The Comprehensive Planning Guide for Local Governments, a publication of the Municipal Association of SC, explores the comprehensive plan process. It explains how planning commissions can develop and revise the 10 required elements of a comprehensive plan, and how councils should adopt it. The handbook also describes the organizational structures and functions of planning commissions and boards of architectural review as well as the process of crafting a comprehensive plan.
The guide helps explain South Carolina’s Comprehensive Planning Enabling Act, which requires those municipalities who want to implement a planning program to do so as long as they operate a planning commission. This commission is responsible for developing a comprehensive plan, specifically addressing the 10 planning elements in ways that best meet their community needs.
For each element, the law specifies that the planning process should include an inventory of existing conditions, a statement of the local government’s needs and goals and implementation strategies with timeframes. The 10 elements are these:
- Population element
- Economic development element
- Natural resources element
- Cultural resources element
- Community facilities element
- Housing element
- Land use element
- Transportation element
- Priority investment element
- Resiliency element
Find the Comprehensive Planning Guide for Local Governments.