Muncie-Delaware County getting a plan together to build a better place

MUNCIE — Bring up the topic of comprehensive master plans and watch eyes glaze over like bridges on Interstate 69 in January. 

Urban planning and the critical questions of whether a property should be zoned R2 for residence or carry a  business and professional zone designation can make up the very definition of minutia. Little facts sitting in large books at the county building waiting to bite land users on the ankles.

But it all starts on a much broader field with big questions – some of the biggest questions a community has, like why do we build affordable housing at Burlington and Memorial drives rather than near Berwyn and Briar road? Why do homeowners in Delaware County invest half as much in upkeep of their residences compared with the national average? And how do we make life better for people, all people, who live here?

Answers of a kind should emerge in TogetherDM, the name given to the development of a new master plan for Delaware County and the City of Muncie. It's a big undertaking launched in February by the Delaware-Muncie Metropolitan Plan Commission, which is overseeing the project along with a 17-member steering committee. The consultants doing much of the research and doing a lot of listening are czb, LLC based in Virginia and Ingalls Planning and Design based in Fairport, N.Y.

"This puts a premium on strategic planning," said Peter Lombardi, the manager of the project for czb.