Location
O‘ahu, Hawai‘i
Client
City and County of Honolulu, Department of Planning and Permitting
The Honolulu General Plan is a collection of overarching objectives and policies that guide land use, development, growth, and capital improvement expenditures within the County, with a planning horizon of 25 years.
First adopted in 1977, the City Charter requires that the General Plan be reviewed at least every 10 years. HHF Planners (HHF) is proud to be working with the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting as the lead consultant to update the City’s General Plan. This current effort is focused on updating objectives and policies related to O‘ahu’s overall growth, the economy, affordable housing, and sustainability.
Discussion about amending the General Plan to recognize the concept of sustainability as a fundamental city policy is a key issue for this update, as the movement to promote sustainability can influence the choices residents make in their daily lives and shape land use and future development on O‘ahu. For an island community like O‘ahu, sustainability principles focus on encouraging self‐sufficiency and self‐reliance, and reducing dependence on imported products.
Through a series of community meetings and a web-based public survey, HHF has identified specific land use and policy considerations to address sustainability, such as promoting the use of local resources to generate energy, increasing the consumption of locally‐grown food, promoting land use development forms that encourage compact and mixed-use development at higher densities, supporting multi‐modal transportation networks, transit‐oriented developments and energy‐efficient building design, reducing material consumption and expanding reuse/recycling, and seeking a diversified, resilient economy.