Community Zoning Updates Aim At Reducing San Diego's Carbon Footprint
The San Diego City Council last week approved North Park and Golden Hills Community Plan updates, which call for strategies to get workers out of their cars, such as eliminating parking spaces and getting employers to offer incentives to get employees to walk, bike and take mass transit. The updates call for reducing by half the 89% of workers commuting by car who live within a half mile of a transit stop by 2035, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.
This was the first of dozens of revised community development plans the council is using to initiate a Climate Action Plan adopted by the city last year. The zoning updates aim to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. These neighborhood blueprints define building heights and the number of commercial and residential buildings allowable on any city block, but haven’t been revised since the mid- to late 1980s.
The North Park plan encourages denser, mixed-use development along major commercial corridors where commercial goods and services and public transit are directly accessible. While the Golden Hills plan maintains the neighborhood as largely low-density residential, it provides for a concentration of multifamily development along the Broadway corridor, thoroughfares and adjacent neighborhoods already experiencing higher-density development. The plan also calls for revitalizing the neighborhood commercial centers to expand the variety of retail amenities and services.
Next up on the council’s agenda (on Nov. 15) is an update of the Uptown Community Plan, which covers a redevelopment district that includes four distinct neighborhoods, including trendy Hillcrest, Mission Hills, the historic Bankers Hill and Park West. Uptown neighborhoods have some of the highest allowable densities in the region outside of Downtown—up to 74 and 109 units/acre along transit corridors. The community plan update encourages dense mixed-used, pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented development that would increase housing stock by 9,500 units, primarily in the Hillcrest Gateway district in the W University Ave area, Uptown’s commercial core. [SDUT]
