ACTION NEEDED: Form Based Zoning Case Dec. 10
FORM BASED ZONING DECISIONS – DECEMBER 10th – EMAIL OR CALL COUNCIL TODAY!!
THREE KEY ISSUES are still needed to protect our neighborhoods and to make the form-based zoning ordinance an effective tool. There are three items that still remain “off of the Natinsky / Staff Form Based Zoning Ordinance” and Dallas needs these items included. Neighborhoods and Developers are on the same page with this plea.
WE STILL MUST ASK THE COUNCIL TO:
- INCLUDE Critical Mass,
- INCLUDE Residential Transition Neighborhoods,
- INCLUDE Residential Proximity Slope.
If you do not understand what these items mean, some examples applicable to Peak’s Addition are listed at the bottom of this article.
If these items are not in the ordinance, each of these issues would have to be fought on a case-by-case basis going forward for generations. This will be a waste of time for us all. If we include these 3 items in the ordinance, we can spend our volunteer hours working for parks and schools, as opposed to fighting zoning cases.
Please give the City Council your personal perspective as someone who ends up working on neighborhood zoning issues or as someone who lives next to a structure that is inappropriate. All three items we need are included as "green" options in the City Council 's copy of the ordinance.
We want the Dallas City Council to “VOTE GREEN” on Wednesday. When you email the Council, ask them to vote for the GREEN AMENDMENTS included in their packets. These are the Developer/Neighborhood Compromise. We are not asking for everything that we need, but feel that these are the top three items that MUST be included.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN THIS WEDNESDAY: On Wednesday, December 10, 2008, City Council will vote on what version of Form-Based Zoning we adopt. Except for minor points, the city staff’s proposal being presented for vote is exactly the same as it was two years ago. After thousands of hours of “Citizen input” (and $100,000’s of taxpayer money poured into this project for staff time and consultants) we are right back to staff’s original desire. Dallas City Staff has had a fixed purpose with their version of the proposed "form-based zoning" ordinance. Their purpose is NOT to create an ordinance that will mandate proper form-based zoning for the City of Dallas with inviting Walkable Urban neighborhoods. Staff's ordinance is instead designed to open Dallas up to Houston-style non-planning — allowing any zoning use, in almost any location in the city, on any size site — and all this with dramatically lowered parking levels intended only for large walkable urban mixed-use neighborhoods. Examples of what these 3 items mean to Peak’s Addition and the City of Dallas in general. • “Critical Mass” is absolutely necessary to create functioning form-based districts
(Without Critical Mass, you have small mixed use developments popping up randomly without proper parking, transportation, systems, etc. These types of developments eventually turn into slums. Critical Mass makes sure the dense developments are created where there is proper transportation, parking, density, and walkability, allowing them the opportunity for long term success. This is what you see in the successful vibrant walkable downtowns and cities of Europe.)
• Residential Proximity Slope to provide a HEIGHT TRANSITION between 2-story homes and 20 story mixed use buildings
(This is a no brainer for Peak’s Addition. Imagine no transition from our Single family homes on Swiss, Junius, Sycamore, and Reiger to the commercial streets they back up to. These homes all back up to commercial streets and NEED a residential proximity slope to protect them.)
• Residential Transition Neighborhood-½ block deep to provide a USE TRANSITION between single family and dense mixed use
(A good recent example of this was the Baylor PD. The team that worked with Baylor developed a transitional section from the neighborhood to the Baylor campus, allowing the development to step up over several blocks as opposed to having towers on Haskell right next door to single family homes.) We need these three items put into the ordinance so the citizens of Dallas and neighborhoods of Dallas do not HAVE to oppose this zoning on a case-by-case basis for the next few generations.