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Brookfield, Wisconsin--a Milwaukee bedroom community turned "edge city"--had explosive growth and no planning department when Kathryn Bloomberg became mayor in 1986. Elected on a proplanning platform, Bloomberg is now serving her third two-year term and the city has two full-time planners.
That follow-through on her commitment has earned Bloomberg this year's APA award for distinguished leadership by an elected official. She was similarly honored last year by the Wisconsin chapter.
Bloomberg, the inventor and marketer of a children's art toy called Shrinky Dinks, was serving her second term as alderman when she unseated the incumbent Brookfield mayor. "One of the reasons I ran was to inject planning into the process," she says. As mayor, and as chair of the city's planning commission, Bloomberg led the effort to update the city's 1959 master plan. She also made sure that the policies and zoning ordinances were in place to implement the new plans, says Daniel Ertl, AICP, the city's first planning director.
Ertl says he took the job in 1987 because he sensed in Bloomberg "a depth of understanding of planning and economic development that is unique in a political figure. She understands there is a delicate balance between growth and the forces controlling growth."
Brookfield is one of the rapidly growing communities listed in the appendix of Joel Garreau's 1991 book, Edge City. The city's population zoomed from 6,000 four decades ago to more than 5,000 today, with rapid growth in both residential and commercial development....