PROVIDENCE — The amended Comprehensive Plan, the document that will guide a series of changes in city planning and zoning laws in the next few years, was approved by the City Plan Commission last night.

The plan will form the groundwork for creating a Providence with walkable paths and green spaces along the rivers and waterfront. It designates “jobs-only” districts as a way to keep businesses in the city as traditional spaces are lost to housing. The plan also labels likely areas for future growth, and identifies “growth corridors” like Broad Street, Westminster Street and North Main Street, where future development will be encouraged. At the same time, it restricts heavy industrial development in the Port of Providence south of Thurbers Avenue, and encourages mixed-use development in the north areas of the port along Allens Avenue.

The plan will now be sent to the City Council, which will hold its own public hearing process and will probably make changes before approving the plan. The council should officially receive it at its first meeting in September, and could hold its own hearings in late September or early October.

If the council approves the plan, a few broad zoning changes will quickly be adopted, including a strengthening of landscaping regulations and new development requirements for universities and hospitals.

Later, specific neighborhood zone changes will follow, after each city neighborhood has held its own “charette,” an intensive weeklong summit addressing the future of the neighborhood.

Some of the major changes in the plan have left business and neighborhood groups unhappy. For instance, members of the City Plan Commission see the industrial waterfront areas as a potential economic powerhouse, with marinas, retail uses and pedestrian activity.

But existing businesses along the Allens Avenue corridor see that vision as a threat to their livelihood, and came out strongly against that change. They were unable to sway city planners.

Residents in the Fox Point and College Hill neighborhoods also lobbied city planners to expand the attention to the city’s waterfront in the plan. They said that the plan was not clear enough, and did not protect the waterfront from the kind of development they fear: towering condo high rises along the water, restricting public access.

The public attention resulted in a special waterfront section being added, which made clear that the city wants to provide more public access and restrict development to what it calls “neighborhood scale.”

The Comprehensive Plan is a guide for the city boards and commissions that make decisions on applications to build across the city, and forms the backbone of the city’s zoning ordinance, the planning law of the land.

Although the existing plan was approved by the state in 2002, the last time the plan was updated was in 1994. The process of updating the current plan has been under way for over a year.

Last fall, the city held a series of public meetings to get input on how to shape and then refine the plan.

It then proceeded with the Washington Park and Elmwood neighborhoods

“This is probably the most open and involved process the city has ever run,” said Planning Director Thomas E. Deller.

The City Plan Commission approved the plan unanimously last night. The commission reviewed the roughly 250-page document section by section in more than a dozen meetings over the course of the summer. Some of the members said they have become quite attached to the document.

“I am proud to have been involved in this,” said City Plan Commission Vice Chairman Harrison Bilodeau. “I think that it’s sufficiently pro-development and it’s sufficiently pro-Providence in its natural and built environments.”

“You’re not going to cry, are you, Harry?” needled fellow board member Jennifer Cole.

“I could cry,” a smiling Bilodeau responded.

dbarbari@projo.com