The Auburn University Community Planning graduate program received a $150,000 grant from the City of Montgomery Department of Planning and Development to provide a state-of-the-art land development and traffic forecasting tool to enable local planners and elected officials find solutions for the growth and development of the city and surrounding communities.

This grant is renewable annually for three years, totaling $450,000. The grant enabled the Community Planning program to purchase new computers and provide salaries for the seven graduate students that will work on the project along with professor Michael Clay.

“We are all tremendously excited to have this opportunity,” Clay said. “This puts Montgomery on the forefront of planning and development. This has the potential to save the taxpayers and the city hundreds of millions of dollars by enabling the city to target the most efficient and effect infrastructure and local economic and land development policies. Montgomery will really find itself a decade ahead of the curve nationally.”

Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright and Montgomery Planning and Development Director Ken Groves attended a reception opening the new Community Planning lab where the research will take place.

Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright and Community Planning graduate student Lindsay
Wallace check out the new computers in the planning lab.

“We are very proud to partner with Auburn University and the Community Planning program,” Mayor Bright said. “The quality of work being done by the faculty and students here are second to none. As an Auburn graduate, it is a dream come true to be able to work with the University to create sound methods of development that will provide a better quality of life for the people of this community.”

Clay, who was recently named a Research Fellow by the Mineta Transportation Institute, and the graduate students will be working with an integrated economic, land use and traffic model called PECAS, which stands for Product Exchange Consumption Allocation System.

This method allows planners to create models that show the consequences of various community development initiatives.
“If there is a plan to expand a road to four lanes, or even create a road to connect existing roads, the PECAS model will show the effects of that plan.” Clay said. “It will show the potential increase of traffic in that area along with residual factors such as businesses or housing sprouting up along that road.”

Clay added that the PECAS model will also take into account economic factors and show how a development proposal would affect low, middle and high income families.