Be Afraid.. Be Very Afraid

The witching month is upon us and some local ghouls, pundits and politicians would have you believe that one of the most terrifying moments in Roswell’s history is looming.  They will have you believe the Unified Development Code (UDC) will cast a shadow of doom over our great city that will be wrought by our current crooked city council and their greedy developer cronies.  These oracles will try to convince you, the naive and credulous, that this new code will usher in smothering density, rampant apartments, skyrocketing crime, soaring infrastructure costs, high-rise buildings, dysfunctional schools, choking traffic and the most ghastly of all...  URBANISM!!!

The UDC does allow for increased density and apartments in certain areas.  Will it be smothering? Is Vickery Village in Cumming a smothering Place?  Are the Providence Townhomes on Canton St smothering?  How about the Bricks and Founders Mill?  What about Liberty Lofts?  I guess they’re right.  Density is unbearable.

Some local examples of Unbearable Density. Clockwise from top left; The Bricks, Founders Mill, Vickery Village, Providence

What about the apartments?  Our current apartment complexes are unmitigated disasters.   Most were not well designed, poorly maintained and thoughtlessly located.  They segregated residents by class and effectively created billboards of indigence.  Lessons have been learned, just take a look at the Canton City Walk plans.  We need new, well-designed apartments like these.

The latest renderings of Canton City Walk illustrate the power of a quality architectural scheme coupled with walkability.

Will we see skyrocketing crime? I have faith in the men and women in law enforcement here in Roswell and the laws we have in place to prevent criminal activity.  It’s just not going to happen.

Infrastructure Costs will soar. Hmm.. Developers pay a lot of infrastructure costs up front and a tighter development pattern reduces infrastructure maintenance costs.  The alternative is to continue a sprawl pattern of development which has proven to cost more to maintain in the long run.  

Evaluation of Urban Residential vs Suburban Residential development in Sarasota, FL. image: Urban3

They’re bringing high-rises.  It’s the ghost of Charlie Brown.  Seriously folks, we have to move on.  The parcel of land at 400 and Holcomb Bridge is too valuable not to redevelop.  The UDC will permit buildings up to 8 stories in that area.  Additionally, it will likely be a future MARTA station.  It’s coming.  Get over it.  It’s only 8 stories.  The next most towering height permitted is 6 stories at Hwy 140 & 9.  There are 6 story buildings all over North Fulton.  Several other areas permit a lofty 4 stories and the rest of the map allows up to 3 stories.  (Correction: 6 stories are permitted in most of the industrial areas North of Mansell along the hwy 9 corridor and east into the industrial areas.  I did not clarify that in the published column.)

Roswell East (aka Charlie Brown) is a little too intense for Roswell. The UDC isn't dictating that this type of development be built anywhere.

Density will destroy our schools.  Huh?  Transiency, poverty and social disorder kill schools not people.  If we build a place where responsible people want to live, regardless of whether they are renters or owners, we won’t have a school problem.  

We will Choke on Traffic.  Our Transportation Master Plan that was approved in September helps address these issues but I challenge anyone out there to name any thriving city that does not have traffic?  Cities and towns without traffic problems are dying cities and towns.  Detroit’s done a fantastic job solving its traffic problem.  

They’re mandating URBANISM!!! - Let’s set this straight.  Urbanism is a design philosophy covering the spectrum from low density to very high density.  Urbanism does not mandate Manhattan but it allows it, just as it allows single family residential. Urbanism promotes connectivity, proximity, mixed-use, walkability, bikeability, incremental change and value creation through effective and thoughtful land use.  

The transect outlines development patterns from Rural to Urban. New Urbanism does not mandate high density.

Canton Street, the Mill Village, Milton Crabapple, Historic Norcross and Marietta Square are all examples of good URBANISM.  So is Seaside which is the only place I can think of that consistently and genuinely has the idyllic “white picket fence” that seems to define the “small-town feel.”  So, how is it that the world’s preeminent model of ‘urbanism’ provides exactly the idyllic, small-town feel that these public agitators preach will be destroyed by said ‘urbanism’? Go sell your Revelations somewhere else preacher men because I’m not buying it.  (30-A stickers anyone?)

The process has been rushed!  I disagree.  Our 2030 Comp Plan was adopted in Oct. 2011.  Amongst other things, it aims to revitalize declining areas, add additional housing options and update existing codes to attract high-quality projects.  Our current codes could not easily accomplish this task and in May 2012 the city brought in Code Studio to assist with the mammoth effort of updating and simplifying them.  A stakeholder committee was formed and has worked diligently over the past 16 months to get to this point. There have been over 40 meetings since the process began and all of them have been open to the public. The process has been well documented and open to the public.

All legislation should have a clear purpose.  The purpose of the UDC is to aid the city in implementing the 2030 Comp Plan and its Strategic Economic Development Plan.  Those that proselytize against the UDC have no plan, they just don’t like this one.  Some of their concerns have some merit but to spout off every worst case scenario to sack legislation is immature and disingenuous.  The bottom line is that Roswell has a plan that was created through a very open process with SIGNIFICANT and UNPRECEDENTED community input and the UDC helps implement that plan.

The kicker is that almost everything the UDC allows could be done today but it would take a lot more effort between the city and developers, builders & property owners thereby wasting taxpayer money and sending a discouraging signal to anyone wanting to do business in Roswell.  The UDC will help Roswell execute on its vision by reducing red tape, clarifying the vision and enabling the private sector to more efficiently and effectively put capital to work.

The Devil’s Advocate likes to say the Devil is in the Details.. I say the Devil is in Delay... NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO AGREE WITH EVERYTHING IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Let your mayor and council know that you support the UDC by sending them an email at  RoswellMayorandCouncil@roswellgov.com

What Would Change Under the UDC?

There will be a lot of talk in the coming weeks over the UDC with the local elections taking place on a similar timeframe as the proposed UDC approval.  The city hopes to have the new UDC in place by the beginning of the year and they hope to have a vote on it in October.  I've written on it here as part of my Community Design Matters column and given that it is one of the most important votes in regards to how Roswell will develop in the coming years, I expect to post a lot more on it in the coming weeks and months.

For now, i just want to post the map of proposed changes.  In the map, the white areas will have no change to their zoning.  The green areas will be a change in name only.  The blue will have their zoning changed as a result of the UDC.

Will the Unified Development Code Divide Us?

You may have recently received a mailing from the city of Roswell regarding the “Initiation of Proposed Map Amendments.”  Essentially this letter was sent to inform some residents, roughly 13,000 of them, that their property may be rezoned as part of the Unified Development Code, an effort to update the city’s antiquated zoning ordinances.  The letter I received was careful to point out that “all of the existing rights allowed on the property will remain,” and that if I am “satisfied with the suggested conversion of my property category, I do not need to do anything.” In case you are wondering, I am satisfied and I’m not doing anything and according to Brad Townsend, planning and zoning director, only about 20 people have voiced their concerns.  I am excited to be moving from “C-3 Highway Commercial” to “DX Downtown Mixed Use!”  The overwhelming majority of residents will see no change in the way their property is intended to be used.

To be blunt, I’m skeptical of zoning.  I think it’s mostly unnecessary.  Most of the best places in our country and the world were built before the advent of zoning.  Many of the great places in Roswell were built without zoning.  Prior to zoning, people generally knew what made sense to build in a certain spot.  Granted, industry encroached on residential areas in inappropriate ways as the industrial revolution picked up steam, especially in large cities.  The natural response was to create regulations that separated incompatible land uses.  Our obsession with single use zoning began in the 20’s & 30’s and by the time the 50’s rolled around, post-war construction was booming and we had relegated virtually every land use to a specific place on a map whether it made sense or not.  Now, virtually every city in the country has a similar zoning code and those codes for the most part mandate a suburban development pattern.  Question to ponder... is suburbia a product of the free market or government regulation?

That said, the unintended consequences of 40+ years of post World War II zoning and suburban development started to become noticeable in the 1990’s as some people began to see sprawl as a problem.  More and more data started to point to our highly zoned and segregated development pattern as a contributor to many issues such as the obesity epidemic, global warming, environmental degradation, declining social capital and placelessness.

We built a country so uniform that it is now difficult to tell whether you are in Florida or Kansas except that one state has small rotating storms and the other has big rotating ones. A rough estimate is that 30 million buildings have been constructed in the past 50 years.  Out of those, 99+% are wholly unremarkable from an architectural standpoint.  Try to think of one place that was built in the past 50 years that is incredible that did not require some sort of variance to get built.  What I’m saying is that our modern zoning creates mundane places that are in no way memorable.  

Now, I’m a realist and understand that no American municipality would dare try to completely repeal it’s zoning codes.  But they can change them. The famed architect and planner Andres Duany is fond of saying “no one has ever dismantled a bureaucracy, not Napoleon, not Hitler. You can, however, change what they administer.”  Ideally, we want to create more Canton Street and Sloan Street and less Alpharetta Highway and Holcomb Bridge.  Our current codes can easily permit an auto oriented strip mall in most sections of the city but it’s much more difficult (impossible) to replicate the section of Canton Street from Norcross to Magnolia which is arguably the most successful 300 feet of retail and residential OTP.  Why would a zoning code make it illegal to replicate that?  Is it unsafe? Is it unsightly?

The UDC begins to help alleviate this problem.  It’s not radical but it is a change.  It even has pictures to illustrate design requirements.  It works to bring the 2030 Comprehensive Plan to life by coding for what we want to see rather than coding for what we don’t want to see.  The new code is intended to help everyone, from layperson to developer, understand what development on a certain property or roadway should look like.  Code Studio, the firm that was selected to write the UDC, is top notch.  They have worked with a committee of stakeholders from our city to draft a document that will help the city achieve the goals set forth in the 2030 comprehensive plan.  They have written similar codes for Raleigh, Denver and Memphis which tells me that they know what they are doing.  

At this point, most of the work is done but there is still time to opine.  There will be public comment meetings held August 19-21 around town.  Times and locations can be found on the city website.

Overview of the Unified Development Code

If you are looking for a quick primer on the Unified Development Code that Roswell will be voting to implement later this year, this is a relatively quick video.  This will be a big win for the city.  The code even has woonerf as a street type.  How European of us...

Canton Street Arbor - Cool Concept, Bad Parking Solution

This is a plan that is on life support for the property at the southeast corner of the Woodstock|Canton intersection.  It was approved with conditions by the Historic Preservation Commission in Jan 2011 but didn't get off the ground due to zoning/use issues.  

One interesting tidbit is the that the property and vision belong to Mayor Jere Wood.  He wants to build an arbor in the style of those built around Georgia in the early to mid 1800's.  See the image of the Brush Arbor at the Marietta Campground below for an idea of the building type.  I wanted to comment on it as I love building but hate the site layout.  It's another case of parking requirements killing progress and inhibiting good designs from becoming reality.

Now, check out the rendering of the arbor that Mayor Wood has had designed for his property.  It is strikingly similar to the Brush Arbor above which was built circa 1839.  It may be a copycat but it sure would be a great addition to our historic district and Canton Street if it were done the right way.

Now, here's a site plan with new parking shaded in red and the proposed arbor in green.

As you can see, there is a lot of additional parking.  The parking will be pervious so it wouldn't be asphalt but it's still parking.  The plans I saw showed the use as Assembley which would require 58 additional spaces to be added to the lot.  Now, the mayor decided he would compromise and say that the use was to be retail instead which would have a lower parking requirement.  This still leaves the entire lot with 95 parking spots.  That's a lot of parking for business that have peak traffic at different times of day.  Another solution is to allow fewer spots because there are spots at the soccer fields right up the road.

The parking requirements are one problem but another is the location of the new parking.  This design would further erode the public realm around that intersection.  I think you could find a way to tuck a lot (not all) of the necessary parking in between the existing buildings and tweaking the layout of the existing parking spaces a bit.  You could even pull the arbor building closer to the sidewalk.  But wait, there are minimum setback requirements to deal with.  You can't build a building close to the sidewalk like Salt Factory or Roswell Provisions or Go With The Flow.. That would be against code.

I'd love to see this get built as a hybrid retail and assembley space but even more than that, I'd love dopey zoning get out of the way and let the free market decide what gets built. 

images: AJC, City of Roswell

Open Letter to Mayor + Council re: Groveway Code

Below is an open letter to the city council articulating my views as well as those of a number of individuals who live in Roswell on the proposed Groveway Hybrid Form-Based Code.  If you support this new zoning, please be sure to let your mayor and city council know before Monday evening as they will be voting on it.  You can email them at RoswellMayorandCouncil@roswellgov.com.  

Dear Mayor and Council,

First, I would like to thank you for the time and consideration that each of you has invested in the Groveway Hybrid Form-Based Code. As you know, the code has gone through extensive review and community involvement.  The assertions by other Roswell citizens that it is being fast tracked is incorrect.  You are also aware that several residents have voiced concern about the unintended consequences of the code.  My initial concerns with the East Roswell Forum email were that the facts were grossly inaccurate.  However, those have now been debunked by the city.  There are 'unintended consequences' of every action. I decided to write you to ensure that both sides of the community are heard and I feel there several additional items that need to be voiced:

• Our existing zoning is outdated and dysfunctional.  It is critical that we have an updated code particularly in the Groveway area.  We need this to encourage development in the heart of our city.  Otherwise, most of what the Groveway Community wants and needs will require time consuming variances and that will likely never happen.
• Now is the time to act.  Our neighbors, Alpharetta and Sandy Springs, are moving forward on development and job growth.  Our tax rolls are not growing while theirs are.  If we do not act soon, we will miss the generational shift that is creating a significant demand for walkable urbanism as Gen Y joins the workforce and as the Baby Boomers become empty nesters and find that they don’t need the large house, that they would like to walk to many of their daily needs and also drive less.
• We must continue to revitalize our town center. Form based codes focus on the creation, revitalization and preservation of vibrant, walkable urban places.  The center of our city should be just that while enabling people of all walks of life to live there.  They help accomplish the following:

• Encourage Placemaking - They can do this because the are prescriptive thus achieving a more predictable physical result.
• Encourage Public Participation - Citizens can see and understand what will be built which engages them more.
• Encourage Independent Development - Independent developers can build on smaller lots knowing that what eventually gets built next to their lot will not adversely impact their building and/or business.
• Create Diversity of Development - Because smaller independent developers have certainty, many more of them build which creates diverse development rather than what happens when one large developer owns all the land.
• Retain History - FBCs work well in existing areas because they retain and codify the best of what is already there and build upon that to create a place unique to the area instead of a cookie cutter design
• Foster Transparency - Non-professionals find them to be shorter, more readable and easier to understand which makes it easier to determine if the code is being followed.
• Provide Developer Certainty and Reduce Risk - They give developers the certainty they need to encourage large investments of their own capital.

There is much to be excited about in Roswell today.  As you saw in Greenville, it takes bold action to build a great place.  Numerous other cities are already ahead of the curve with creating 21st century zoning codes (Denver, Miami, Nashville, El Paso, San Antonio, Montgomery, Sarasota).  One of the most famous towns in the south, Seaside, was built using a Form Based Code.  

I am are asking that you vote YES for the Groveway Hybrid Form-Based Code.  Please don’t let the short-term view of a few who have fed misinformation to many further delay the progress of our great city.  It would be a shame to waste this opportunity and see jobs and development continue to flow to our neighboring cities.

Sincerely,


Michael Hadden | CNU-a | New Urban Roswell 

Roswell 40U40
712 Creek View Lane | Roswell, GA 30075

The Phony Groveway Controversy

It has come to our attention that a group of citizens are raising a signficant amount of opposition to the proposed Groveway Hybrid Form Based Code.  We have written about this code previously (here and here) and support the effort to revitalize one of the most neglected parts of our city by engaging the community, updating the zoning into the 21st century and giving those citizens the neighborhood design they desire.

The opposition is making false claims about the potential for large numbers of apartments and retail space.  The claim is that through hyper development in this area, our city will suffer reduced quality of life, more traffic congestion, degrading school quality and several other social ills.  Additionally, there is concern that this is being fast tracked by council.

The facts show that these claims just aren't true.  The city made an official response, posted below, to the initial email that addresses the claims very well.  We have chosen to not post the original email as it contains several factual inaccuracies that could further confuse the public.  Please consider sending an email to the mayor city council voicing your support. 

• mayorwood@roswellgov.com  
• ndiamond@roswellgov.com
• rdippolito@roswellgov.com
• kigleheart@roswellgov.com
• Jorlans@roswellgov.com
• bprice@roswellgov.com
• bwynn@roswellgov.com

If you can, please try to come out to the City Council Meeting Monday evening (4/9) at City Hall and show your support.  Here's the city's response:  

You recently received an email containing a letter written by ........ concerning the Groveway Community project. There are many inaccuracies in this letter pertaining to this project, and the City of Roswell would like to give you the correct information. 

Groveway Project Process

This project is not being fast tracked. It has gone through a thorough, painstaking process which began back in 2008 with the City receiving a grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission to study the area for redevelopment.  From 2008 until today, the City has involved the community and stakeholders from day one. The Groveway project has been a community-driven effort with multiple meetings for citizen input. The City has held a two-day charrette with citizens, four community meetings and 17 Groveway Stakeholder committee meetings following the charrette. The result is a community vision and comprehensive plan for Groveway: A mixed-use zoning code overlay that will re-create the area, making it a vibrant part of our city. Please visit the timeline for this project to see how it has progressed over the years.http://www.roswellgov.com/DocumentView.aspx?DID=2351

Apartments

The maximum number of apartments that could be built in Groveway is 2,800 but realistically that number is not likely to exceed 1,500. The Groveway project is a mixed-used development which means there will be single family homes, multi-family homes (apartments/townhomes), commercial and retail. To achieve 4,000 apartments, every piece of land in Groveway would need to be developed into five-story apartment complexes. That would include the City Hall property, the Cultural Arts Center, the Police Department, the Library, the Child Development Association, Pleasant Hill Church, the AT&T building, the cemetery and Waller Park. That is just not going to happen.

In addition, the Groveway hybrid form-based code does not allow for five-story buildings everywhere. Five-story buildings are allowed only on the primary streets of Atlanta, Oak, Hill, Norcross, and Frazier. Secondary streets in the community are allowed only three-story buildings. Currently there are approximately 400 apartments in the GrovewayCommunity. Realistically Groveway will be redeveloped into a community with homes, townhomes, apartments, retail and commercial…a balanced approach. 

Retail

There will not be 1,782,000 square-feet of retail space developed in the Groveway Community. Again to achieve this level of retail, every parcel in Groveway would need to be retail, and that is not realistic. That would include the City Hall property, the Cultural Arts Center, the Police Department, the Library, the Child Development Association, Pleasant Hill Church, the AT&T building, the cemetery and Waller Park. Again, that is just not going to happen. In addition, the Groveway Community is on a grid system and the size of the land parcels does not allow an assemblage of land large enough to support that much retail. This is a mixed-use development not solely a retail development.

Transferable to other areas of Roswell 

 The Groveway Community Hybrid Form-Based Code Regulations have been created through a community effort for theGroveway Community and nowhere else. If other communities in our wonderful City would like to redevelop their areas, a similar process would need to take place. The residents and stakeholders of the community would need to be engaged and drive the process from the very beginning to its fruition, and Roswell’s Mayor and Council would need to approve the final plan.

Infrastructure Improvements

Necessary infrastructure improvements would be required through the redevelopment of the properties in addition to developers paying impact fees for improvements. This is a live, work, play, walkable community where people will walk to the stores, restaurants and parks similar to those who live in the Canton Street area.

The Groveway project is a community vision of what this area of our city could be – a thriving, vibrant neighborhood for our community. To read more about the Groveway project, we encourage you to visit http://www.roswellgov.com/index.aspx?NID=1435.

Quote of the Week: Timothy Lee on Mixed-Use, Zoning & Density

In the decades after World War II, urban planners across the country pursued a variety of aggressive “get people into their cars” policies. They used the power of eminent domain to push freeways through the heart of urban areas, destroying some neighborhoods outright and cutting others off from the rest of the city. They passed zoning restrictions that systematically discouraged high-density urban living. Many of these laws are still on the books to this day. In addition to restricting building heights and mixed-use development, these zoning codes almost invariably force developers to provide parking for new construction projects, whether the market demands it or not.

The results of these policies—convenient automobile access to the heart of the city, plentiful parking, inflated rents in the city compared to the suburbs, spread-out neighborhoods that are hard to traverse on foot—creates the illusion that people are freely choosing a suburban, auto-oriented lifestyle. But this is like saying the market has freely chosen to sweeten products using high fructose corn syrup while ignoring corn subsidies and sugar tariffs.

excerpted from Libertarians and the Urban Planning Culture War from Forbes

Adopt the Smart Code

This is the 11th post in a series of posts this December that will chronicle the 25 things we would most like to see in Roswell. None of these are actually happening... at least in the way we'd like them to. Please enjoy and have a happy holidays!

This one goes along with the DPZ charette.  I know it's not going to happen but we need it to.   We are already behind the curve on this one.  If you don't know what the Smart Code or other Form-Based Codes are about, check out this wikipedia link.  To summarize, form-based codes regulate the form of the urban fabric while used based codes regulate what types of land uses can go where.  Used based codes are extremely limiting and do not give developers, builders, citizens and governments flexibility in what they want to build and where.  

It has become common knowledge that our zoning has in large part led to the sprawling mess that America has in its suburbs today.  The old Euclidean, use based zoning codes are on their way out and are making way for form based codes such as the Smart Code which essentially make it easier to create mixes of uses and consistent blocks, streets and neighborhoods which then create places where people want to be rather than places where cars want to be.

The trend is accelerating.  Currently Georgia has 13 form-based codes.  These include Woodstock's downtown, Lawrenceville's downtown, and the city of Mableton among others.  Georgia trails six states in the number of codes adopted.  The top three states in order are Florida, California and Texas.  For more information check out the Code Study. The current economic slowdown is the exact time that we as a city should be demanding a new code.  The days where the answer to our problems was to zone more commercial to bring in more tax revenue are over.  If you'd like a primer on why more commercial zoning is akin to monkeys pushing buttons, check out Chuck Mahron's post on his Strong Towns Blog.  So, we've reached a point where we are saturated in retail as a city, state and country.  We have six times the amount of retail square footage per capita than our next closest consumer rival.  We don't need more of what we have.  We need to prioritize and make what we have better.  

Here is a graphic that compares traditional zoning with form-based codes:

I think it's hard to argue that form-based codes offer some distinct advantages when looking to rebuild a city.  So, my wish list couldn't be complete without a shiny new Smart Code to completely replace our existing zoning codes.  

images: Form-Based Codes Institute, 1000 Friends of Florida