Lynchburg Looks to Update Ordinances

Though there are plenty of trees in and around Lynchburg, the city's parking lots lack for greenery.

The Lynchburg planning department and the planning commission says the city is long overdue to revisit its landscape ordinances and needs to ?EUR??,,??prepare citywide design standards addressing landscaping/trees, signage, site design,?EUR??,,?? according to a June 7, 2005 news item in the Lynchburg News & Advance.

This is a common refrain across the country, where codes written decades ago no longer adequately deal with the increased levels of development.

One current city ordinance, for instance, only requires a commercial developer to landscape five percent of a parking lot, unless the site is in a scenic corridor. The city planning director, Rachel Flynn, notes that most cities require between 15-20 percent of a parking lot to include trees and shrubs. One prominent city parking lot has not a single tree.