Cranston is approaching a significant milestone in its future planning process.

After a year of work, city planners earlier this month unveiled a trove of new information to shape development projects over the next 20 years.

The process began in September 2023, in response to a state law requiring all Rhode Island municipalities to revisit their comprehensive plans at least every 12 years.

Now, the city is under pressure to meet the state-mandated deadline.

In an interview, Jason Pezzullo, Cranston’s planning director, said that the process has focused on updating data, facts, figures and analysis. The current plan was last updated in 2010. Eventually, Pezzullo said, the updates will help the city make informed policy decisions for the future.

“We’re not changing goals, policies and actions,” Pezzullo said. “The simple fact is that phase one has been a rush to get it approved, just so the city can have an adopted local plan.”

Pezzullo said turnover over the past year within the city’s planning department limited the ability to work on the comprehensive plan. The department has recently reached full capacity again, Pezzullo said, with five planners now on staff.

The 182-page updated draft consists of 13 chapters and is available online for public viewing on the city’s planning department homepage. Each chapter, viewable as PDF documents, focuses on a critical aspect of the city’s future: Land Use, Natural Resources, Historic and Cultural Resources, Recreation and Open Space, Services and Facilities, Transportation, Economic Development, Housing, Natural Hazards and Climate Change and Energy.

In the next week there will be two meetings to push through the plan’s approval.

The first is a special meeting to discuss the comprehensive plan, held on Thursday, Aug. 29 at 5 p.m. It will be live-streamed and archived for viewing on the city’s YouTube channel. If necessary, the Planning Commission will meet again, on Sept. 3, to continue the discussion and vote. It will then likely be on the agenda at the City Council's next scheduled meeting, September 23.

What is Comprehensive Planning?

If you’ve ever wondered what your neighborhood will look like 10 or 20 years from now, Cranston’s comprehensive plan is a good place to start for answers.

A comprehensive plan serves as a guide for addressing big questions about the future: How and where should Cranston build affordable housing? Where should solar farms be located? Which parts of town need bike lanes? How is the city preparing for environmental risks associated with climate change?

Meredith Brady, associate director of Rhode Island’s Division of Statewide Planning, which oversees comprehensive plans across the state’s 39 cities and towns, explained the significance to updating comprehensive plans.

“If a plan is expired, it means that it has not been updated to take into account changes that residents and leadership want and need, nor does it consider changes in land use statute and practice,” Brady said in an emailed statement.

Cranston’s comprehensive plan has been outdated since 2017, according to state guidelines.

Addressing these challenges will be crucial as the city moves forward with the next phase of the plan. Pezzullo said phase two will emphasize public engagement. He said it will focus more on modern zoning, urban design and addressing the city’s most pressing issue: housing.

“The biggest planning issue facing the state is housing, and [Cranston] is right in the mix of trying to address this,” Pezzullo said.

The comprehensive planning process could be further slowed by a busy election season in Cranston. Numerous primaries and general elections are being run for council seats in each of Cranston’s six wards, an open spot in the state senate and high-profile mayoral race figures. With so much at stake in city government, the process may get a brighter spotlight on the campaign trail and on Election Day in November.

Pezzullo said the public engagement and drafting process will likely start in the winter of 2025 and completed within 18-24 months.

Renewable Energy: ‘Inadequate Implementation’

One of the most significant additions to the plan is new sections on the city’s energy use and hazard mitigation, topics of growing importance as climate change intensifies extreme weather. The plan outlines several areas for improvement, including the development of stronger policies for solar installations.

When it comes to renewable energy, Cranston received poor marks, according to a challenge highlighted in the plan’s new energy section. Despite a 2017 amendment to the comprehensive plan to address solar development, “there has been limited solar or renewable energy facility development in western Cranston.” Challenges include conflicts over land-use and a lack of clarity on zoning policies specific to renewable energy.

The city’s updated comprehensive plan does not address these issues.

A forward-looking endeavor?

Cranston resident Annette Bourne, a director for HousingWorksRI, a policy and research organization run out of Roger Williams University, said she hopes that the city will take a more strategic and holistic approach than it has in the past.

“Planning should be an aspirational, forward-looking endeavor,” said Bourne. “From the affordable housing perspective, I’ve come to think of planning as a way to maintain the status quo. If people are pleased with their quality of life, then they tend not to see a reason to make changes to the plan.”