Is Atlanta’s new Zoning 2.0 survey too “confusing” for regular people? – Atlanta Civic Circle

Atlanta’s planning division is soliciting neighborhood enter for its first zoning code overhaul in 40 years, however one native housing advocacy group says the town’s Zoning 2.0 survey for the general public is just too darn sophisticated—and so it’s give you an answer of kinds.

“The survey they developed is absolutely complicated should you’re not a land-use skilled,” Considerable Housing Atlanta says, so it’s posted suggestions on-line to information urbanist-minded Atlantans in filling out the survey. (The group says it consulted housing consultants to craft its suggestions.)

The survey asks residents for his or her opinions on planning techniques like zone strings, frontage requirements, and ground space ratio limits—issues with which many are fully unfamiliar.

Atlanta’s new planning commissioner, Jahnee Prince, advised Atlanta Civic Circle in an e mail that she hasn’t taken the Metropolis Planning Division’s Zoning 2.0 survey but herself. She stated she’ll test it out quickly, including, “I’ll ask a few my neighbors to take it and inform me what they suppose.”

One other activist group, Housing Justice League, emphasised the significance of neighborhood participation within the zoning code’s revamp, saying in an e mail blast, “If we don’t have interaction on this course of, solely people who need Atlanta to remain the identical will take part, which can dictate who will get to stay within the metropolis of Atlanta for the subsequent era.”

“This could possibly be an enormous alternative for [housing] affordability, and if we do nothing, we are going to proceed down the trail of quickly turning into the [San Francisco] Bay Space—inexpensive solely to the ultra-rich,” the group e mail warned.

Considerable Housing is rallying Atlantans to demand “extra versatile” residential zoning rules to densify housing within the metro space and make it much less car-dependent. The group argues that imposing as few residential zoning restrictions as doable will hold rents down. 

“Town of Houston has the slowest improve in rents of any giant metropolitan space,” the group says on its web site. “They haven’t any zoning. This isn’t a coincidence.”

Some zoning restrictions that the group proposes stress-free are: eliminating parking house necessities for residence buildings, permitting extra accent dwelling models, equivalent to yard tiny properties, and lowering restrictions on small- and mid-size residence complexes and townhomes.

Considerable Housing additionally means that Zoning 2.0 survey respondents foyer the town for brand spanking new rules that require the bottom ground of parking decks to have pedestrian-friendly eating places and shops as an alternative of parking. That might go for parking decks on main roadways, close to transit, paths and parks, and in mixed-use, industrial, and multifamily areas. 

“If pedestrians are participating with parking decks, there ought to be a requirement—NOT an incentive—to have lively floor ground makes use of,” the group says.

Need to take the Atlanta Zoning 2.0 survey? Click on right here.

Want some steering from the urbanists at Considerable Housing Atlanta? Click on right here.