As the region's designated Metropolitan Planning Organization, MARC must predict growth and traffic patterns each time it updates the Long-Range Transportation Plan — a plan that guides all of our transportation investments that use federal funds. Major highways are planned years in advance, and to plan correctly we need to know how and where our population will grow.

Long-range planning requires much more than just predictions of population growth and decline. To plan for efficient transportation systems, we must also predict how land will be used. Where will our employment centers be, our retail development, our green spaces, our hospitals and schools? Will our growth rate follow current trends? Or will changing forces such as climate change, globalization of the economy, technological change and demographic shifts cause us to grow faster than expected — or slower?

Frank Lenk, the Mid-America Regional Council’s research services director, is working with a Technical Forecast Committee on a future land-use forecast to support the new long-range transportation plan for the Kansas City area, Transportation Outlook 2040.

Over the next 30 years, the region can expect to add 500,000 people and 300,000 jobs, and the future land-use scenarios under consideration show alternate ways of accommodating overall growth. Under a baseline scenario — where past trends continue into the future — nearly all the region’s growth over the next 30 years occurs on previously undeveloped land. But through focused development, we can grow smarter. The adaptive scenario assumes that 40 percent of population and job growth between now and 2040 will be concentrated in activity centers and along key corridors in existing areas, older suburbs and urban places. This would lead to major differences in infrastructure costs, amount of land used, roadway congestion and transit ridership levels

For years, growth in the Greater Kansas City area has meant building homes and retail centers on what used to be fields and farms. But in many parts of the region, such low-density development has become unaffordable as infrastructure costs increase faster than the tax revenues. In addition, smaller, more diverse households, along with rising concerns about energy costs and climate change, are resulting in market demands for new housing choices where walking, biking or riding transit are attractive travel options.

To adapt to these changes, local governments have created plans for more sustainable development that focus activity in identified centers and along priority corridors. But implementation of these plans will require changes in local and regional policies.

To accurately predict what the region will look like in 2040, forecasters need to know what new policies local governments are likely to adopt. And the leaders who will make these decisions depend on input from people like you. Please tell us what you think about the following policy choices. The survey only takes about 10 minutes and should be completed by February 26, 2010.

Find details regarding the plan and upcoming community meetings here, and take the survey here.