Geography Research Guide: Planning Reports

Most planning reports have been cataloged in the library online catalog, including some online reports. Most, but not all, are located in the Planning Reports Collection in the Main Library, on the 2nd floor of the East Wing. 

The major way of finding planning reports in the catalog are via Keyword Search and faceting the result by location.

• Keyword search: The phrase "planning reports" appears in every planning report catalog record regardless of their topic (which might range from master plans to bicycle plans, zoning regulations, etc.)
  For example, you might use the keywords: detroit and land use and "planning reports". Note that this search retrieves over 70 reports. The keyword search organizes the results with newest report listed first.
   
• Once you have a list of results you can facet them by location to eliminate any items that are not planning reports. See the pictures below for where to click in the search results.
   
• First search for keywords, for example Planning reports Detroit:
  
   
• After clicking "See More" you can click on Planning Report Collection in the Library Location field:
• 

The collection is organized by geography, beginning with ALABAMA and ending with ZIMBABWE. A person might go to the Planning Report collection on the 2nd floor of the East Wing and browse the collection for a geographic area of interest. Planning Reports for Michigan State University, for instance, have the call number

MICHIGAN
East Lansing
First words of title...

Planning Reports of interest to the larger campus community might also be filed under larger geographies (depending on the scope of the work) such as

MICHIGAN
Ingham County

or

MICHIGAN
Lansing Metropolitan Area

or

MICHIGAN
Tri County Regional Planning Commission

Many online Planning Reports that have not yet been cataloged have been gathered into two Research Guides:
Michigan Planning Reports
and
Local Government Planning Reports: Non-Michigan

Other planning reports might be found freely online (many newer reports have been published online, but not all) by using a web search engine and searching:

nameoftown master plan

or
nameoftown comprehensive plan

or
nameoftown land use