The Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Consortium in Region Five represents the people of Cass, Crow Wing, Morrison, Todd and Wadena counties in Central Minnesota. This HUD NOFA has catalyzed an extraordinary team of partners that have begun working together to identify the critical needs of our region and created a step-by-step collaborative approach to plan for the long-term, social, economic and environmental sustainability of our communities. Our region is a rural and small town area with a population of 162,000 in 69,194 households spread over an area of nearly 4 million acres or 6,057 square miles.

The R5DC Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Consortium is led by the lead applicant, Region Five Development Commission (R5DC), in collaboration with the University of Minnesota‘s Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships. The Consortium is committed to leveraging the assets and facing the challenges of creating a sustainable future for our region. By creating a community-driven, university-assisted process leading to an integrated Regional Plan for Sustainable Development we will foster and accelerate the transformation of our regional communities into sustainable communities. In order to accomplish this, the consortium includes many diverse governmental units, regional planning agencies, non-profit organizations, and public and private sector partners. Together, this group embodies the extraordinary capacity and experience of the organizations represented in the Consortium working on the behalf and with the people of counties served by Region Five. Likewise, the project draws upon the State‘s land-grant university, the University of Minnesota, to combine local knowledge and innovation with the specialized knowledge bases at the University of Minnesota.