Northeast Ohio’s biggest regional planning effort in a half-century has won the planning profession’s top award for a comprehensive plan. Vibrant NEO 2040, the product of three years’ work by the nonprofit Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, has been awarded the 2015 Daniel Burnham Award of the American Planning Association. “It feels terrific,” Grace Gallucci, director of NOACA, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and one of the plan’s lead organizers, said about the award. “I think it helps to validate the work that NEOSCC did over the last three years . . . to say that it’s a good plan,” she said. The award is named for Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, who planned Chicago’s world-famous lakefront and also devised influential plans for other American cities, including Cleveland’s 1903 Group Plan. Gallucci said she hoped the award would add impetus to the implementation of the Vibrant NEO vision, which calls for focusing new…
2015
The Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study’s (AMATS) recently completed Mid-Block Crossing Analysis is a first-of-its kind effort by the agency to identify locations where mid-block pedestrian crossings are occurring or are likely to occur throughout the Greater Akron area. By identifying these locations, area communities can determine where pedestrian safety improvements may be needed. This analysis won’t be the last-of-its-kind either, according to AMATS officials. It’s the first in a series of similar efforts to foster a new planning synergy for the region that combines new planning and design strategies for a single purpose: To improve the area’s quality of life. Many of the locations identified in the analysis are informal crossing points at roads and streets that aren’t marked as crossings. People prefer to cross illegally at these points rather than walk to the safety of the nearest available crosswalk. Many do so with no problem while…