Regional Challenges

Dayton’s Plan also highlights several regional challenges that will impact all communities within the Dayton region. Among these are:

• Regional Decentralization. In recent years, Dayton has been affected by significant numbers of people and jobs moving to the suburbs. This has impacted the vitality of the region's center-City and other inner-ring suburbs.
• Need for Regional Partnerships and Collaborations. The Dayton region has nearly one million people; only about 20 percent live in the City of Dayton. The remaining 80 percent are served by nearly 170 general-purpose governments, 50 school districts, and 30 chambers of commerce. The Dayton region's political fragmentation makes it difficult to work together as a unit to build on the region’s strengths. In coming years, it will be critical to find ways to work together to maximize scarce resources, control land-use sprawl, and provide services in efficient ways.
• Changing Economy. While the rest of the country has seen a drastic reduction in manufacturing jobs, the Dayton region has managed to hold on to over 100,000 such jobs from the late 1970s to the present. But Dayton's share of jobs in all sectors of the economy has declined. Employment projections suggest that Dayton's total employment base could drop by more than 20 percent – from 124,000 in 1997 to 98,000 in 2020.

City of Kettering

The Comprehensive Plan for the City of Kettering, completed in August 2002, provides a long-range vision for development and redevelopment opportunities, housing, and urban design. It is intended to be a decision-making guide for public officials, residents, and the development community.

Kettering is a mature inner-ring suburb of Dayton, and has been preparing neighborhood plans, corridor plans, and other special area plans for years. The 2002 Plan is the first comprehensive approach to City-wide planning.

The purpose of this Plan is to identify and guide development and redevelopment opportunities through a comprehensive set of plans and policies. The Plan also provides a vision of where the residents of Kettering want their community to be in the future and provides a strategy to achieve that vision.

Future Land-Use

Kettering’s Land-Use Plan is illustrated in Figure 9.

The long-term planning principle in Kettering is to enhance the current quality of life and to create a balanced network of neighborhoods and redeveloped areas. Redeveloped neighborhoods would contain housing, parks, and schools located within close proximity of shops, civic services, employment, and entertainment uses.

The pattern of development should include linkages between various land uses including neighborhood and community scale shopping areas, employment areas, services, schools, and open spaces. Redevelopment should reflect a pedestrian scale by providing a balance between the needs of people and cars.

As indicated in Figure 9, most of the properties that border Oakwood are designated low-density residential, except for the commercial area along Far Hills south of Dorothy Lane, the existing multi-family area east of Shroyer Road, and the open space areas west of Oakwood.

Redevelopment Areas

Since Kettering is a mature, built-out community, there are few vacant properties within the City that are available for development. However, there are several sites that contain vacant or aging buildings and underutilized properties that may represent opportunities for redevelop-