Planning staff update Southwest and Southeast area plans; transit, sidewalks and housing top concerns

Planning division staff co‑project managers gave an update to the Madison Plan Commission on June 2 on progress, outreach and emerging themes from work on the Southwest and Southeast area plans.

Urvashi Martin, co‑project manager for the Southwest area plan, and Rebecca Kinnear, co‑project manager for the Southeast area plan, described the area boundaries, demographic context, public outreach to date and the next steps to produce draft recommendations. Martin said the Southwest planning area contains “a little over 16,000 housing units” and “approximately 37,000 residents” and is more racially diverse than some other city areas. Kinnear said the Southeast area contains a little over 11,000 housing units and about 25,000 residents, and that 26% of Southeast residents identify as BIPOC or Hispanic/Latinx.

Staff summarized engagement to date: two rounds of surveys (the team said the first survey received more than 900 responses), a…