LAND USE and URBAN DESIGN

Goal: To create a sustainable, compact, cohesive urban neighborhood where residents can live, work, shop and play.

Objectives:

• Develop a long-range land use plan that encourages a compatible mix of land uses, protects natural and built assets and creates a sense of place.
• Connect mixed-use areas with a network of landscaped "green" streets and walks.
• Ensure that development contributes to the social and economic life of the community through quality design of the physical environment.
• Strengthen small business activity that is compatible with the social and physical make-up of the neighborhood.
• Encourage quality-building practices, which are enduring and will accommodate future alternative uses.
• Encourage the design and placement of buildings that incorporate human scale design details and promote pedestrian and non-motorized vehicle usage.
• Preserve historic structures when feasible and consider adaptive re-use.
• Encourage demolition of unsafe and condemned buildings and infill with architecturally compatible uses
• Preserve and create walkable commercial and mixed-use areas 
• Create on-site parking that:
• is carefully and judicially placed as to not create a void breaking the  continuity of the neighborhood
• assures safe vehicular and pedestrian circulation, minimizes negative  visual impact an is well landscaped
• integrates parking with buildings whenever feasible
• Use the following basic urban design principles when developing commercial and mixed-use areas:
• Build to the sidewalk (i.e. property line).
• Create a strong "streetwall" in which each building meets or comes close to the sidewalk.
• Locate the inside floor level as close as possible to the level of the sidewalk outside.
• Make the building front "permeable".
• Connect the inside of the building and the sidewalk outside with windows and doors.
• Prohibit mirrored glass or window coverings that block visibility.
• Prohibit parking lots in front of the building.
• Put on-site parking above, below, behind, or beside the building.
• Allow on-street parking. Stop-and-go parking is essential to real shopping districts.

Recommendations:

• Prohibit surface parking lots as a principle use.
• Amend the existing land-use plan to include the Imagine Kutzky Vision plan.
• Change neighborhood zoning where needed through a Special Zoning solution (such as a form based overlay zone, new zoning ordinance, etc.).
• Create design guidelines and standards that shape the character of new development to the existing neighborhood character and are in accordance with the Urban Design objectives in the Imagine Kutzky Vision Plan.