The latest and perhaps final draft of the city’s new comprehensive planning effort contains much to consider:

— Much for city residents.

— Much for city leaders.

— Much for resident business owners and operators.

— Much even for non-residents whose business and/or work interests are part of the city’s vital cornerstone.

— Much for the education and religious communities.

— Much for the various facets of the cultural and historical communities and the miscellaneous interests that make this wonderful city what it is today.

However, the central point of the comprehensive planning draft now awaiting public comment is that Altoona has considerable work to do if it ever is to achieve its full potential or something close to it.

Outside of the proverbial nuts and bolts of the plan, which was prepared by the consultant czb, the recommendation that deserves the most serious contemplation and brainstorming is that redevelopment proposals need to project the attitudes and determination that were in play in the mid-to-late 1960s and the decade of the 1970s.

That was when Altoona was transformed from a predominantly railroad-centered community and economy into a multi-pronged municipal and residential entity capable of recognizing and responding — to keep up with changes going on around it.

Without change, there is no progress. Without the vision to initiate it, there is stagnation.

Three initial steps czb identified as a necessary launchpad for Altoona, if the city hopes to make the most of what the comprehensive plan aims to achieve, were included in an April 26 Mirror front page article, and deserve repeating here.

The plan’s first launchpad suggestion is the city should create a special fund for needed improvements, to which the city itself, the private sector and nonprofits would contribute.

Next, the city should revise the existing zoning and subdivision and land development regulations, so they embody high expectations and yet remain business-friendly and flexible.

Finally, the proposed plan recommends that the city expand all types of housing intervention — intervention regarding demolition, rehabilitation and new construction.

The planning draft also suggests that, “in considering improvements, the city should also follow accepted “planning principles.”

Amid all that, the planning proposal focuses on what the document describes as “one central priority” — convincing young people to avoid the temptation of moving elsewhere for the proverbial “greener pastures” that might not be so green after all.

A talented workforce is a basic necessity, and the plan rightly urges the community as a whole to keep that priority front-and-center as it evaluates and comments on the plan’s various components, including the challenges surrounding paying for what the plan envisions and suggests.

For Altoona, the era of the 1960s and ’70s was a scary time, especially to residents who watched decades of sameness evolve into a wave of unfamiliarity.

The proposed comprehensive planning effort does not portend to be as unnerving as what the parents and grandparents of today’s working generations witnessed.

Still, what is before the city at this time merits a reasonable amount of comprehensive, undistracted attention.

Area residents will have until June 7 to comment on the latest draft. It is important that their voices be heard.