Discuss High Performance Buildings, Lighting, Animals and Parking at This Wednesday’s UDO Session

Decatur Metro | April 15, 2014 | 10:32 am

Last week, we posted about the upcoming Unified Development Ordinance community input session surrounding Sustainability this Wednesday at City Hall from 7p-9p.  Now we have a bit more info of the “green performance” issues that will be discussed, and man are they varied.

Courtesy of Decatur Next…

High Performance Buildings
High performance building is the practice of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building’s life-cycle — from design, construction, operation, and maintenance, to renovation and deconstruction. Such buildings reduce energy costs, improve indoor air quality, and provide greater, more consistent comfort. We’ll detail high performance building practices that could be incorporated into Decatur’s ordinance, along with their potential long-term costs and benefits.

Some of these most common performance issues are nicely summarized in this cool interactive overview from Southface.

Outdoor Lighting Standards
Decatur currently lacks regulations to reduce light pollution, despite increasing scientific research on the negative health and environmental impacts of excessive lighting at night. Potential changes to the ordinance include regulations about the types and placement of fixtures to control the unnecessary spread of light.

Animals
Chickens have become quite popular in Decatur, contributing to food, fun, gardening and education. Is everything working okay or does the number of chickens on any one lot need to be restricted? And what about potbellied pigs and pygmy goats? Should they be explicitly allowed or prohibited? Because, currently, the code is unclear either way.

Unbundled Parking
Today, parking is bought indirectly through the lease or purchase price of a property, which — beyond the environmental impacts of excessive parking — works against our affordable housing goals because it forces buyers and tenants to purchase parking, even if they have no car (or have fewer cars). Unbundling treats parking as separate from housing and allows tenants to save money by only buying what they need. People are still free to purchase what they require but those who need or choose to live without a car are no longer penalized.

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8 Responses to “Discuss High Performance Buildings, Lighting, Animals and Parking at This Wednesday’s UDO Session”

  1. Mr. Bad Example says:
    April 15, 2014 at 11:53 am

    The number of chickens is already covered by the code albeit in a complicated way. There are square footage restrictions for the coop based on property size and proximity to neighboring residential structures. There are also minimum coop square footage requirements for individual birds. The other items are indeed less clear.

  2. Pierce says:
    April 15, 2014 at 12:44 pm

    How about we look at a maximum number of dogs? There is a house in our neighborhood that has 10+ toy dogs that make the most obnoxious noise. It doesn’t appear to that the neighborhood red tailed hawks are up to the job… Anybody know how we could cultivate some eagles to move into the neighborhood to deal with small, loud dogs?

    The rationale for unbundled parking sounds great… but I wonder how that will really play out. People who have a car but may not commute every day are likely to try to avoid paying for parking by parking on a neighboring street. Developers definitely have an interest in avoiding that expense, but don’t typically have to deal with the consequences of a building with insufficient parking. We will reduce the financial incentive to build parking at a greater rate than we will reduce the demand for parking. Then we have to begin regulating who gets to park on residential streets, so that the people who live on those streets will have access.

  3. Rival says:
    April 15, 2014 at 2:00 pm

    What about my urban bison?

  4. brianc says:
    April 15, 2014 at 2:24 pm

    Though I certainly love the idea of “unbundled parking”, how would it work in practice? Is this simply a matter of requiring less spaces per housing unit in the zoning code, or something more robust? I’ve heard of a condo complex in Boston that actually compensates residents who sign binding agreements in which they pledge they don’t own a car and will not park one on the premises in the future.

  5. Helvetia says:
    April 15, 2014 at 3:46 pm

    Where can I get view a copy of the chicken ordinances?

  6. Brad says:
    April 16, 2014 at 2:43 pm

    Re parking — isn’t it simple enough for a development to say you can use shared parking for free, but you have to buy/lease a reserved spot?

    And, you just underbuild the shared parking so folks with extra $ buy reserved spots…