Toward a Longer View and Higher Duty for Local Planning Commissions

Allor traces the history of planning commissions and the challenges they face. Planning commissioners are often poorly prepared and lack adequate training to make informed decisions about planning and development issues. Allor argues that planning commissions have the potential to be much more than simply “development processing commissions,” but can be effective participants in broad community issues if they can learn from the past by “looking backward to the future.”