guide To Community Planning”. 01 August 1994.
Friedmann, J. “The Future of Comprehensive Urban Planning: A Critique”. May/June 1971.
Fruend, E.C. & Goodman, W.I. “Principles and Practices of Urban Planning”. Chicago, Ill. International City Managers Association. 1968.
Kohls, Heather. “Comprehensive Planning: Is There a Relationship between Committee Design and Subsequent Outcome: A Baseline Survey”. October 2006.
Bryson, J.M. “There Is No Substitute for an Empirical Defense of Planning and Powers.” Journal of Planning Education and Research. February 1991.
