Journal of Urban Planning and Development

This paper presents an alternative framework for development review and local planning that is more open and consistent with promoting innovation in housing and land use. The current approach is a “closed system” framework, where innovations can be adopted only if they were anticipated in the local comprehensive plan or a political majority can be convinced to support the proposal. The alternative framework, rooted in the American legal tradition of natural rights, builds in a presumption in favor of innovation in land use and housing subject to specific limits and qualifications. The new system is “open ended” in that innovations are encouraged as long as they do not limit the rights of other property owners or the community and impacts are mitigated. The new framework has the practical advantages of recognizing the dynamic nature of urban development, promoting innovation, and subjecting land-use regulation to objective, performance-based measures.

City planners are rallying against social and economic segregation by enacting regulatory changes, particularly zoning reform. Land use zoning, many argue, is one of the most potent tools planners have to enact change in human settlement patterns, and the goal of that change is often to foster greater levels of socioeconomic and land use diversity. This paper presents a method for connecting land use zoning and spatial patterns of diversity explicitly. It addresses the question of whether, and in what ways, zoning and human diversity are interrelated. Two fundamental questions arise in attempting to use zoning to foster greater diversity: What is the current relationship between human diversity and zoning, and second, how can zoning, given local experience, be changed to effectuate more diversity. To answer these questions, patterns of zoning by parcel and patterns of socioeconomic diversity were evaluated for the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana, Ill. A form of the Simpson Diversity Index was used to measure socioeconomic and zoning diversity by census block group. The results showed an association between diverse residential zoning and income diversity, but other measures of social diversity were not strongly correlated.

In this study of how off-street parking requirements affect urban form, we begin by analyzing the relationship between population density and streets in cities. We find that denser cities devote a greater share of their land to streets, but also have less street space per person. This relationship results in part from the difficulty of constructing new streets in built-out areas. The amount of street space does not increase as fast as population density, and this in turn helps explain why dense areas have less vehicle travel per person but higher levels of congestion. In contrast to streets, new off-street parking is supplied continually, owing largely to minimum parking requirements that make new development contingent on the provision of parking spaces. But the ample supply of off-street parking makes traffic congestion worse and inhibits street life. We recommend either removing off-street parking requirements, or converting them from minimums to maximums.

With federal policy beginning to shift from auto-centric planning, provision for pedestrian and bicycle access is now mandated in federally supported projects. However, the field of transportation planning has little in the way of theory and methods to guide design and planning for walkable cities. Walkability is increasingly valued for a variety of reasons. Not only does pedestrian transportation reduce congestion and have low environmental impact, it has social and recreational value. Recent research suggests that walking also promotes mental and physical health. The quality of the pedestrian environment is key to encouraging people to choose walking over driving. Six criteria are presented for design of a successful pedestrian network: (1) connectivity; (2) linkage with other modes; (3) fine grained land use patterns; (4) safety; (5) quality of path; and (6) path context. To achieve walkable cities in the United States it will be necessary to assess current walkability conditions, revise standards and regulations, research walking behavior in varied settings, promote public education and participation in pedestrian planning, and encourage collaboration and interdisciplinary education between transportation engineers and the design professions.

A strategy has been presented to address conflicts that may arise in implementing smart growth initiatives in the face of the growing importance given to controlling nonpoint source pollutants. These pollutants are the result of urban development and subsequent storm water runoff and are regulated under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Phase I and Phase II storm water requirements. The strategy is based on utilizing EPA’s newly promulgated Water Quality Trading (WQT) Policy that seeks tradeoffs between development in different portions of a watershed. The strategy is consistent with regulatory requirements in providing a means to maintain compliance with water quality criteria in all portions of a stream, while providing a community with the flexibility to allow continued development in economically important areas. The strategy can be applied on a community-wide basis or in individual locations to support individual smart growth projects. Issues that must be addressed before WQT can be implemented are identified, along with potential solution strategies. Although additional effort is necessary to implement WQT for smart growth, a framework has been established upon which subsequent work can be built.