Citizens Advisory Group

Imagine that the zoning code gave the planning director the unfettered right to reduce the density of a project simply because he thought it was too dense. Zoning might allow, say, 300 housing units on a tract but the planning director could reduce the total to 200 if he thought 300 was just too many. No one would be able to take zoning entitlement... s at face value--published densities would merely be suggested maximums. The only way to determine what one could build would be to file a site plan and see what happens. By-right development would be dead, with each new development project having the potential to deteriorate into a public fight over density. This is the California model. It's a bad one. Badly needed housing projects in California are routinely subjected to round after round of circus-like hearings and litigation because little can be built as a matter of right. That system has produced the nation's worst housing crisis. Los Angeles, a city four times Austin's size, has 20 times as many homeless. But this is what Austin's draft land development code proposes--except that it vests this broad discretion in the Transportation Department rather than the Planning Department. It's an astonishing expansion of the Transportation Director's authority and a troubling erosion of by-right zoning. This is not hyperbole. Section 23-8D-1030(B) of the draft code provides: Design and Construction Requirements. If a development application requires review under Article 23-8C (Transportation Review and Analysis), the director or the body responsible for acting on the application may require: (1) Delaying or phasing development until construction of municipal transportation infrastructure required to accommodate vehicle trips generated by the development or other transportation improvements necessary to directly serve the development; or (2) Reducing the density or intensity of the development, to the extent necessary to ensure that the capacity of the street network can safely accommodate vehicle trips generated by ...Read More