PLANiTULSA Proposal Step 1: Revise the Zoning Code

[PonderInc]

From the PLANiTULSA "Our Vision" document - Proposed Strategies
Read the entire document: http://www.planitulsa.org/files/tulsa-vision-draft-091509-screen.pdf

Step 1: Revise the Zoning Code
Realigning the city’s zoning code with the new comprehensive plan is a critically important step. A zoning code is the enforceable policy behind the plan’s recommendations and guidelines. For every new development, the zoning code addresses the most pertinent details, from required parking to building height. Most zoning codes, like Tulsa’s, are designed to protect people and to prevent harm. While this is important, it is just half of the whole picture. A complete zoning code protects from harm and helps a developer understand community priorities for a particular location and how to build successfully there.

Tulsa’s zoning code should:

Be Easy to Use
Allow More Diverse Building Types
Enable Innovative Parking Solutions
Align Development Incentives with Goals

[PonderInc]

Glad to hear they are making recommendations about changes to the zoning code.  The recommendations sound simple, logical and necessary.  That's why I predict a humongous, knee-jerk reaction/fight from the entrenched status quo-ers.

I'm interested in the concept of Parking District Management, which "provides parking as a form of public utility."  It "considers how much parking will be needed ...and then seeks to meet that demand with on-street spaces and pooled parking facilities..."

But how does that work?   

From the Transportation Chapter:

"New development will no longer be required to provide large amounts of on-site pakring...but will be allowed to use public spaces already on the street and public lots or garages that serve many buisness.  This will not preclude builders from including additional parking on-site, but lower minums will allow the marketplace to determine how much parking is needed."

I think this will help the creative developers out there, who want to do more neighborhood-friendly, walkable developments.  Of course, if Tulsa continues to attract national chains, those developers will continue to over-pave and over-park our city. 

It seems we were a bit too timid to include parking maximums in this vision statement.  With maximums, if a developer could prove a hardship, they could get a special exception allowing more parking.  But they'd have to prove it first.  (That is, make it easy to do the right thing, and hard to do the wrong thing.)