Master Planning Ideas

Sussex County Comprehensive Plan - Adopted 2019

12.2 PROMOTING BETTER COMMUNITY DESIGN 

Sussex County Code contains regulations for the subdivision of land and zoning. Through the code, Sussex County currently uses two primary methods to encourage better community design: Residential Planned Communities and Cluster Development. Master planning, or small area planning, provides an additional tool for Sussex County to encourage better, more cohesive, community design in specific areas. 

12.2.3 Master Planning and Small Area Plans 

The County would like to encourage more master planning of large-scale developments on large parcels or groups of smaller parcels in order to provide flexibility in the design of a site’s buildings, trails and pedestrian paths, roads, and open space as well as encourage interconnectivity between parcels of land. With County involvement in large scale master plans, there is opportunity to plan for a larger area and create automobile, bike and pedestrian connections between developments. Development of small area plans provides Sussex County with the opportunity to develop longrange plans – just like a comprehensive plan – but applied to smaller, more specific areas of the County. A small area plan is an aspirational community plan that addresses an area’s unique characteristics and then develops a vision for the future, as property ownership and other conditions change over time. It enables the County to prioritize and coordinate capital projects and to set the stage for ensuing private investment. With goals to enhance quality of life, small area plans address elements of the built environment - housing, businesses, parks/open space, public improvements, and the transportation network that connects them.