Strengthening Your Municipal Master Plan

A municipality's Master Plan establishes the long-term vision for how a community should grow and develop. It guides decisions about housing, businesses, agriculture, transportation, open space, natural resources, historic areas, infrastructure, and future development.

Simply put, if something is important to your community's future, it should be reflected in the Master Plan.

Why the Master Plan Matters

Development decisions don't happen in isolation. Municipal officials, Planning Boards, planners, and other decision-makers look to the Master Plan when considering zoning changes, redevelopment areas, infrastructure investments, and future growth.

A strong Master Plan gives a community a clear direction.

For South Jersey's rural communities, that means planning not only for where development should occur - but also identifying the places and resources that should remain protected.

What Should Your Community Be Planning For?

Residents should consider whether their municipality's Master Plan adequately addresses:

Farmland and agricultural preservation
Open space and natural resources
Historic and cultural resources
Rural and community character
Appropriate locations for commercial and industrial development
Housing and residential growth
Roads, traffic, utilities, and other infrastructure
Parks and recreation
Economic development
Large-scale or emerging land uses

The goal isn't to prevent all development. It is to make sure development happens intentionally and in places where it makes sense.

Protect What Makes Your Community Unique

Every municipality has characteristics worth protecting.

It might be productive farmland, a historic downtown, forests and wetlands, scenic roads, waterways, small neighborhoods, or the rural landscape itself.

Those priorities should be clearly identified in the Master Plan.

Once farmland, open space, and historic landscapes are developed, they can be extremely difficult - if not impossible - to restore.

Preservation should therefore be part of the plan, not a reaction to development.

Residents Have a Role

The Master Plan belongs to the community.

Residents can participate by reviewing the current plan, attending Planning Board meetings, participating in public hearings and Master Plan updates, submitting comments, and asking municipal leaders how preservation and future development are being addressed.

You don't need to understand every page of a planning document. Start with a few basic questions:

What does our Master Plan say we want to preserve?
Where does it say future development should occur?
Does the plan still reflect what residents want for their community?
Are agriculture, open space, history, and community character adequately addressed?
Has the community changed enough that the plan should be revisited?

Turn Community Priorities Into a Plan

A strong Master Plan creates a shared vision before individual development proposals arrive.

That gives residents and municipal leaders a foundation for making thoughtful decisions instead of addressing major land-use changes one project at a time.

Decide what should be protected. Decide where growth belongs. Put those priorities into the plan - and use that plan to guide the future.