City of Racine Comprehensive Plan

The City of Racine adopted its first Comprehensive Plan in 2009, and, like many communities during the early phase of comprehensive planning, designed the plan to closely reflect the requirements outlined by state statute. The result was a dense, lengthy document with robust information but lacking graphics and user-friendliness to be widely understood and usable by many in the community. GRAEF partnered with the City of Racine to create a more user-friendly, visually appealing Plan that addressed the City’s current needs and challenges. Throughout the Plan, GRAEF conducted community engagement to ensure the Plan closely reflected the needs, priorities, and feedback of the residents, business owners, and elected officials who know and love Racine. Engagement was designed to be in person (events and group meetings), online (interactive website, mapping, and survey), and offline (do-it-yourself meeting kit) so that community members had a holistic set of options to drive the Plan.

GRAEF designed the Plan to meet and exceed statutory requirements by including the nine required elements of comprehensive planning and adding additional elements in chapters on Sustainability, Equity, and Smart City reflecting the community’s commitment to innovative and inclusive planning practices. The Plan advances a place-based approach using geographic sub-areas of the City to plan for a mix of complementary uses instead of a single-use framework for future development. Helpful data, community input, links to resources, and celebration of past success is woven throughout the plan to provide ease of navigation and understanding to a broad audience. A targeted, time-bound implementation framework is included for Staff implementation, accountability, and transparency purposes to ensure the Plan is strategically enacted instead of sitting on a shelf.