I enjoyed the height limits section of this article in particular; it reminded me of the most arbitrary height limit I've seen codified. One of the recent progressions for density in my city has...
I enjoyed the height limits section of this article in particular; it reminded me of the most arbitrary height limit I've seen codified. One of the recent progressions for density in my city has been to allow development on undersized lots. For a long time, the city deemed any lot below 2,200 sqft to be unbuildable, essentially making parking the only legal use for those properties. As part of a larger zoning overhaul, we decided to legalize development on these tiny lots, but with a limit of 2 stories and 22ft in height (itself a 100% arbitrary limit) in an effort to keep any new construction in scale. When we presented this change to our planning commission, a commissioner raised a concern about his two massive sons and questioned whether houses built to a 22ft height limit could accommodate big tall men. After discussion, the commissioners raised the height limit to 32ft (but kept the 2 story limit).
Some of these less restrictive approaches to zoning cited in this article have begun appearing in ordinances around the country, including in my own city. Our use matrix, once very prohibitive, now looks a lot like the Japanese example. We've also crunched our zoning district count down to a number under 20!
Being said, my city's zoning ordinance remains a little clunky. As it stands, most of the residential zones don't allow for the densities that developers want to build at. Rather than changing their developments to fit our zones, builders instead petition the city council to get a spot zone change into a commercial district, which have much looser zoning requirements. These zone changes take months and months, but they're well worth it for developers who want to see returns on their investments. All this bother because densifying the residential zones would be "too political."
A big part of that density calculation is parking. Parking is one of the big topics that this article set didn't cover. I don't know what parking regulation is like in Japan, but in North American cities, it has a big impact on the viability of projects. The conventional wisdom is that no resident would ever accept a dwelling unit without a parking spot (or multiple), but in dense urban cores, it's frequently easier for developers to turn a profit when they aren't devoting significant chunks of their lots to car storage. Most of my city's commercial zones have no parking minimums for lots below 10,000 sqft (another huge success of the recent zoning reforms), which is why developers request these zone changes in the first place.
I enjoyed the height limits section of this article in particular; it reminded me of the most arbitrary height limit I've seen codified. One of the recent progressions for density in my city has been to allow development on undersized lots. For a long time, the city deemed any lot below 2,200 sqft to be unbuildable, essentially making parking the only legal use for those properties. As part of a larger zoning overhaul, we decided to legalize development on these tiny lots, but with a limit of 2 stories and 22ft in height (itself a 100% arbitrary limit) in an effort to keep any new construction in scale. When we presented this change to our planning commission, a commissioner raised a concern about his two massive sons and questioned whether houses built to a 22ft height limit could accommodate big tall men. After discussion, the commissioners raised the height limit to 32ft (but kept the 2 story limit).
Some of these less restrictive approaches to zoning cited in this article have begun appearing in ordinances around the country, including in my own city. Our use matrix, once very prohibitive, now looks a lot like the Japanese example. We've also crunched our zoning district count down to a number under 20!
Being said, my city's zoning ordinance remains a little clunky. As it stands, most of the residential zones don't allow for the densities that developers want to build at. Rather than changing their developments to fit our zones, builders instead petition the city council to get a spot zone change into a commercial district, which have much looser zoning requirements. These zone changes take months and months, but they're well worth it for developers who want to see returns on their investments. All this bother because densifying the residential zones would be "too political."
A big part of that density calculation is parking. Parking is one of the big topics that this article set didn't cover. I don't know what parking regulation is like in Japan, but in North American cities, it has a big impact on the viability of projects. The conventional wisdom is that no resident would ever accept a dwelling unit without a parking spot (or multiple), but in dense urban cores, it's frequently easier for developers to turn a profit when they aren't devoting significant chunks of their lots to car storage. Most of my city's commercial zones have no parking minimums for lots below 10,000 sqft (another huge success of the recent zoning reforms), which is why developers request these zone changes in the first place.