Florida Florida Statutes
§ 163.3177 — Required and optional elements of comprehensive plan; studies and surveys
FS § 163.3177Ch. 163
Statute text
View on source(1)The comprehensive plan shall provide the principles, guidelines, standards, and strategies for the orderly and balanced future economic, social, physical, environmental, and fiscal development of the area that reflects community commitments to implement the plan and its elements. These principles and strategies shall guide future decisions in a consistent manner and shall contain programs and activities to ensure comprehensive plans are implemented. The sections of the comprehensive plan containing the principles and strategies, generally provided as goals, objectives, and policies, shall describe how the local government's programs, activities, and land development regulations will be initiated, modified, or continued to implement the comprehensive plan in a consistent manner. It is not the intent of this part to require the inclusion of implementing regulations in the comprehensive plan but rather to require identification of those programs, activities, and land development regulations that will be part of the strategy for implementing the comprehensive plan and the principles that describe how the programs, activities, and land development regulations will be carried out. The plan shall establish meaningful and predictable standards for the use and development of land and provide meaningful guidelines for the content of more detailed land development and use regulations.(a) The comprehensive plan shall consist of elements as described in this section, and may include optional elements.
(b)A local government may include, as part of its adopted plan, documents adopted by reference but not incorporated verbatim into the plan. The adoption by reference must identify the title and author of the document and indicate clearly what provisions and edition of the document is being adopted.
(c)The format of these principles and guidelines is at the discretion of the local government, but typically is expressed in goals, objectives, policies, and strategies.
(d)The comprehensive plan shall identify procedures for monitoring, evaluating, and appraising implementation of the plan.
(e)When a federal, state, or regional agency has implemented a regulatory program, a local government is not required to duplicate or exceed that regulatory program in its local comprehensive plan.
(f)All mandatory and optional elements of the comprehensive plan and plan amendments shall be based upon relevant and appropriate data and an analysis by the local government that may include, but not be limited to, surveys, studies, community goals and vision, and other data available at the time of adoption of the comprehensive plan or plan amendment. To be based on data means to react to it in an appropriate way and to the extent necessary indicated by the data available on that particular subject at the time of adoption of the plan or plan amendment at issue.1. Surveys, studies, and data utilized in the preparation of the comprehensive plan may not be deemed a part of the comprehensive plan unless adopted as a part of it. Copies of such studies, surveys, data, and supporting documents for proposed plans and plan amendments shall be made available for public inspection, and copies of such plans shall be made available to the public upon payment of reasonable charges for reproduction. Support data or summaries are not subject to the compliance review process, but the comprehensive plan must be clearly based on appropriate data. Support data or summaries may be used to aid in the determination of compliance and consistency. 2. Data must be taken from professionally accepted sources. The application of a methodology utilized in data collection or whether a particular methodology is professionally accepted may be evaluated. However, the evaluation may not include whether one accepted methodology is better than another. Original data collection by local governments is not required. However, local governments may use original data so long as methodologies are professionally accepted. 3. The comprehensive plan shall be based upon permanent and seasonal population estimates and projections, which shall either be those published by the Office of Economic and Demographic Research or generated by the local government based upon a professionally acceptable methodology. The plan must be based on at least the minimum amount of land required to accommodate the medium projections as published by the Office of Economic and Demographic Research for at least a 10-year planning period unless otherwise limited under s. 380.05, including related rules of the Administration Commission. Absent physical limitations on population growth, population projections for each municipality, and the unincorporated area within a county must, at a minimum, be reflective of each area's proportional share of the total county population and the total county population growth.
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Legislative history
s. 7, ch. 75-257; s. 1, ch. 77-174; s. 1, ch. 80-154; s. 6, ch. 83-308; s. 1, ch. 85-42; s. 6, ch. 85-55; s. 1, ch. 85-309; s. 7, ch. 86-191; s. 5, ch. 92-129; s. 6, ch. 93-206; s. 898, ch. 95-147; s. 3, ch. 95-257; s. 4, ch. 95-322; s. 10, ch. 95-341; s. 10, ch. 96-320; s. 24, ch. 96-410; s. 2, ch. 96-416; s. 2, ch. 98-146; s. 4, ch. 98-176; s. 4, ch. 98-258; s. 90, ch. 99-251; s. 3, ch. 99-378; s. 40, ch. 2001-201; s. 64, ch. 2001-279; s. 24, ch. 2002-1; s. 58, ch. 2002-20; s. 70, ch. 2002-295; s. 2, ch. 2002-296; s. 904, ch. 2002-387; s. 61, ch. 2003-286; s. 2, ch. 2004-230; s. 4, ch. 2004-372; s. 2, ch. 2004-381; s. 2, ch. 2005-36; s. 1, ch. 2005-157; s. 2, ch. 2005-290; s. 10, ch. 2005-291; s. 2, ch. 2006-220; s. 57, ch. 2007-196; s. 1, ch. 2007-198; s. 2, ch. 2007-204; s. 2, ch. 2008-191; s. 10, ch. 2009-21; s. 3, ch. 2009-85; s. 3, ch. 2009-96; s. 1, ch. 2009-154; s. 43, ch. 2010-102; s. 2, ch. 2010-182; s. 4, ch. 2010-205; s. 3, ch. 2011-14; s. 12, ch. 2011-139; s. 3, ch. 2011-189; s. 4, ch. 2012-99; s. 24, ch. 2014-218; s. 2, ch. 2015-30; s. 13, ch. 2016-10; s. 31, ch. 2019-3; s. 2, ch. 2021-195; s. 1, ch. 2023-31; s. 1, ch. 2023-169; s. 2, ch. 2025-136.