The Role of a Strategic Plan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

The article examines “Towards a Sustainable Future, Cambridge Growth Policy” from strategic planning and urban sustainability perspectives. Towards a Sustainable Future advances planning assumptions and policies aimed at guiding the physical planning of Cambridge. The plan was intended to be utilized by the City’s Planning Board and the Community Development Department to guide development projects, to help review land use decisions, and to determine work programs. The planning document enabled mostly three of four main social functions associated with Urban and Regional Planning in a democratic free market society that comprise (i) the promotion of the collective interests of the community, (ii) considering the external effects of individual and group action, and (iii) the protection of the interests of society’s most needy members. This article does not aim to be an exhaustive analysis of Towards a Sustainable Future. Nonetheless, it provides a general overview of the entire planning document and of the planning process that was behind it, while simultaneously presenting some of the most important connections and inferences that can be established between the plan and a set of selected planning and administrative sciences scholarly papers and books. Cambridge’s current roadmap, “Envision Cambridge,” is also expected to advance not only the three dimensions mentioned above, but also the improvement of the information base needed for public and private decision making in the context of growing concerns associated with the Anthropocene epoch.