What is a reasonable price for a comprehensive plan?

[A Golovin]

Dear colleagues
One Russian around 1 mln population city decided to order Comprehensive Plan for 2050. The authority would like to understand what is the reasonable price for such works. Could somebody help to find an approach for budgeting of it? If there are some comparable examples? However that may be, help is needed!
Thank you

[Cardinal]

There may be different legal requirements in different countries, and overall pricing may be different, so anything we tell you may be little more than a guess. The other issue is what topics are to be addressed in the plan and to what depth.

Here, our state requires the comprehensive plan to address demographic and economic data and forecasts, housing, transportation, utilities and community facilities, agricultural, natural, and cultural resources, economic development, land use, cooperation with other governmental entities, and plan implementation. For a community of one million people, a basic plan might start at around US$500,000, but most likely cost more.

[nrschmid]

As a consultant, I have worked on comp plans with budgets as low as $95,000 for a small rural communities of 5,000-6,000. For larger suburbs with populations ranging from 10,000-30,000 it might go up to the low to mid 100's. Unfortunately, my firm occassionally low-balls bids which puts more pressure on me to do unbillable work after hours

The majority of these contracts are not lump sum budgets. There may be room for negotiating additional costs during later phases of the project. These are usually comp plan updates, so the entire comp plan is not always created from scratch. If it were, the cost would go up.

[FueledByRamen]

Unfortunately, my firm occassionally low-balls bids which puts more pressure on me to do unbillable work after hours

Tell me about it

[Suburb Repairman]

We're budgeting about $550,000 for a growing city of 50,000. We are going to try to do a lot in-house, but budgeted as though we would go 100% consultant just in case.

[FueledByRamen]

We're budgeting about $550,000 for a growing city of 50,000. We are going to try to do a lot in-house, but budgeted as though we would go 100% consultant just in case.

The quote in your signature terrifies me...

[MacheteJames]

Ours will be somewhere north of $300,000-$400,000 when all is said and done. This is for a community of 25,000. A lot of the expense is due to our decision to hire legal counsel to defend against the inevitable lawsuits from developers.

[A Golovin]

Colleagues I’ll complicate a question task.
First of all Russian cities were planned in accordance with planning standards that have been established since 1959. It was centralized planning system. There weren’t private ownership for land and building, private development companies, real-estate market. Now everything is existed. But system remains the same. Social system of urban development was prevailing on cheapest way of expansion. Nobody (power body) cared for effective and livable level of maintenance of the cities. Now we have lots of things to change and to implement: another approach in planning, new standards of city management, zoning, property management and so on.
It’s seems to me that comprehensive plans for Russian cities much more than usual strategic planning this is an overall urban development system changing.

[Dan]

Tell me about it

I wrote comprehensive plans for small villages and townships (populations ranging from 1,000 to 20,000) at my previous employer, a county government. We charged the local governments that commissioned the plans a very small token sum -- anywhere from $5,000 to $9,999 -- but the plans involved hundreds of hours of work. If the plans were drafted by a private firm charging $100 an hour, the communities would have paid from $50,000 to $100,000, if not more, for the work.

Back on-topic: from what I understand, there's really no long tradition of urban planning as a profession in Russia. It may be difficult finding a qualified planning consultant. There are planning firms from the US and other countries that do work internationally, but there could be a language barrier.

[A Golovin]

...but there could be a language barrier.

Mostly an ideological barrier...
But it depends on the leader mover.