The city’s Planning Dept. undertakes studies and assessments of the economic, housing, employment, and transportation needs of the La Crosse urban community, and strives to improve the quality of life in the city of La Crosse by using comprehensive planning approaches, and applying for project funding.

This series consists of City of La Crosse Planning Dept. inactive files organized by major topics, including a subject file of more miscellaneous topics. The major topic groups are capital improvement program budgets, capital improvement projects, economy/marketing, health, housing, Park & Recreation Dept., transportation, and general subject files. Materials from the La Crosse Area Planning Committee are scattered throughout the series.

The housing series includes Community Development Block Grants, Redevelopment Authority, Harborview downtown redevelopment project, housing rehabilitation, housing surveys and public (low income) housing.

The transportation series is the most voluminous and includes federal and state transportation programs and financial aid. A highways subseries consists of various proposed north-south corridors through the city of La Crosse since 1967. La Crosse Area Transportation Study files (1966-1974) and the TOPICS program (Traffic Operations Program to Increase Capacity and Safety in Wisconsin) (1967-1970) are also found here. This includes a set of black and white photographs taken in July 1970 to help support specific, high traffic intersections where planners felt there were vehicular and pedestrian/bicycle safety concerns.