Austin’s new land development code is currently being crafted, resulting in changes that could alter the way Austin looks in the coming decades.

The process for rewriting the city’s development code, dubbed CodeNEXT, has included multiple opportunities for community members to examine the existing laws to learn what Austinites love about the city and what they would like to see changed, said Matt Lewis, assistant director of the city of Austin Planning and Zoning Department.

CodeNEXT lead consultant Opticos Design Inc. is categorizing the different zoning areas in Austin using a rural-to-urban transect system.[/caption]

Now the team is rolling out a first draft of standards based on the input received during the past two years and the goals of Imagine Austin, the city’s new comprehensive plan.

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The goal is to revisit general requirements, such as parking, stormwater management and building design, Lewis said.

“All of those elements are being examined to see how we can basically fix some of the issues we’ve had problems with in the past and redesign our city so it implements Imagine Austin,” Lewis said. “This will impact how Austin looks, feels and functions.”

CodeNEXT Project Manager Jim Robertson told residents they could expect a final draft of the code revisions by fall 2016.

“We would like to be at the City Council [with a revised code proposal] within two years,” he said.

From imagination to creation

Imagine Austin is the city vision adopted in 2012 based on resident and stakeholder feedback. The comprehensive plan seeks to ensure Austin retains its creative economy, establishes a more compact and connected community, and remains environmentally conscious all while trying to keep the city affordable. These points of emphasis not only change what development is allowed but also the community experience in Austin, Lewis said.

Austin city staffers and Opticos Design Inc. consultants are in the process of drafting a new land development code. A final draft is expected to be ready for City Council approval by January 2017.[/caption]

“This development code is not about development necessarily,” he said. “It’s about people, and it’s about human lives and how they experience Austin.”

Austin City Council decided June 18 it did not want a full code rewrite and instead chose a middle ground to revise the law in such a way that integrates successful rules with new principles adopted during CodeNEXT, Lewis said. 

In October and November, the city of Austin hosted seven Community Walks to receive additional input from residents. Paul DiGiuseppe, principal planner with the city’s Planning and Zoning Department, said the purpose of the Community Walks was to get feedback from the public about how they are experiencing the seven designated test areas.

“One of the things we’re trying to achieve with CodeNEXT is identifying the DNA of a neighborhood—what makes it what it is,” DiGiuseppe said.

If executed properly, Lewis said the rewritten code should create new and more diverse housing types and allow residents to live in their desired environment, whether it be urban, suburban or rural. He also said changes to the development code should help desegregate the city and allow people of various economic classes to live in the same neighborhood.

“We’re a very segregated city, and we have the ability to make decisions in coding and development types to resolve those issues,” Lewis said. “We’ve designed our way into this mess, and we can design our way out of it.”

However, the transformation to Austin will not occur immediately, he said.

“We think in two years CodeNEXT will be done where we would be prepared to put it on the ground,” he said. “This not an overnight transformation. This basically puts the tool kit in place for developments to start following these patterns, [and] it sets the new framework for how we’re going to develop as a future.”

Change is a challenge

Although the new land development code is not slated to roll out until 2017, there are some issues Austin City Council felt could not wait. Changes to the existing code are frequently made from the dais, which is the right approach so those changes can be evaluated through the CodeNEXT process, said Gabe Rojas, chair of the Zoning and Platting Commission.

“I don’t think [CodeNEXT] is something to wait on. There’s things that we’re implementing right now,” Rojas said. “Let’s do that now; let’s tackle these hard issues. Let’s make those changes now, and it just becomes a part of CodeNEXT.”

However, tackling those issues now may make the job harder for those in the Planning and Zoning Department, according to Greg Guernsey, the department’s director.

“As we get closer to CodeNEXT, it becomes harder to anticipate those changes,” Guernsey said. “If [City Council] were to stop making changes today that would be fine with me because it would make our job easier. … But they have constituents and they have priorities.”

Once the CodeNEXT process is complete, Rojas said it will be important to see how the new laws are implemented and used when making development decisions at the commission and council level. Neighborhoods may have to decide whether to amend neighborhood plans to better align with the values of Imagine Austin, he said.

“Right now some of our issues are we hear a very one-sided view of any development. We don’t ever get the holistic, ‘This is what’s good for the city, and this is why we should do it.’ We get the adjacent landowner perspective of, ‘This is going to affect me, and I don’t want it.’” Rojas said. “We need to have a much larger conversation at some of these meetings of what it would mean for transit, for housing affordability across the city instead of, ‘This is going to put more cars in front of my house.’”

Lewis said he hopes the code can help resolve tension between developers and neighborhoods by creating the ability for people to predict what could be developed near them.

For the car-oriented, suburban areas of Austin farther from the city center, the existing code, which regulates land based on its use, will continue to create family residences, limited office space and neighborhood commercial zones, and that process will not change much, said Dan Parolek, principal of Opticos Design Inc., the lead consultant for CodeNEXT.

But more walkable, urban areas throughout the city are likely to embrace form-based zoning, which is a more nuanced method that pays particular attention to how buildings complement streetscapes and the physical form and scale of buildings rather than their uses, Parolek said.

“Different neighborhoods require different solutions and different rules,” he said. “Use is still regulated. ... It’s just not the foundation for the code.”

The form-based code would categorize different parts of the city and allow different types of commercial and housing options based on how rural or urban the area is, Parolek said. The combination of conventional and form-based zoning will create a hybrid code for the city, he said.

While change may not come easily, Lewis said it is a time to celebrate the future of what Austin can become.

“This is not an easy task. We’re taking on an incredible undertaking, but it’s a fantastic opportunity for Austin to really define what we want to be and how we want to grow up,” Lewis said. “It would be real easy to continue business as usual, but the community said that’s not what they want.”

Kara Nuzback and Kelli Weldon contributed to this story.