Best Practice

GreenStep City Best Practices: Land Use

Mixed Uses {BP No. 8}

Develop efficient land patterns that generate community health and wealth.

Best Practice Actions

1. Organize or participate in a community planning/placemaking/design process for the city/a mixed-use district, including specific community engagement practices that engage cultural and income diverse community members.

2. Locate or lease a property for use as a school, city building or other government facility that has at least two of these attributes:

a. Adjacent to an existing employment or residential center.
b. Designed to facilitate and encourage access by walking, biking, or other non-vehicle travel modes.
c. Accessible by regular transit service.

3. Modify a planned unit development (PUD) ordinance to emphasize or require mixed-use development or affordable housing, to limit residential PUDs to areas adjacent to commercial development, and/or to add sustainability features.

4. Report that a (re)development meets a city/community-determined minimum point threshold under the Equitable Development Scorecard or LEED-ND (Neighborhood Development).

5. Have a downtown zoning district that emphasizes small and destination business, entrepreneurial spaces, and allows or requires residential and residential-compatible commercial development.

6. Incorporate form-based zoning approaches into the zoning code, in those areas where a diverse mix of uses is desired.

7. Create incentives for vertical mixed-use development in appropriate locations (downtown, commercial districts near colleges or universities, historic commercial districts, commercial districts with minority-owned businesses).

Optional Best Practice for Step 3 Recognition

Category A cities: implement this best practice by completing any two actions.

Category B and C cities: implement this best practice by completing any one action.

Optional Metric for Step 4 Recognition

Metric # 7: Land Use

Summary

Meeting sustainable urbanism's goal of complete, compact and connected communities (see Urban Design with Nature) depends on mixing land uses, which lowers infrastructure costs, increases property taxes/acre, increases walkability and decreases traffic fatalities, and minimizes environmental impacts and increases a community's health and quality of life. A city can use its land use authority and other tools to help create a vibrant community that attracts jobs, fosters economic development, and that is an appealing place in which people can live, work, and recreate without having to drive everywhere for every activity of daily living. Growth can happen in a manner where roads, transit, schools, ecologic services, and access to retail, commercial, jobs, and industrial facilities are planned for and efficiently provided through connection and coordination with existing local and regional infrastructure and services.

In cities across the nation, neighborhoods and districts of compact development with a mix of land uses, transportation options and pedestrian-friendly design have reduced driving from 20% to 40% compared to large single-use zoning districts. And such areas have resulted in, to use the Urban Land Institute's phrase, cities of convenience, conviviality, and charm. And as the Congress for the New Urbanism phrases the challenge before cities: Disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage is one interrelated community-building challenge.

Greenstep Advisor

Brian Ross, Vice President - Renewable Energy, Great Plains Institute: 612/767-7296, bross@gpisd.net, www.betterenergy.org/who-we-are/staff-and-consultants/

Connection to State Policy

As of July 1, 2009 the new Minnesota Education Omnibus Law includes provisions to eliminate minimum acreage requirements for schools, and to remove the bias against renovating, rather than rebuilding, old, typically more compact schools within walking and biking distance of residential neighborhoods.

Benefits

Major Benefit

See Land Use and Driving: The Role Compact Development Can Play in Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Urban Land Institute: 2010). See also the geometric facts of why the street network of traditional neighborhood development offers far greater vehicle capacity than conventional suburban development and its multiphase left-turn traffic signals with longer wait times.
The National Association of Realtor's 2011 Community Preference Survey reveals that most Americans would like to live in walkable communities where shops, restaurants, and local businesses are within an easy walk from their homes, as long as those communities can provide detached single-family homes. The survey also shows that most Americans would choose a smaller home and smaller lot if it would keep their commute time to 20 minutes or less.
See the business opportunities of smart growth for developers (U.S. EPA studies) and Smart Growth for Conservatives (Bacon's Rebellion: 2012). Being less risky loans, the Small Balance Loan terms offered for mixed-used buildings in downtowns (called Top Markets) by Freddie Mac are especially attractive; total SBL loans are expected to top $5 billion in 2017.
The Livability Economy (AARP: 2015) report/design guide and infographic shows how livability initiatives contribute to improved economic performance and a more vibrant, desirable and competitive environment for housing and commercial investment. See links to 65 studies that quantify how urban places increase human, economic, and environmental wellness, and links to 135 studies on the impacts of form-based codes and compact, mixed-use development patterns.
Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl (Smart Growth America: 2003) found that people living in sprawling developments tend to weigh more and have higher blood pressure, partly due to sorting themselves and partly due to lack of routine exercise opportunities. Active living by design, or design for health, focuses on making changes in the physical design of a city that facilitate people incorporating physical activity into their daily routines.
Building Better Budgets: A National Examination of the Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth Development (Smart Growth America: 2013) finds these benefits for cities: (1) development costs one-third less for upfront infrastructure, (2) an average 10% drop for ongoing delivery of services, (3) 10 times more tax revenue per acre than conventional suburban development.