Citizens Agenda on Planning and Zoning

Much is made of William Penn’s celebrated street grid, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and the making of Society Hill. But let’s face it:  Despite these landmark achievements, city planning has not been Philadelphia’s strong suit for a very long time.

Cities like Portland, Boston and Chicago have left us in the dust kicked up by their grand projects. They’ve busily reclaimed their waterfronts, reformed their zoning laws, fostered green design, and attracted international development dollars.

Philadelphia, meanwhile, wasted years praying over cursed tracts such as Penn’s Landing.  Here, we pit communities against developers and scare off investment with our backroom political culture. We starve our planning commission of funds and staff. 

No doubt about it: We’ve rested on our planning laurels. We’ve slept and snored. And we’ve come to accept a degraded public sphere as a fact of life.

Luckily, the legacy bequeathed us by long-ago decisions – walkable neighborhoods, gracious architecture and a compact downtown – now are seen as major assets by a nation rediscovering city life. A 50-year trend of population loss is leveling off; the value of the median Philly home jumped 30 percent in the first five years of this decade.

Suddenly, Philadelphia is planning again: More than 1,000 people jammed the Convention Center for the recent unveiling of a waterfront master plan. A new Zoning Code Commission has begun a rewrite of that tangled document. The city is at work on a bold GreenPlan for open space, and Mayor Michael Nutter has pledged to reinvigorate urban planning.

A new era beckons. But where to begin?

The No. 1 Priority  

Give the city, at long last, a true comprehensive plan.

Why it matters: The problem of helter-skelter development that wastes resources, damages neighborhoods, invites corruption and enables ugliness begins with the city’s lack of a comprehensive plan. A citywide plan would provide the basic framework for creating more detailed zoning rules. Planning should drive zoning, not the other way around. A comprehensive plan expresses a city’s vision for what it wants to become. It provides a touchstone for evaluating large development proposals. The current habit of drafting neighborhood by neighborhood plans creates a patchwork approach, and it favors neighborhoods with resources to hire planners over those that don’t.

What to do: Continue the effort to gather citizen comments and ideas begun by the Imagine Philadelphia hearings. Include aggressive outreach to people of all income strata and ethnic groups. Accelerate the process to make sure the comprehensive plan is finished before detailed work on a new zoning code is done.  Incorporate into the city’s comprehensive plan good ideas from other cities about watershed protection, transit-friendly development and inclusive housing.

Near-term actions

Blooper backstop: Create a design review commission to help prevent architectural bloopers from getting built. Baltimore and Boston get better buildings with architectural advisory boards. We can, too.

Get rolling on the river: Embrace and begin to enact the Central Delaware riverfront vision developed through the Penn Praxis project. Protect the riverfront while the detail work to carry out the broad plan gets done. Otherwise, a forest of disconnected towers could sprout along the river, undermining the vision. Incorporate the vision’s ideas into the new zoning code, and if necessary, pass an interim zoning overlay to preserve goals such as a riverfront trail and pedestrian-friendly design. Map out the new riverfront street grid called for in the plan.  Set up a public or nonprofit agency to carry out the riverfront vision.

Don’t stack the code: Be clear from the outset that the zoning-code rewrite must balance community and developer interests, not throw the advantage to one side. Open a broad public conversation, and don’t skip the basics. Use that dialogue to decide first what civic principles the new zoning rules should encode.

Call in the pros: Reserve some seats on the Zoning Board of Adjustment for design professionals. End its reputation for arbitrary judgments. (Note: Mayor Nutter failed to name any design or planning professionals in his five appointments to the ZBA early in 2008.)

Bet against the (state) house: Casinos may have the odds on their side, but keep up the pressure to revise the current oppressive, big-box designs.

Appoint a development czar: Name a coordinator to ride herd from the mayor’s office on the alphabet soup of agencies that have a hand in approving developments. The goal: Ensure the fairness and predictability that quality builders expect. Done, with appointment of Andrew Altman by Mayor Nutter.

Build greener: Build incentives into the zoning code (and perhaps the tax code) to reward energy-efficient design. Reduce parking requirements for new developments to encourage the use of transit and your own two feet. Encourage mixed-use development within walking distance of transit stations. With oil topping $100 a barrel, cities are the sites of a sustainable future.

Preserve our past: Be more aggressive in placing buildings on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. The city Historical Commission should be more proactive in soliciting nominations. Though Philadelphia has a reputation as a place that respects its history and historic structures, the city still allows some deplorable demolitions of historic structures. The development czar should make it part of his mission to enforce the proper balance between the energy of new development and the priceless legacies of history.

Honor foot power: Preserve Philadelphia’s distinctive character as a city that is walkable and friendly to bicyclists. Make that goal a byword of the comprehensive plan, the zoning code and streetscape projects.

Long-term efforts

Embrace 21st-century zoning: Ditch the complicated mathematics of conventional zoning for a new “form-based” code, one that starts with how a building meets the street, defines public space, and matches its context. The benefit? Peace in our time between neighbors and developers.

Save the middle-class house: Philly construction costs are the fourth highest in the nation. Luxury builders can handle those costs, low-income projects get public subsidy, but middle-income homebuyers get squeezed. Here, the unions must step up for their city, offering the lower rates they charge in the competitive suburbs.

Finish the Parkway: Building on the excellent renovations of Logan Circle and Aviator Park, make the Parkway less of a highway and more of what the Center City District calls “an animated cultural campus” that welcomes pedestrians, instead of scaring the heck out of them. New buildings, restaurants and the arrival of the Barnes art collection will help.

Make no small plans: Let ambition become the city’s byword as it rethinks public spaces. By some analyses, every $1 of public money put into public amenities can trigger $12 in private investment. What transformative projects could propel Philadelphia’s growth for the next 40 years? 

Ideas from citizen forums

Civic exchange: Start field trips for civic leaders. One neighborhood hosts another.  Create an information clearinghouse to link neighborhood leaders who’ve learned how to handle development issues with those who lack this expertise.
 
Finish NTI: Don’t lose momentum from the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. Continue programs to maintain cleared lots and spruce up commercial corridors. We’ve seen the bulldozers. Now bring on the bricklayers.

Play something else: Public confidence in City Hall’s ability to shape development has been seriously harmed by pay-to-play debacles like the last round of Penn’s Landing shakedowns. An era of no scandals is desperately needed.