Client
City of Madison Heights
Services
Planning
Completion Date
February 2021
The City’s last complete Master Plan was prepared in 1989. While the Future Land Use Map had been updated from time to time in the intervening years, the City wanted a fresh look at its existing conditions and vision for the future. Giffels Webster worked with the City to prepare a Master Plan that specifically looks at strategies to strengthen four core areas: housing, recreation, commercial corridors and nonmotorized transportation. It does this through chapters dedicated to neighborhoods, placemaking and downtown development.
The Plan recognizes the strength of community as embodied in its 13 neighborhoods and refines the vision of the previous Master Plan to include recommendations for physical improvements as well as promote the use of the neighborhood unit to improve communication and social networks within the city as part of the implementation chapter. The Plan reinforces the importance of the arts in creating community character, promoting health and wellbeing and supporting placemaking efforts. In addition, the Plan outlines redevelopment strategies to be spearheaded by the city’s Downtown Development Authority.
The 2021 Master Plan includes a chapter on resiliency and sustainability that outlines a framework for additional short- and long-range planning. Adapting to change and discovering our role in contributing to the health of these systems is an essential to planning for a community that can survive and thrive even in the face of the most severe challenges.