Tell us what you think about El Paso!
Bring completed cards to the hands on session tonight!
Translation
Planetizen – Urban Planning, Design and Development Network
- Designing Cars for Future Megacities
- Saving Small-Town Movie Theaters
- Cities Fighting For Lebron
- Debate Over How to Measure Ridership Plagues HSR Project
- Wild Animals Prowl the Suburbs
- The Transformation of the Great Plains States
- Cutting Airport Infrastructure to Cut Flyers' Emissions
- Activism and Architecture
- Auto Dependence Is Central To Asthma Epidemic
- Fear of Tunnels
Your firm is contracted to create “form-based land development regulations” for El Paso which are closely aligned with the very controversial Smart Code which was adopted by the city. The El Paso Smart Code remains today an untested option with limited incentives for urban and residential development, but it apears that the work you are doing will be to have the Smart Code made binding to new zoning districts or to mapped corridors or areas of the city. When the Smart Code was adopted there would have been an even louder uproar to oppose it if there had been any indication it would not remain as optional and never incorporated into zoning or a mapped area. Did anyone tell you this and are you prepared for very significant & organized opposition to any such attempts you might make?
Your publicity states that your process must include “highly public planning” with “neighborhood residents, civic leaders, business owners, and government officials coming together to proactively plan for the future” but it also stresses that the zoning regulations you are creating WILL incorporate all the predicates familiar from the previous Smart Code process including: “an interconnected network of streets, small blocks, pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare design, a mix of uses, street-oriented buildings, accessible parks and open spaces” and “a walkable, bikable,transit-connected city of neighborhoods, with schools, shops, workplaces, and services within walking distances of homes”.
Form-based land development and Smart Code are among the latest planning experiments being tried by a few American cities, but no examples of their application exist today where there are demographics similar to El Paso. To date these new concepts have not been adopted or proven in any communities with vast land areas existing to accomondate growth or with household incomes at the level of El Paso. The regulations will do nothing to foster the thriving market in El Paso for detached single family residences in the $85,000 to $130,000 range or the proven and traditional models employed here to attract tenants to commercial developments. It has never been demonstrated that these new-urbanism and mixed-use development concepts can flourish absent the demographics which support participation by the higher-end national retailers, grocers and restaurant chains which will not locate here, or absent a significant white collar employment basis of multiple corporate headquarters which El Paso also lacks.
The only examples of these form-based land development regulations existing today are in communities which have significantly higher household income levels than El Paso does, and also one or more of these charistics:
1) fully developed cities with limited or no exapnsion potential and therefore forced to increase density and become more urban.
2) new planned communities.
3) cities with a sizeable market for median homes and condominiums in the $300,000 – $700,000 range.
Can you counter the claims in the two paragraphs above and show any communities with these zoning regulations in place where there are demographics like here in El Paso?
You are also creating detailed plans for the city to redevelop the Asarco site. Oddly enough however, it is not clear what oportunities will exist in the future for the city to purchase the Asarco site or what limited development options will be possible for that site. Soils at all of the Asarco property will remain highly contaminated even after the trustee completes the established agenda of removing the buildings and equipment and a limited scope of surface enviornmental clean-up. Is it not apparent to you as outsiders that the smoke stack is the most abhorrent landmark in the city, and if so then why are you playing a role in a dialog for it to remain?
Do you post these comments on this web site? Or do you only share the silly one word comment cards? Will your iron man spiritual guru Victor Dover read this?