Pasco County embarked on an ambitious, multi-year effort to reimagine its Comprehensive Plan, with a strong emphasis on meaningful community and stakeholder engagement. Inspire joined the County’s team following the second year of the process and quickly mobilized an intensive, twelve-month public engagement and visioning program. As one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, Pasco County is projected to accommodate nearly one million unincorporated residents by 2050, an increase of approximately 400,000 people, making long-range planning both urgent and transformative.

Year three of the Pasco 2050 initiative centered on an inclusive, interactive, and highly effective visioning process designed to reach residents across all geographies and demographics. This effort represents one of the most robust visioning exercises undertaken for a comprehensive plan update. Engagement tools included an interactive project website, eight in-person visioning workshops, multiple topic-focused group meetings, stakeholder interviews, mobile pop-up activities at community events, online surveys, and continuous coordination with County departments. Additional outreach included presentations to community organizations, professional groups, and universities, as well as direct engagement with the Board of County Commissioners. Strategic media outreach resulted in more than 15 earned media mentions across local newspapers, newsletters, evening news broadcasts, and NPR’s Florida Matters. The outcomes of this effort were memorialized in a visually compelling Vision Plan that articulated community values through clear vision themes, a unified vision statement, and actionable strategies for implementation.

Building on this extensive visioning foundation, Inspire led the preparation of the Pasco 2050 Comprehensive Plan. This phase included the development of entirely new data and analysis, restructuring the plan into a clear, user-friendly framework aligned with the community’s vision, and drafting updated goals, objectives, and policies. Throughout this process, Inspire worked closely with County departments, advisory boards, and the Long-Range Planning team to ensure technical accuracy and implementation feasibility. Recognizing the complexity and sensitivity of overhauling a long-standing plan, additional vetting was conducted through a land use practitioners group, which provided critical feedback on policy development and helped build trust and understanding among stakeholders and the broader community.

Key accomplishments of the Pasco 2050 update include a reimagined Future Land Use framework grounded in placemaking principles; strengthened policies addressing coastal resiliency and climate adaptation; enhanced multimodal mobility and transit-oriented corridors; the establishment of mixed-use hubs to support compact development; consolidation of decades of development approvals into a streamlined and accessible format; and a comprehensive reorganization of plan elements into chapters aligned with the vision themes. Together, these outcomes will position Pasco County with a forward-looking, implementable plan that responds to growth while preserving community character and quality of life through 2050.