Greensboro's "Comprehensive Plan"

The new Greensboro ordinance https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/
departments/Planning/compplan/
document.htm provides a vision for growth and development for the city over the next 20 years.

Greensboro, N.C. has adopted its first "comprehensive plan for the city." The new 495-page document???"Connections 2025"??? is the result of more than two years of community input and discussion.

This new land development ordinance, developed with the help of a volunteer committee, will provide one source for standards and regulations for the city, replacing the Unified Development Ordinance that has been in place since 1992.

Some of the broad objectives are to protect and improve environmental conditions such as shade, air purification, oxygen regeneration, stormwater runoff, noise abatement, glare and heat.

The new ordinance will mostly have a greater impact on new development than existing neighborhoods. The new ordinances are designed to promote development with a mix of commercial and high-density residential areas that have access to public transportation.

Some of the residential zoning districts will be renamed under the new ordinance. Each new house built in the city will be required to have one shade tree in the front yard.

The new rules require more roads for safety and accessibility, a regulation that could affect whether developers can build cul-de-sacs, a coveted design of residential developers. It won't be death to cul-de-sacs, but will tend to limit their numbers.

Other proposed regulations put restrictions on mega-churches and large schools.

The new ordinances will help rectify what in Greensboro, and across the nation, has been a legacy of zoning land uses into discrete and uniform residential, commercial and industrial categories. The initial intent was a valid one???to protect public health and welfare by removing noxious influences from residential areas. However, the result has been to segregate uses in suburban areas to such an extent as to create a total reliance on automobile travel for activities that formerly were located within convenient walking distance in older, more mixed-use urban settings. Such settings remain in the downtown and in Greensboro’s historic in-town neighborhoods. The new ordinances will encourage compact mixed-use development in suburban areas that is transit and pedestrian oriented.