PlanET Playbook Offers Vision, Guidance for East Tennessee's Future

Plan East Tennessee (PlanET) was an ambitious three-year planning process that actively engaged citizens, local governments, and businesses in imagining a more prosperous future for East Tennessee and charting a course to get there.

The process yielded more than forty resources focused on developing community-based solutions to shared regional challenges. The cornerstone of those resources is the PlanET Playbook.

A compilation of strategies gathered during an intensive public outreach campaign, the Playbook will serve as a guide for communities as they plan for the future. Strategies in the Playbook are voluntary recommendations that any community can undertake to create more prosperous people and places.

The five-county region comprising Anderson, Blount, Knox, Loudon, and Union counties grew by 300,000 people in the past 50 years and is forecast to grow that much again by 2040. And with those new neighbors will come an estimated 240,000 new jobs. The public outreach effort asked this central question: how do we accommodate that much growth and become more economically competitive in the years ahead?

During a series of public meetings, online town halls, and working group sessions, participants agreed on a shared vision for the future. Subsequent community meetings, surveys, and workshops generated goals and strategies to achieve that vision. The Playbook brings it all together with eight goals and more than 300 strategies that connect the vision to specific action.

The PlanET Playbook - along with the more than 40 other resources - is available on the PlanET website, www.planeasttn.org.