Indiana County, Pennsylvania: Embedding Walkability into Rural Comprehensive Planning

Location	Indiana County, Pennsylvania
Population	Approximately 82,000 residents
Core challenge	Rates of adult obesity, inactivity, and poverty in Indiana County exceed state averages; the county lacked enforceable standards to translate walkability goals into routine development decisions
Lead organization	Indiana County Office of Planning and Development (ICOPD), in partnership with WalkWorks (Pennsylvania Department of Health) and the Livable Indiana Neighborhood Connections (LINC) coalition
Planning tools	Where We Live — A Comprehensive Plan for Indiana County (2012); Pedestrian & Bicyclist Transportation Plan (2011); Open Space, Greenways and Trails Plan (2010)
Key strategy	Embedding walkability and active living goals across multiple adopted planning documents, then using that policy foundation to drive subdivision ordinance amendments and community-level walking route development
Governance issue	Translating adopted comprehensive planning goals into enforceable development and subdivision standards
Key lesson	Policy alignment across multiple adopted plans creates stronger implementation authority for rural counties — and a long-running local coalition can lay the groundwork years before a formal program begins
Learn more	Indiana County Office of Planning and Development (icopd.org); WalkWorks case study documentation (Pennsylvania Department of Health)

The community: where the need starts

Indiana County sits in the Allegheny Highlands of western Pennsylvania, a largely rural county of roughly 82,000 residents anchored by the borough of Indiana — home to Indiana University of Pennsylvania — and surrounded by small boroughs, townships, and farmland. The county’s economy has long been tied to coal, agriculture, and the university, and like many rural Pennsylvania counties it has experienced gradual population decline and economic contraction in recent decades.

The health data that shaped Indiana County’s walkability work was unambiguous. According to the U.S. Census and 2014 County Health Rankings, rates of adult obesity, physical inactivity, and poverty in Indiana County all exceeded the statewide averages for Pennsylvania. The county was among the areas specifically targeted by WalkWorks — the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s walking promotion program — on the basis of those figures, combined with high percentages of obese and overweight students in local school districts and elevated rates of low-income households.

For a county without major urban centers, large capital budgets, or dense pedestrian infrastructure, the challenge was not simply one of building more sidewalks or trails. It was structural: how do you ensure that walkability is embedded into the decisions that shape development over time, rather than depending on one-off projects that may or may not get funded?

Three plans, one direction

Indiana County’s walkability strategy rested on an unusual foundation: three adopted planning documents, developed across a three-year period, that all pointed in the same direction.

The oldest of the three, the Indiana County Open Space, Greenways and Trails Plan (2010), was the most explicitly health-oriented. Among its stated purposes were to “promote healthy lifestyles” and “increase non-motorized mobility.” One of its core goals was to “enhance opportunities for physical, mental and spiritual wellness through expanded recreation opportunities.” This was a recreation and conservation plan that made no effort to disguise its public health purpose.

The second document, More People Biking & Walking More Often: Pedestrian & Bicyclist Transportation Plan for Indiana County (2011), was an official county policy document providing both policy and facility recommendations for improving bicycling and pedestrian conditions. Its scope was comprehensive. The plan called for designing streets to accommodate not just cars but also people walking and cycling safely; developing communities of neighborhoods connected by sidewalks; making street crossings safer; building a connected network of routes linking neighborhoods with popular destinations; and encouraging bicycle and pedestrian commuting. It also set out a specific list of objectives for local governments, including adopting regulations requiring sidewalks and bicycle facilities for all new development, establishing capital funding programs for pedestrian and bicycle projects, and improving conditions along rural routes that functioned as barriers to non-motorized movement.

The third document — and the most powerful in terms of regulatory reach — was Where We Live: A Comprehensive Plan for Indiana County (2012). This plan tied the earlier documents together and gave them the authority of the county’s primary land use policy statement. Its transportation section explicitly referenced the Pedestrian & Bicyclist Transportation Plan and called for implementing the recommendations of both plans. Its housing section recommended fostering “well-designed developments and walkable and bikeable neighborhoods that offer healthy lifestyle opportunities for county residents” — language that explicitly linked the form of new development to health outcomes. The corresponding action item called for amending subdivision and land development ordinances to require bicycle and pedestrian accommodations in conjunction with new development and redevelopment projects.

Perhaps most significantly, Where We Live addressed the relationship between development standards and walkability head-on. Its land use section acknowledged directly that the way in which “the County will grow is directly related to the rules that regulate land development and standards for the infrastructure that support development” — rules governing street widths, sidewalks, building setbacks, parking, and landscaping. Each of those standards might seem technical and inconsequential in isolation. Collectively, the plan acknowledged, they determine whether walking in a community is practical, safe, or effectively discouraged.

When WalkWorks examined planning documents across all the Pennsylvania counties and municipalities where it operated, it found that the emphasis on bicycling and walking was “far greater in breadth and depth within the plans of Indiana County than in any of the others.”

The coalition that came first

The three planning documents did not emerge from nowhere. Behind them was a community organization that had been advancing the same goals for more than a decade before any of the plans were written.

Livable Indiana Neighborhood Connections — known as LINC — was founded in 2000 and brought together representatives from the private sector, the Indiana County Office of Planning and Development, Indiana County Parks, the Cambria & Indiana Trail Council, Downtown Indiana, Welcome to Indiana, and Citizens for Alternative Transportation. Its vision was “a more livable community by promoting healthy lifestyles and neighborhoods through increased bicycling and walking.” Its goal was to improve quality of life for all residents “by fostering the development of a more livable, connected community.”

LINC’s strategy centered on establishing what the organization called “safeways” — pedestrian and bicycle corridors designed to place walkers and cyclists on equal footing with motorists. By designating certain streets as safeway streets, a community creates a visible, recognized system of routes that supports both modes of travel. LINC pursued designated bicycle routes, pedestrian improvements in high-use areas, and traffic calming measures as concrete tactics toward that goal.

It was on behalf of LINC that the deputy director of planning at ICOPD first reached out to WalkWorks — not the other way around. That detail matters. Indiana County did not become a WalkWorks partner because the state health department came looking for it. It happened because a local planning agency, representing a coalition that had been working on these goals since 2000, actively sought out a program that aligned with work already underway. The planning documents reflected that institutional history. They were not aspirational statements drafted to attract grants. They were the written expression of a commitment that predated them.

Joining WalkWorks

WalkWorks is a Pennsylvania Department of Health initiative designed to increase physical activity through walking. The program designates walking routes in targeted communities, supports the formation of walking groups, and works toward the policy changes needed to make walking a sustainable community habit rather than a short-term program outcome.

WalkWorks selects its partner communities and target areas using a combination of public health data: school-year obesity and overweight BMI rates, low-income percentages, academic performance indicators, and participation in CDC-funded health programs. Indiana County met the criteria on multiple dimensions. Rates of adult obesity, physical inactivity, and poverty all exceeded Pennsylvania averages. The county was targeted.

Indiana County’s Office of Planning and Development was not, however, among the organizations originally invited to partner with the program. ICOPD made an overture at a moment when WalkWorks happened to need an additional partner — and the depth of the county’s planning infrastructure and the existence of LINC made ICOPD an unusually compelling match. The partnership that followed was, in WalkWorks’ own assessment, distinctive: Indiana County brought a level of policy alignment and organizational groundwork that most communities in the program did not have.

Selecting communities for walking routes

Once the WalkWorks partnership was in place, ICOPD faced a practical question: which communities within Indiana County should be the first to have walking routes developed? The answer required a process as methodical as the planning work that preceded it.

Drawing on the county’s comprehensive plan, ICOPD identified 14 boroughs and townships designated as growth communities — places projected to increase in population and economic activity. Each received a communication explaining the WalkWorks program, along with maps of potential walking routes specific to their geography. Communities were given a deadline to express interest, with follow-up calls to those who had not responded.

Those that responded were invited to phone interviews in which ICOPD assessed both interest and capacity. The questions were direct: What is your community’s interest in walking? Do existing walking groups already operate here? Who might serve as a strong group leader? How would you propose to engage residents? Who are the potential stakeholders — schools, hospitals, businesses — that could help sustain the effort? ICOPD also asked each participating community to form a local stakeholder group, creating a structure for community ownership of the route rather than external administration of it.

The first community selected was Blairsville, a borough in the Blairsville-Saltsburg School District. Blairsville was also covered by the Southern Indiana County Cooperative Communities Comprehensive Plan (2004), which provided additional policy backing. Homer City followed. Both communities had existing planning foundations that made them realistic candidates for the kind of policy change WalkWorks was designed to catalyze. The walking routes in those boroughs were among the WalkWorks program’s early successes.

Turning plans into subdivision standards

The most consequential element of Indiana County’s approach was not the walking routes themselves — it was the attempt to translate walkability goals from adopted plans into the ordinances that govern how land is developed.

Many rural planning documents identify walkable neighborhoods and pedestrian infrastructure as desirable goals. The gap between those statements and actual built outcomes is almost always the same: the plans are advisory, and the subdivision ordinances that govern routine development have not been updated to reflect them. A developer can propose a new subdivision without sidewalks, and unless the ordinance requires them, planners have limited grounds to insist otherwise.

Indiana County recognized this gap directly. Where We Live called explicitly for amending subdivision and land development ordinances to require bicycle and pedestrian accommodations in new and redevelopment projects. That action item was not rhetorical. It was a commitment to close the loop between planning policy and development review — to make the standards that govern subdivision approvals consistent with the health and active living goals that the county had formally adopted.

For rural counties, that mechanism matters enormously. Unlike urban governments that can fund large-scale pedestrian infrastructure through transportation budgets, rural counties typically cannot afford to build sidewalks and trail connections at scale through capital programs alone. Subdivision standards offer a different path: walkability improvements accumulate gradually, project by project, as development occurs and each new project is required to meet the pedestrian accommodation standards the county has adopted. The infrastructure builds incrementally through ordinary growth rather than waiting for extraordinary investment.

The emphasis on bicycling and walking is far greater in breadth and depth within the plans of Indiana County than in any of the others. — WalkWorks Case Study documentation, Pennsylvania Department of Health

What made the model work

Indiana County’s approach to walkability was not the result of a single program, a single grant, or a single plan. It was the cumulative product of more than a decade of institutional consistency — and understanding what drove that consistency is what makes the case useful to other rural planners.

The coalition preceded the plans. LINC was founded in 2000. The county’s first walkability-related planning document wasn’t adopted until 2010. For ten years, a cross-sector coalition was building relationships, developing shared language, and advancing bicycle and pedestrian goals at the community level before those goals found expression in formal county policy. When the plans were eventually written, they reflected an existing institutional commitment rather than manufacturing one from scratch. That sequence — coalition first, plans second — is worth noting. It reversed the typical assumption that planning documents create political will. In Indiana County, political will created the planning documents.

Policy alignment was the implementation mechanism. The three plans reinforced each other because they were designed to. The Open Space and Trails Plan (2010), the Pedestrian & Bicyclist Transportation Plan (2011), and the Comprehensive Plan (2012) shared the same goals and explicitly cross-referenced one another. That alignment gave county planners and elected officials a consistent, multi-layered basis for decision-making. When a development proposal arrived without sidewalks, staff could point not to a single plan preference but to a documented county-wide commitment expressed across three adopted documents.

The planning office moved first. Indiana County’s Office of Planning and Development did not wait for WalkWorks to come to it. It reached out on behalf of LINC at the moment an opportunity opened. That posture — proactive rather than reactive — reflects the same institutional orientation that had produced LINC, the walking route selection process, and the effort to amend subdivision ordinances. The planning office treated walkability as an active organizational priority, not a background aspiration.

Community selection was rigorous and deliberate. Rather than placing walking routes wherever was easiest or most visible, ICOPD developed a structured process to identify communities with both demonstrated interest and real capacity to sustain what would be started. The phone interviews, the stakeholder group requirement, and the use of growth community designations from the comprehensive plan all reflected a commitment to durability over speed. The goal was not to launch routes that would fade. It was to begin a process of behavioral and policy change that would continue after the program moved on.

What Indiana County teaches planners

Coalitions can build the foundation that plans later formalize. LINC operated for a decade before the county’s walkability planning documents existed. That history gave the plans credibility and the planning process genuine community roots. Rural counties looking to advance active living goals don’t always need to begin with a plan — they may need to begin with a coalition that can sustain the effort long enough for formal policy to catch up.

Plans that cross-reference each other are more powerful than plans that stand alone. Indiana County’s three planning documents were most effective because they pointed in the same direction and explicitly acknowledged each other. A comprehensive plan that references a pedestrian transportation plan, which in turn informs an open space plan, creates a coherent policy framework that is harder to ignore during development review than any single document would be.

Subdivision ordinances are where walkability plans either succeed or fail. Advisory language in a comprehensive plan does not build sidewalks. Subdivision and land development ordinances — updated to require pedestrian accommodations as part of routine development approval — are the mechanism through which planning goals become physical reality over time. Rural counties that want durable walkability outcomes need to close the gap between their adopted plans and their development standards.

Incremental development is a viable strategy for rural infrastructure. Rural counties rarely have the capital budgets to build pedestrian networks at scale. But subdivision requirements allow walkability improvements to accumulate project by project, through ordinary development activity, without depending on large one-time investments. The built environment changes slowly — but subdivision standards ensure it changes consistently in the right direction.

The planning office can be the initiating actor. Indiana County did not wait for a state agency, a federal grant, or an outside consultant to tell it that walkability was worth pursuing. Its planning department engaged LINC, sought out WalkWorks, developed a rigorous community selection process, and drove the effort to align planning documents with subdivision standards. In rural communities where institutional capacity is limited, the local planning office — if it chooses to act — can be the institution that initiates change rather than simply responding to it.