Getting In The Zone With The UDC

Although well-intended when they were first introduced into city governments, zoning codes became an instrument for sprawl and unsustainable growth.

They up-ended walkable neighborhoods, increased greenhouse gas emissions, contributed to unhealthy lifestyles and driven up government spending. Often, it seemed that our communities might have grown better if there had been no zoning codes at all.

That’s certainly true here. We have created a community with the worst economic segregation among the top 50 metros. We have urban neighborhoods whose survival was undermined by the codes themselves.

Just think about it: list the cities that you enjoy visiting – New York to San Francisco, Provincetown to Savannah – and the downtowns that you like best – Seattle to Chicago, Charleston to Portland. They’re the ones that have the mixed uses that zoning codes prohibited in cities across the U.S.

Zoned Out

When the codes were put in place, it was for the best of intentions: to solve the “enormous losses in human happiness and in money which have resulted from lack of city plans which take into account the conditions of modern life,” in the words of then Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.

The notion that people shouldn’t be living next door to a factory belching out black smoke inspired the idea of setting up “zones” in cities where specific kinds of functions could be isolated – residential here, commercial there, industrial way over there.

Unfortunately, zoning codes proliferated just as cars came to dominate the American landscape, and once crowded neighborhood sidewalks gave way to enclosed shopping malls and office parks, ushering us into an age where politicians seeking political contributions and developers seeking greenfields converged to give us the sprawl that brings no net benefit to our community – its economy, its social ties, its civic life and its environmental impact.

And yet, anyone who questioned the futility of the zoning codes was treated like he was caught poisoning the mayor’s dog.

Code Red

As a leading smart growth advocate put it, “if zoning is the DNA of sprawl – the coding that endlessly replicates the bleak landscape of autotopia – then what is the DNA of a livable communities?”

It’s a fundamental question that Memphis and Shelby County needs to answer, because in the past 25 years, zoning codes have given us a community that we cannot afford and cannot sustain.

That’s why the proposed form-based code making its way through city and county governments is so crucial, and as Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton has said, best of all, it is a beginning and not an end.

Hopefully, in the future, its emphasis on smart growth principles, New Urbanist sensibilities and public engagement will be expanded and strengthened, but for now, the new Unified Development Code (UDC) is light years from the previous code that allowed a proliferation of Planning Developments (PDs) that neutered any semblance of planning for a quality urban fabric.

Good Form

Here’s hoping that the proposed forms-based code – which will emphasize the form of buildings rather than the use of buildings – will change all that. At its heart, the lack of interest in a smart code until now fundamentally mirrors our civic lack of self-worth and the pervasive attitude that we simply don’t deserve the best – in our downtown, in our neighborhoods and in our urban design.

It is the antithesis of the UDC’s attention on forms, because if anything, too much of our community, particularly its suburbs, is formless. So, the question is what do we really want our city to be and what principles should we follow?

Here’s the beginning of our list (and we invite you to send yours):

Build great places – recognize the importance of the public realm and set out to make it exceptional. For those who say that our people don’t “get” this, keep in mind that when the opinions of 125 people who developed the Sustainable Shelby were combined with the public polling, creation of high-quality public realm was the #1 priority. This requires us to take the quality of the public realm out of the hands of the city engineering department because we need to re-establish streets as the primary public space for the city.

Principled Planning

Walkability – put simply, we have to care more about people than cars. We need to develop neighborhoods with mixed uses so people can walk to the store, to the park or to the school.

Traditional Neighborhood Structure – neighborhoods need to be connected to the rest of the city by streets, sidewalks, greenways and complete streets. We have to get serious about walk-bike issues.

Connectivity – we need to concentrate on streetscape that is human scaled, we need to surround big box retail with liner buildings and we need to locate parking to the side or rear of stores.

Design – we need to care about urban design and use the soon-to-be-adopted Unified Development Code as the smart code to guild development and to design a city where the best architecture is not just pursued but expected.

High Drama

As we’ve said repeatedly, Memphis has no margin for error because we are dangerously near the tipping point from which we cannot return. We need dramatic action, and approval of the UDC is one of those changes.

To survive in today’s economic climate, local government needs a new way of thinking, flexibility, a new business model and an injection of optimism. That’s why we strongly support consolidation of city and county governments after year’s of antipathy.

Simply put, it’s time to shake things up, to do things differently and to send a message that we are unwilling to accept business as usual any longer, particularly in our public sector. Those who think that we should work on city government first and then pursue consolidated government just don’t realize how close we are to disaster and how little time we have to waste.

We have no more time to lose. We begin by adopting the UDC. We continue by starting over and creating local government that we are proud of.

Land Use (Out Of) Control Board Rubber Stamps Sprawl

Maybe we’re just the world’s slowest learners.

Despite 20 years of tax freezes that have accomplished nothing so much as expanding a low-wage, low-skill economy, we fought the reform of the PILOT program and continue to define success by how much city and county taxes are given away.

Despite the exodus of an average of three middle-income families a day from Memphis in the first seven years of this century, we re-elected a mayor who invited them to leave in greater numbers.

Despite 105,000 students in Memphis City Schools who deserve sustained, concerted attention, by the time a student graduates from high school, he’s had 3-4 superintendents and the same number of “comprehensive plans” to turn around city schools, creating a policy churn that prevents fundamental change.

Code Red

Despite the desperate condition of some urban neighborhoods, we continued to annex areas that spread public services over a broader area and eroded services where they are most needed – inside the urban core.

Despite a miserable record of code enforcement in Memphis neighborhoods, the review and reform of the city program were buried and a new director was appointed to a division with few reasons to exist.

But despite all these, they’re no match for when we are at our dumbest - when we come face-to-face with developers. If talk were money, we could pay off Shelby County’s debt with all of our big talk about smart growth. Sadly, all the big talk has rarely been followed up with any substantive action.

If there is a poster child for our lack of commitment to planning and quality of place, it is the strip mall that is Germantown Parkway. It has about as much to do with a livable city as Chernobyl.

Land Use Out Of Control Board

It didn’t have to be this way. The Office of Planning and Development wrote a plan for the highway that was aimed at creating neighborhoods, but before the ink was dry on it, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners labeled it as an advisory plan and began to make exceptions to it.

The result is what you see on Germantown Parkway today. There is little argument from anyone now that it is a planning – if not visual – disaster and an object lesson for all of us.

But perhaps that’s all of us with the exception of the Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Control Board. Despite the obvious lessons, our ultimate slow learners are on the verge of transforming Houston Levee Road into the next incarnation of Germantown Parkway.

That’s because in July, the Board approved three massive Planned Developments (PD’s) – our community’s favorite misused and overused zoning application – at Houston Levee and Macon Road. In a real sense, these votes effectively sealed the fate of Houston Levee Road. It will now slowly but inevitably become Germantown Parkway, enriching the few while damaging the quality of life and tax stability for the many.

Subversion Of The Process

The subverting of a legitimate planning process stems largely from the blizzard of PDs that have blown effortlessly through the Land Use Control Board. Although PDs were intended to be rare and only granted for innovative development with important public benefits, such as increasing open space or protecting the environment, in Memphis and Shelby County, unlike the rest of the nation, they are the rule, not the exception.

And, the underlying zoning isn't even changed, so that we have land with agricultural zoning covered with cookie-cutter developments. To make matters worse, local PD applications are treated as special exceptions with their weak requirements for public involvement.

We’re hoping that the new Unified Development Code working its way through the political approval process not only has beefed up the public notice for such applications but more fundamentally that it has reduced the use of them in the first place.

This overuse was compounded during the Rout Administration when the Land Use Control Board was taken by developers (aided and abetted by county politicians). It produced a startling statistic: in a one-year period, the percentage of times the professional planning staff was reversed skyrocketed from about 15% to 70%, opening the floodgates from ill-conceived projects that fueled sprawl and required tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure from a county government that could never said no to a politically-connected (and contributing) developer.

People, Not Cars

In other words, the zoning is regularly all about cars, not people. That’s certainly the case with the Land Use Control Board’s approval of the PDs on Houston Levee Road. All are poorly organized single-use developments that make Trinity Commons look like it’s a model New Urbanist development.

Only Emily Trenholm – essentially the only representative for city neighborhoods – voted against applications known more for their stupidity than their validity. It is nothing short of a civic scandal that this many years into the high-sounding rhetoric about smart growth and sustainability, Ms. Trenholm is still alone, fighting the good fight even though her own colleagues have their knives out to defend the developers.

As usual, developers paint beautiful pictures of new economic growth (although it will only cannibalize existing businesses, particularly on Germantown Parkway) and they talk of growth as if it’s not merely the most massive relocation of people in the history of our region.

These votes are an absolute contradiction of the Sustainable Shelby plan that should be the Bible for the Land Use Control Board. In a city that has to change its trajectory or become the next Detroit, the negative impact of these kinds of misguided decisions can’t be overstated. When you match it with the idiocy of I-269, we are not only slow learners. We are just plain dumb.

Getting It Right

Shelby County Government is light years behind in understanding the fallout of these projects on Houston Levee Road on the economy, environment and quality of life that we need to avert disaster. Shelby County Engineer Mike Oakes – a disciple of context sensitive design – can’t design enough smart roads to offset the damage being done by the Land Use Control Board.

Shelby County Government can begin by examining all PD approvals along Houston Levee Road back to the turn of the century. Like Germantown Parkway, developers have been getting their approvals and sitting on the projects to see if the market for it makes sense. What this means is that the Land Use Control Board approves the application of the developer, who has five years to file the final plan although the deadline can be approved by an inconsequential sounding item routinely placed on the board’s consent agenda.

Here’s what every candidate for Mayor of Memphis should have in their platforms: correcting the weakness in our regulations that produces PDs’ abuses and removes any ability for us to create the kind of land use that serves the broad interest of our community.

In the end, we are beaten down and in serious need of a victory…any victory. Otherwise, our future is sealed: lower density, more and more developments that are non-sustaining and taxes rising to cope with the duplication of new infrastructure needed to move people around Shelby County.

County Engineer's Office Bridges To Better Design

Shelby County Engineer Mike Oakes had no trouble over bridging waters when it came to an opportunity to show how an inspired engineer can contribute directly to a better quality of life.

Here’s the set-up: Shelby County Government needed to build a new Kerrville-Rosemark Bridge over Big Creek. No one driving over the bridge would have thought anything of it if the new bridge had been a concrete monolith built with little regard for anything but our car-centric community. After all, that’s been a tradition in our region.

But Mr. Oakes had a better idea, and because of it, North Shelby County – an area whose residents justifiably often feel overlooked and underappreciated – has a bridge that contributes to an improved image and attitude.

Smarter Infrastucture

The bridge symbolizes the journey that the county’s chief engineer has taken in the past seven years. Freed from the traditional public sector way of thinking about infrastructure, he’s become a leading proponent of smart growth and context sensitive design in our community. This bridge in particular speaks to the latter, since it’s a radical departure from the run-of-the-mill ones designed and built in the past 25 years by local government.

We wrote a couple of days ago about his role in county government’s first “smart street” where a new section of Houston Levee built by Shelby County Government is more pedestrian and bike-friendly and just plain more attractive.

As for the Kerrville-Rosemark Bridge over Big Creek, the enhancements to make it more attractive and to make it sit more comfortably in its surroundings cost an additional $48,000; however, the bridge was built for $875,000, which was less than the contractor’s bid of $946,000, so in the end, it was a victory for the budget as well as for a better way of building bridges.

The public gets it. Even when it was thought that the bridge would cost more, they liked the idea, and now seeing the results, reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.

Looking Differently At Opportunities

When we asked Mr. Oakes what the “tipping point” was that led him to his new philosophy on these public infrastructure projects, he said: “First, I’m not sure I can say what the tipping point was. I have had a lifetime love for beautiful public works and facilities. When I was very small, I was fascinated by the souvenir book my grandmother had of the Chicago World’s Fair which was filled with beautiful public buildings, parks, etc. I loved our Cossitt Library and the Overton Park Zoo facilities like the Cat House.

“I was particularly impressed by my first visit to New York when I was 21 and saw the beautiful stone bridges on the Long Island Expressway. In my travels, I’ve wondered how San Francisco, San Diego, New York City, Chicago, etc., had managed to create so many great buildings, bridges, traffic circles, statues and parks that really set them apart as great, swaggering, successful cities.”

His simmering interest in these kinds of place-making investments flourished when Mayor A C Wharton took office, he said, citing the mayor’s commitment to context sensitive design (that led to a totally new approach to the highway through Shelby Farms) and to smart growth (that led to Sustainable Shelby and the new Unified Development Code).

“This opened doors that had been closed for decades in our community,” Mr. Oakes said. “We started looking for opportunities to apply (better design) about the time we were bidding the construction of the Houston Levee Road Bridge over the Wolf River. Shortly after award (of the contract), the contractor suggested some value engineering cost reductions which we could share. This additional funding source and the time needed to prepare and gain approval from state government on the changes presented the opportunity to try some architectural enhancements.

Good Design Is Everybody’s

“It turned out that we got the approval, built and enhanced the bridge and still saved money. At about that time, we also began to envision a steel bridge with dyed concrete and asphalt ‘pavers’ that could be repeated around the rural areas as our ‘signature bridge.’

“We are completing the new Mary’s Creek Bridge which will mimic the Wolf River Bridge about a mile away on Houston Levee Road. The design of the Macon Road Bridge is almost complete and will comprise two bridges with a more urban and historical look. The two bridges are more efficient and cost effective way of building this two-lane structure. It will also afford the motorists a view of both the bridge they are on and the adjacent one.“

Proving that good design is not just meant for everyone, Mr. Oakes is also considering a distinctive bridge for an industrial area. “While an industrial area offers less inducement in terms of context, we are considering some fairly inexpensive art deco enhancements on the new Fite Road Bridge,” he said. “We plan to have the parapet walls of this railroad crossing suggest the 1930’s Burlington ‘Zephyr’ train.”

When we brought Jeff Speck, former director of design for the National Endowment for the Arts, to Memphis last year, one of his “modest suggestions” for our city was that we not allow our engineers to be in charge of our quality of life. The design ethos at the Shelby County Engineer’s Office proves the exception to the rule, and we can only hope that it proves to be a virus that infects its peers in City Hall.

Best of all, Mr. Oakes understands that he is doing more than building bridges and roads. “We hope all of these, in their combination, may be the beginning of a new ‘swagger’ for our metro area.”

Shelby County Builds Its First Smart Road

Shelby County’s model “smart growth” road – Houston Levee between Wolf River and Macon Road – lives up to its advanced billing.

The $7 million experiment sparked by Shelby County Engineer Mike Oakes’ commitment to smarter road design stands in stark contrast to county government’s long-time tendency to build too many lanes to fuel too much sprawl at too much cost to the urban core.

Criticism by Conn Canale – owner of the four-decades-old and always enjoyable Canale Grocery – showed just how badly we have been brainwashed by the roadbuilding industry. In The Commercial Appeal, Mr. Canale said: “I think we need a couple of more lanes, because the traffic backs up.”

It’s this preoccupation of building roads on the basis of its busiest 10 hours each week – rush hour - that led to the six-lane monstrosities marring what used to be context sensitive roadways and enjoyable pastoral drives. In addition, as sprawl has pulled population and businesses eastward, these six lane roads often now divide quiet, vacant buildings in areas that the economy has abandoned.

Complete Streets

That’s why Mr. Oakes, in his wisdom, chose a road less traveled.

Instead of building lanes that would only be used in rush hour, he designed and constructed an almost four mile segment that is a tip of the hat to the “complete streets” movement. The two 35 miles per hour lanes can be expanded to four lanes later (if needed) and a landscaped median can be added, but now, the road’s gentle curves leave room for walkers, bicyclists, skaters and joggers.

The design of the roadway harkens back 40 years ago when the undulating roads outside Memphis cut through pastures and hamlets, making Sunday drives a popular pastime. When asked why he didn’t design the roads to cut straight across the county, the county engineer of the time said: “I think these softly curving roads are more attractive and fun to drive.”

He was right then, and Mr. Oakes is right now. He said that “context sensitive design and Mayor Wharton’s ‘smart growth’ initiatives opened doors that had been closed for decades in our community.” “I have found an appreciation for better design whenever it is tried. We began to realize the quality of life aspect to projects that we had been ignoring in the past.” As a result, he said that he began to look for opportunities to change the county’s traditional engineering on its roads, and that when he presented this new concept for Houston Levee Road, Mayor Wharton said yes.

It’s A Start

It’s a modest project, but it’s a start, especially to county to taxpayers who’ve been paying a premium for suburban sprawl.

Few subjects have been as endlessly discussed in this community as smart growth, and at times, we seemed at risk of co-opting the language while doing nothing to change our behavior. However, finally, we’re seeing the first signs of meaningful change in the way that the county engineer’s office designs roads. Now, if only this attitude could reach across Main Street to City Hall where the city engineer’s office often sends the message that it’s his way or the highway (excuse the pun) and that the public is nothing so much as a nuisance in the design process.

In fact, nothing symbolizes the difference in attitude and tone between the county engineer’s office and the city engineer’s office more than the difference between City of Memphis’ Walnut Grove Road into Shelby Farms Park and Shelby County’s Houston Levee Road between Wolf River and Macon Road.

At Shelby Farms Park, the city engineer’s office seemed determined to fight any suggestion that Walnut Grove Road should accommodate bicyclists and walkers. Incredibly, it essentially is a barrier to bicyclists interested in actually crossing from one side of the park to the other. As the city engineer’s office seems to be saying, its loyalty is to asphalt and cars, and sensitivity to the natural setting or other modes of transportation is someone else’s job.

Smart Planning

Houston Levee Road may be a modest first step, but Mr. Oakes suggests that county government is going to raise its aim beyond this 3.7 miles experiment, and hopefully, usher in a better way of building roads and highways in this community.

We know it is too early to get overly excited about the prospects. After all, there was a time when Germantown Parkway – now a concrete tribute to the county’s lack of commitment to sound planning – was heralded as an important opportunity to emphasize some of the same issues now being applied to Houston Levee Road.

Back then, before the ink on the Germantown Parkway Plan had dried, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners was making amendments that reversed the plan’s fundamental policies and produced the endless succession of strip malls across the landscape.

Mr. Oakes pointedly rejected the massive design used for Germantown Parkway in favor of his two-lane road, and to underscore that a new day may be dawning, his plan actually includes bike paths and the planting of trees. He promises that the road will be no wider than two lanes until about 2016 at the earliest and even afterwards, it will be widened to four lanes designed as a boulevard.

McMassive Roads

The county engineer’s thinking about this road corresponds with a growing belief that supersizing highways actually ends up making them more dangerous. The expansive roadways that exist throughout suburban Shelby County are bleak testament to the “bigger is better” attitude so often adopted by highway engineers.

Thankfully, a change is taking root around the country with a new breed of engineers who design roads that take into consideration once unheard of ideas – slowing down the traffic to move fewer cars and sharing the road with pedestrians and bike riders.

The Memphis city engineer’s office reminds us of how hard it will be for the profession to adapt to this new approach. Strangely, many traffic engineers in the public sector seem blind to the fact that this different philosophy can prevent the fault lines that so often open up between government, neighborhoods and environmentalists. That’s why flexibility and listening are two skills that are becoming as important to highway engineers as skills at the drafting table.

After all, transportation in Shelby County does much more than just move people from place to place. It also shapes the innate character of the community at its most basic. Recent studies show that people with access to sidewalks walk more, people with access to trails jog and walk more, and that walking increases with well-connected streets that are calm, appealing and narrow.

Getting Out Of Cars

Residents of walkable neighborhoods engage in about 70 more minutes a week of physical activity than people living in less walkable neighborhoods. Between 1977 and 1995, trips made by walking have declined by 40 percent for children and adults while driving trips have almost doubled. It’s no wonder that the percentage of young people who are overweight also doubled when compared to 20 years ago.

Some suggested changes to road design include adding more roadways with bike lanes and trails; damping speeds on arterials and collectors to about 35 miles per hour; offering networks for pedestrians and bike riders that are as accessible as those for cars; bulbing out curbs, improving crosswalks, and installing landscaped medians to slow down traffic and adding to the safety of pedestrians; adding landscaping, especially trees, and installing public art.

With the new thinking displayed by the county engineer’s office, it’s easier to imagine a community focused on highways that create higher quality of life and reduce the cost of construction as well as public health costs. Once, it was a pipe dream, but Houston Levee shows that it can become reality.

Memphis: Looking Smart

Natural Resources Defense Council’s Kim Ranney notifies us about an interesting new website feature that uses Memphis as a spotlighted scenario demonstrating the impact of simple design changes.

Picturing Smart Growth, the new feature, “visualizes how communities ripe for transformative change can grow and develop while saving open spaces, revitalizing neighborhoods and reducing greenhouse gas emissions through improvements to walkability, public transportation, public safety, infill development, and more.”

The Memphis images, illustrating "Smart on a Small Scale," show how simple changes like sidewalks, shade trees, and street lamps can turn unappealing streetscapes into pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.

In addition to the featured scenario, the website maps 70 locations across the U.S. To view the visualization, you can open the map, zoom in on a location, and see a Good Maps satellite view, some context about the metro area, and a slide show detailing how each can be converted, step-by-step, from sprawl, vacant property, or disinvestment into a lively, beautiful neighborhood.

Here's the overview on the new feature from NRDC Smart Growth Director Kaid Benfield's blog.