Welcome to the website for the Gwinnett County 2030 Unified Plan. The 2030 Unified Plan will coordinate the updates of the Comprehensive Plan, the Consolidated Plan, and the Comprehensive Transportation Plan. This website will keep you informed on the progress of our work.

Listed below are links to the final documents for the 2030 Unified Plan. The final report consists of three sections and a summary. There are also links to the technical appendices including the Comprehensive Transportation Plan and the Consolidated Plan.

The Gwinnett County 2030 Unified Plan is the central document and integrates two traditionally separate plans: the Comprehensive Plan and the Consolidated Plan. Typically the Comprehensive Plan, required by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, focuses on land use and development issues while the Consolidated Plan, required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, addresses community development, housing, and homeless needs. Both of these plans rely on the same basic data and both establish long-range policy direction for the County.

The Unified Plan will guide future land use and community development decisions in the County through 2030 and address housing and homeless needs for the period 2008-2012. This single document will simultaneously provide the basis for capital investment and land use decisions while allowing the County to continue to receive federal funds from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Comprehensive Transportation Plan, while coordinated with the Unified Plan, will be a stand-alone document and will focus on the transportation network needed to serve current and future development. The Comprehensive Transportation Plan becomes the reference providing for the county's transportation funding priorities. A summary of the Comprehensive Transportation Plan will become the "Transportation Element" of the Comprehensive Plan.

This planning effort must respond to many new concerns and changes since the county's last major comprehensive planning efforts:

• The approaching "buildout" of the county
• The increasing need for redevelopment
• Increased congestion, but decreased highway funding
• The increasing diversity of the county's population

These new challenges do not mean that older problems have been put to rest:

• Road capacity continues to lag growth
• Housing choices must match the changing needs of our citizens
• Planning for the county and its independent cities needs coordination
• Continue the protection of county waterways, forested areas, and air quality
• Water supply remains the ultimate challenge to sustainable growth

This planning process will address these challenges and concerns by creating and evaluating alternative scenarios of the future. These will be very different from each other. Evaluating the impacts of each scenario and predicting how they meet various goals will enable us to identify the most desirable, yet achievable, future for Gwinnett County.

Work on the 2030 Unified Plan began in February 2006 and may be completed by mid-2008. After public hearings, the goal is to have the Unified Plan adopted by the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners in late 2008. A Planning Advisory Committee, representing a range of community interests, will help guide this effort. Public information meetings, focus groups, and public hearings will promote further public input. This website will provide up-to-date information on such events and will also contain the interim documents and products of this planning process.