The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and local governments in North Carolina on how to structure local Land Development Plans so that they can be used in long range transportation planning. The impetus for this guidebook is the 2001 amendment to the General Statutes requiring towns that request NCDOT involvement in transportation projects to have a qualifying Land Development Plan. The amendment has not yet been fully implemented, due in part to the lack of guidance to local governments and NCDOT regarding the necessary plan contents. Additionally, NCDOT has not received sufficient guidance on methods of evaluation for the Land Development Plans, in order to assess whether they comply with the plan requirements. The lack of guidance has caused problems in some areas around the state, delaying transportation planning efforts. In order to bridge these gaps, this document provides the following: Detailed discussion of the necessary land development plan components and the rationale for requiring them; Plan evaluation questionnaire; Detailed discussion of appropriate preparation methods of plan components, with increased guidance to NCDOT regarding how to assess whether the plan preparation is adequate; and Suggestions for how to explicitly address transportation issues within the Land Development Plan. It is not the purpose of this document to provide detailed planning support to local governments. The North Carolina Division of Community Assistance (DCA) is the appropriate state agency for local planning assistance; there are also other agencies and organizations that can provide planning assistance. A list of planning-related resources is provided in Appendix 1. This guidebook also will not address macrolevel policies, as they are assumed to come from federal or state mandates beyond the control of local governments. Figure 1 provides an illustration of the land development planning process and how it feeds transportation planning. To determine the necessary contents of the Land Development Plan, this document starts with the land use forecast that must feed the transportation planning process. Baseline (current year) land use data feeds the forecast, and also provides the basis for any future growth pattern scenarios. Local development management policies, determined in part through the public involvement process, inform the future growth pattern scenarios and the forecast. Finall...