The purpose of this report was to study the planning and development operations in the City Manager’s Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) and the Bureau of Land Use Control (BLUC), and to compare them with the manner in which several other New England cities organize similar operations. The Research Bureau selected these operations (1) because of the need to define specific goals from the Master Plan and to develop a strategy to implement them; (2) to determine how other municipalities are involved in downtown development; and (3) to determine how other communities respond to development pressures and neighborhood opposition to housing and economic development.