Course: The Land Use Project

Developing Land Use Policies

Introduction

Land use planning can affect our quality of life and the kinds of work people do in a community. Former Governor Jennifer Granholm stated that thousands of young adults are moving away from Michigan every year. They may be seeking a better quality of life and more rewarding work. Better land use policies may help keep young adults from leaving Michigan. The State of Michigan can only do so much to improve the quality of life in your area. Most of the improvements have to be made at the local level of government.

Your task is to write good land use proposals, which will increase the quality of life in your community and encourage you to stay there as an adult.

Here are the major steps of this project:

1. Write Hypotheses: Students will write five initial proposal hypotheses. An hypothesis is a statement that may be true but needs to be studied and tested. Hypotheses on what would be good land use policies can never be proven, but can be disproved. First you will think of five ideas individually, then your whole class will decide on five hypotheses.
2. List draft propsals, one to three sentences describing the proposal.
3. Speak with an Expert: Test and discuss the hypotheses with experts and students from other classes.
4. Review Your Hypotheses: Review and possibly revise the hypotheses and reduce the five to one.
5. Research Your Hypothesis: Research the hypothesis by collecting data from websites, newspapers and journals, interviews and surveys.
6. Refine the Hypothesis: Refine the hypothesis based on the research.
7. Write and Present Policy: Write your proposal and action plan and develop a presentation.
8. Present over Video Conference: Present to other classes, experts and audiences that write the policies in your community.

Note to the teacher

Complete the Policy Proposal, Action Plan and Presentation
- Continue to develop the Plan
- Complete the presentations using the guidelines available and assign speaking and other roles.
- Confirm videoconference connections and practice
- Videoconference to present your policy and action plans to the Land Use experts. The experts will be asking questions about your policy and action plan.
- Debrief and discuss what you learned.

Use this Forum to ask questions and get help.

The purpose of the Student Forum is for students to talk about things not necessarily related to the project. You can exchange ideas and ask each other questions.
There are rules! Do not give out home address, phone numbers, pictures or other identifying information. Enjoy the Student's Forum in a safe responsible manner.

The Land Use Project by Mike Souden and Oakland County ISD and Oakland County Land Use Planners is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.