About

This website has all the information you need about your Community Planning Area and the assessment process the City uses to plan with each community for the future.

The assessments will provide a snapshot in time and specific recommendations for how the City and local partners can work together to create a community that works best for everyone.

CPA Handout

Background

Future development and planning should respect and strengthen existing communities, enhance their distinctive qualities, and provide more opportunities for residents to meet their daily needs. To that end, the City of Albuquerque has 12 City Community Planning Areas (CPAs). They are organized around Albuquerque's rich diversity of communities, each exemplifying a unique set of characteristics, environments, and lifestyles that set them apart as special places.

CPAs were first developed in 1995. People were given maps of the metropolitan region and asked to identify their house, their neighborhood, and their community. The resulting map outlined distinct Community Identity Areas which were adopted into the Comp Plan in 2001. As of 2016, the CPA boundaries have been revised to better match U.S. Census Tracts, allowing the City and County to gather demographic, employment, and commuting data and to track growth and trends over time.

 

CPA boundaries are intended to be small enough to be able to engage area residents and stakeholders at a neighborhood level, while placing community issues and opportunities into a larger community context. Neighborhood-level conversations are critical, but neighborhoods are not islands; they are affected by, benefit from, and contribute to the larger community. 

Previously, Sector Development Plans (SDPs) were an important way to address planning issues within individual neighborhoods and corridors. As of 2014, the City had adopted over 60 SDPs, many with a mix of policy and zoning, which leads to confusion and unrealistic expectations about their applicability and enforceability.

Additionally, because sector development plans were historically done in isolation from each other, it proved difficult to apply valuable lessons to other areas of the city. Another unintended consequence of this approach has been plans that are so tailored for specific places that they create isolated solutions that do not always consider citywide goals or nearby planning efforts.

These specialized tools are not always effective, and implementing numerous plans proved impractical and infeasible for the City. Worse, many neighborhoods in the city have not had the benefit of additional planning efforts, and adding more standalone plans to cover these areas would only compound a currently unworkable system of proliferating, uncoordinated plans.

Instead of reacting to immediate crises, the CPA process is intended to be proactive – like a wellness check before symptoms of illness appear. It is also intentionally designed to accommodate all areas of the city, learning from each and extending the benefits to all. 

Information from the SDPs has been carried forward into the Comp Plan and the Integrated Development Ordinance, and they will inform the CPA assessment process. Policies from adopted plans were sorted into the relevant chapters of the Comprehensive Plan - the City's main policy document for land use and development. Regulations from adopted plans were sorted and incorporated into the Integrated Development Ordinance. Summaries were prepared for each of the adopted documents and are listed below. The CPA assessment process will include reviewing the relevent SDPs for content that's still relevant, including area descriptions, desired character, issues or challenges, and potential projects projects.

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History

Community Planning Areas (CPAs)

The City of Albuquerque organizes long-range community planning around 12 Community Planning Areas. These areas often have common interests, challenges, opportunities, and priorities in terms of planning and development.

Learn About CPAs

Public Engagement

The voices of the community will shape the CPA assessments, and there are many ways to be involved! You can provide input into development decisions, long-range community planning, and community projects. Find out more by clicking the button below!

Get Involved

Data & Tracking

Data and maps can create a broad vision of a community and provide a baseline for understanding its current circumstances. Additionally, data informs policy development, project identification, and many other aspects of the assessments. Check out the link below for more. 

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CPA Assessment Cycle

Every CPA will have an updated assessment in each 5-year cycle. A team of three planners spends 16 weeks in 3 CPAs per year for 4 years. On the 5th year, recommendations to change City policies are incorporated into an update to the ABC Comprehensive Plan.

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Schedule

The Community Planning Areas will each have an assessment completed in the five years between Comp Plan updates. The order for this 5-year cycle was approved by City Council in July. 

See the Schedule

One Year Process

Each Community Planning Area will have a one-year assessment process to develop a community vision for the future, collect data, identify priorities, and make recommendations for changes to implement the vision. 

More about the Process