Community engagement will be first step in process

Four months have passed since Austin City Council unanimously approved the Imagine Austin comprehensive plan. Imagine Austin maps out the way Austin will develop, and redevelop, in the coming years. In accordance with that vision, the city is embarking on a process to revise its land use code. Even before the revision has begun, Austin residents with interests in urban design and sustainable neighborhoods are already looking to be a part of that process, hoping to help shape the new code.

"Not everyone agreed with everything that was discussed during the development of the plan. There was, however, a great deal of consensus about one thing and that was Austin didn't want a shelf plan," said Garner Stoll, Planning and Development Review director.

In order to implement the plan, the city's planning staff has created a process and a timeline for revising the land use code, hoping to condense what in other cities has been a three- to four-year process into 2 1/2 years.

Why revise the code?

The last comprehensive revision of the city's land-use code was in 1984. Assistant Planning Director George Adams said at a Zoning and Platting Commission meeting Oct. 2 that there have been 181 code amendments since 2005. He said in 1984, Austin was less than half the size it is now, and now there are multiple duplicative and conflicting requirements.

"Many of our zoning cases are characterized by custom, lot-by-lot zonings, which points to some deficiencies in our code," Adams said. "There are over 60 zoning districts in our code, which is slicing the pie very thinly in [the department's] opinion."

Adams said there are properties with multiple overlay districts, making it difficult to understand what is allowed on a property.

"The complexity that is within our code certainly convolutes the permitting approval process, both for the applicant and for those trying to participate in the process," he said.

How is the city going to do it?

The process Stoll laid out has four steps and includes the participation of a steering committee made up of staff and stakeholders who will work with the consultant the city will hire to help with the revision. Each of the four steps will include updates and input from City Council and reports to the Planning Commission, steering committee, the consultant and staff. The first step will be reaching out to the community and listening to input, identifying issues and educating the public. The second step will be diagnosing problems, doing additional research as needed and creating an annotated outline of the new code.

"The diagnosis can be seen as not only taking the comprehensive plan and the result of the listening sessions, but also as sort of a triage approach; what should be left alone, what absolutely has to be revised, and what needs to be explored, or what additional research is needed to make a decision," Stoll said.

The third step will produce a preliminary draft of the code.

"It should not be in ordinance form yet, but it should be readable by the public, and they should understand both how the code is organized and what its requirements are at this stage," Stoll said.

Step four will be adopting the code with a series of commission and committee meetings, public hearings and final adoption by the council.

Possibilities for change

The land-use code determines the makeup and layout of the city's residential, commercial, and industrial uses. Conventional zoning separates residential from other uses.

"Working areas are no longer smokestacks," Stoll said. "Conventional zoning often puts more space between living and working than is desirable or necessary."

Dave Sullivan, former planning commissioner and current Congress for New Urbanism Central Texas board member, said he would like to see more neighborhood parks in order to allow more residents to walk to parks, rather than driving to larger, district parks, such as Zilker Metropolitan Park and Mary Searight Moore Park. He said CNU CTX is also interested in design changes such as requirements for shorter city blocks. Sullivan said the current code allows blocks as long as 1,200 feet in subdivisions.

"Research shows that the shorter the block length, the more trips that are made by foot or by bike," Sullivan said. "I could show you subdivisions where two houses are back-to-back, but the distance between them along the street was such that the mom would drive her kids to play at the house behind them."

Steven Zettner of Sustainable Neighborhoods said the organization is interested in the process and hoping to ensure what results will keep Austin's neighborhoods family-friendly, preserve existing diversity, and avoid congestion with population growth.

Though stakeholders have many ideas for ways the code can be improved, ultimately the changes will depend on the information gleaned from outreach.

"We won't know until we have more information in terms of what sorts of changes are warranted. We really want to get additional input in terms of what's the best fit for the community and what will do the best job in realizing the vision identified in Imagine Austin," Adams said.