NUTTER: Strengthening Planning Commission

As Mayor, I will re-establish the Planning Commission as the nation’s preeminent city planning agency. For centuries, Philadelphia has been known around the world as one of the innovators in urban planning.

From William Penn to Edmund Bacon, the city has been a visionary home for planning principles and practice. However, in recent decades, the City Planning Commission has been marginalized and ignored. The City became a place where any type of development, planned or not, was considered better than none. The neglect of the planning commission has produced many negative results. Although continued construction is vital to the city’s future, we must be careful to direct development in ways that benefit the city and do not harm the fabric of our neighborhoods. As Mayor, I will work with City Council to legislate to new qualifications for members of the City Planning Commission in order to ensure that both professional expertise and neighborhood concerns are represented. I will ensure that the Commission has the budget and authority within my administration to do their jobs well.

The Planning Commission should provide assistance for the development of community master plans. A proactive plan works better at achieving community goals because it sets the agenda in advance and provides a written basis for evaluating development proposals. Rather than react to development proposals as they are made, it would be far better to involve the public in creating local plans that stake out community goals. The guidance provided by these plans and their design guidelines should drive the form and intensity of development. Such enforceable, community-sponsored guidelines create standard expectations that developers must meet rather than treating all projects as negotiable. In addition, a standardized public engagement process should be established with clearly defined objectives and procedures that create more certainty for all parties.

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