2018-032 Attachment-Comprehensive Plan Update

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SECTION 5: THE ROLE OF URBAN DESIGN IN THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN (A) Introduction. The fundamental tool for urban design currently in American cities is its zoning ordinance. Although use of a zoning ordinance is critical regarding how a community looks, historically and presently a zoning ordinance essentially separates incompatible land uses, and addresses height, bulk, and dimensional requirements for cities. However, during the last approximately forty years in the United States, an expanded group of elements—including the zoning ordinance—has been used to more widely address the aesthetic appearance of U.S. communities. The following discussion can aid Paris, both in the short and long term, to enhance its appearance, design, and aesthetic qualities. (B) What is Urban Design? Urban design is that component of city planning primarily concerned with the functional and visual relationships between people and their physical environment and the means by which those relationships can be improved. As a result, urban design is specifically involved with many areas of planning, including housing, transportation, open space, community facilities, business, industry, and the general relationship between various land uses. Urban design is typically understood to function as an element of the public sector, where it can serve to stimulate, guide, and influence actions of the private sector. Further, guiding the physical design character of public sector uses (e.g. utilities, open space, transportation, etc.) is an important method for improving environmental quality and providing an incentive for private sector investment. Urban design encompasses aspects of the disciplines of city planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and certain elements of civil engineering. It concerns itself with the large-scale organization, function, and design of the city. It deals with the massing, scale, and organization of buildings and the spaces between them, more than the design of individual buildings. (C) The Contribution of Urban Design to the Comprehensive Plan. Future land use plans are typically two-dimensional, reflecting future land uses and their relationships on a map. There is a need, however, for a three-dimensional planning perspective in comprehensive planning which may be achieved through urban design. This is recommended because: (1) The future land use plan can enhance the organized arrangement of land uses; and, (2) Urban design can add additional aesthetic qualities to orderly land arrangement and growth management. (D) Elements of Urban Design. Some of the major components of urban design are outlined for the purposes of this section. Elements of urban design include: 1. Urban form (physical configuration of the municipality): (A) Relationship to existing corporate limits; (B) Relationship to the extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ); and, (C) Consideration of the ultimate planning area of the city: This is advantageous because it allows the municipality to address, for example, its major thoroughfare plan, open space and recreational needs, utility planning, capital improvements programming, and other 13