Each chapter or section of the plan describes a set of related issues under such titles as land use, transportation, housing, public facilities, natural resources, and health and safety. Streamlining to minimize duplication and overlap is a primary goal of element consolidation. For example, the Planning Law identifies flooding as an issue of concern in the land use, open-space, conservation, and safety elements. All too often, when separate general plan elements are revised or adopted, inconsistencies seep in among the goals, objectives, policies and programs of the various elements. This is a real danger when the same or related issues are addressed independently in more than one element.
Consolidation reduces the possibility of inconsistencies by reducing duplication.
Because of the overlap among the planning issues in state law, there are certain elements that are particularly suited to consolidation. Safety and noise elements share the goal of avoiding environmental hazards. Although housing element concerns overlap land use and open-space issues, in order to ensure that the state Housing and Community Development Department can perform its mandated review of draft housing elements, we do not recommend that the housing element be combined. Consolidation Models Around the state, new general plans are commonly placing all their elements under one cover. The following models and examples illustrate some the ways in which consolidated plans may be organized.