Against Zoning Overlays
The permanent Temporary Flight Restriction that the FAA has granted Disney prevents me from flying a drone in this location to get a photo, so a Google Earth view will have to suffice.
Overlay zones are a popular way for city planners to expand the range of uses allowed within neighborhoods. For instance, a commercially zoned property located along an arterial roadway that is zoned for retail commercial uses might have a mixed-use overlay. This would allow the property owner to develop their property as either a strip mall or a mixed-use building with residential uses over ground floor retail. While this provides more flexibility for property owners, it is not urban planning.
The act of planning a city is to put forth a vision of what the city should evolve into. A city’s planning documents—whether that’s a comprehensive plan, general plan, specific plan, or zoning code—should enable the realization of that vision and bar the construction of anything that works against the vision. Overlay zones often provide for two opposing visions for the city that are in conflict with one another.
The problem with creating two opposing visions for the development of the city is that it becomes impossible to build a neighborhood where all of the constituent parts work well together. If, for instance, a city wants to build a walkable neighborhood, each property must contribute towards that goal. By allowing property owners the choice of building walkable developments of car-centric ones through the use of an overlay zone, the car-centric developments will diminish the quality of walkability in the neighborhood.
In fact, this uncertainty practically forces developers to build car-centric developments instead of walkable ones. For the most part, car-centric development can still be financially viable if placed within a walkable community. However, walkable developments need to be placed within a quality walkable neighborhood to survive. If a developer, even one willing to play the long game, wants to build in a neighborhood that provides the option between walkable and car-centric development, they will choose to build a car-centric development since they will be uncertain that their neighbors will continue to build out a walkable neighborhood, which would be necessary to ensure the viability of a walkable development if they were to choose to build one.
Overlays that focus on walkable versus car-centric development are not the only examples where a zoning overlay can cause problems with the buildout of a city. Anaheim loves overlays and provides a myriad of examples of why they fail to provide the basic necessities of planning. Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle is the biggest example of this failure. Approved two decades ago, the Platinum Triangle envisioned a mixed-use community in the heart of Orange County on what was at the time an industrial area. Unfortunately, the Platinum Triangle was implemented using zoning overlays and left the underlying industrial zoning intact. This has resulted in the Platinum Triangle being built out much more slowly than it otherwise would have. Worse yet, it has led to some of the industrial uses expanding over the past two decades, something that would not have been possible had the underlying zoning been changed. This has led to areas that have on-going industrial uses directly neighboring new homes. Due to the ongoing investments in these industrial uses, it can be expected that this is a condition that will remain for decades to come.
Cities change over time, so incompatible development patterns should be expected to be found next to one another at times over the history of a city. Residential streets become busies and homes convert to small shops. Industrial areas become walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. During these transition periods, it is expected that not all uses will support and enhance the final vision for the community. However, it should be the goal of any planner and every city to minimize this transition time. Overlays do nothing but extend it.
City planning documents should provide a clear vision for the future of the city that property owners, developers, and, most importantly, residents can depend on. Providing multiple competing visions for the city through overlay zones odes none of this. Overlay zones should rarely, if ever, be used in city planning.