The recipients of the last HUD Sustainable Communities grants were announced last Monday.  These are the last awards given through this program, as funding for the Partnership for Sustainable Communities – the collaboration between HUD, DOT and the EPA – was not included in the FY2012 transportation budget in a sufficient amount to make another round of grant awards.

The good news in this region is that Omaha-Council Bluffs Metropolitan Area Planning Agency (MAPA) will be awarded $2,045,000 to develop a Regional Plan for Sustainable Development. According to MAPA’s submittal, “the plan will include the development of several scenarios for future growth that represent different ways of achieving equilibrium between the goals of equity, environmental sustainability, and economic growth in the future development of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan region. The scenarios will be developed through an extensive community engagement process at the regional, local, and neighborhood scales.”