Ingenuity Spring 2018

Pond Ingenuity Spring 2018 7 Other data collection techniques include: • The development of an online survey (over 500 responses so far). • An exercise called “The Timeline” is where residents can view the history of Gwinnett County from the prism of planning and development before we broadly ask what people expect to happen between now and year 2040. • A unique crowdsourcing technique to encourage conversation that we refer to as a “Living Room Chat” that is a mechanism for engaged members of the community to spread the word about our work and have informal discussions at their convenience about the past, present, and future of Gwinnett County. Data and Technical Analysis An emerging centerpiece of our work is a series of analyses we have developed and call “Opportunity for Change”, which has three distinct components. The first component is called “change and preserve preferences” and is an exercise we developed to understand the parts of our community that residents would like to (1) preserve as they are and (2) conversely the parts of our community where they see an opportunity for changing into something different than what we have now. The second component is called “urban scale preferences” and is a companion exercise for us to understand what types of development and intensity the community feels appropriate. Using a scale from rural to suburban to urban areas, residents are able to voice their vision for the future of different parts of Gwinnett County. In the third and final component, called “change and preserve likelihood”, Pond performed a series of analyses to understand what parts of the County are likely to change and what parts are likely to preserve using a variety of different criteria ranging from walkability scores to property values to existing and planned infrastructure (such as where there is transportation and sewer capacity) to market demand based on rates of home ownership and developer proposals. Compa r i ng t he t h ree sepa r a t e components of the “Opportunity for Change” analysis, our team has been able to pinpoint a variety of different thematic similarities. In particular, there is tremendous interest from the community to change the character of the I-85 corridor. In contrast, there is a lot of interest in retaining the suburban feel of many of the primarily residential parts of our community. While Gwinnett County’s current population is estimated at a little over 900,000 people today, some estimates anticipate we will absorb over 600,000 additional residents between now and the year 2040. Therefore, it will be incredibly important to make sure this growth occurs in a responsible and sustainable manner. This unique analysis process we’ve developed will empower the planning team and County decision makers to make informed and educated decisions as we plan our future. NEXT STEPS Our planning team anticipates preparing an initial draft of the plan this summer. From there, we will work further with the community, decision makers, and regulatory agencies to eventually have the plan adopted by the County Board of Commissioners, anticipated to occur in February 2019. Eric Lusher, AICP | Senior Project Manager, Transportation Pond’s David De Leon participates in an interview on La Raza to help explain the importance of the Gwinnett 2040 Unified Plan. Urban development occurs on a continuum from undeveloped rural communities all the way to dense urban centers. The Pond team is asking Gwinnett County residents where they believe these different types of treatments are appropriate in the community. The results of our “Opportunity for Change” analysis indicate a lot of interest and potential to changing the I-85 corridor, while there is interest in preserving much of the northern, eastern, and southern parts of Gwinnett County.

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