Chapter One(continued)

 
• Planning in New Orleans
• Contemporary Framework for Development in New Orleans
• Geographic Organization of the 1999 Land Use Plan
• Methods Used to Develop the 1999 Land Use Plan 
• Common Concerns Expressed at Citizen Workshops 
• Recommendations of the 1999 Land Use Plan
• Next Steps: Zoning and Master Planning Implications 

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The 1999 Land Use Plan is the result of a careful blend of public comment, professional knowledge and contemporary public policy. The centerpiece of the public comment portion was a series of public workshops, conducted during June and July 1998, that brought residents into the planning process. The 1980 Land Use Plan surveyed public opinion by planning district and published the results in a separate section within each chapter. The 1999 Plan integrates neighborhood input into the plan itself. Neighborhood input was initiated by a series of ten mapping sessions held throughout the city, at which residents of each planning district, facilitated by City Planning staff and planning consultants, worked in small groups filling in a blank map to reflect their desires for land use in the district. At the end of the workshop, each group presented its vision to the other participants and a rough consensus was formed on land use for the district. The maps created by each small group were then combined by professional planners into a graphic expression of group discussion and consensus, and provided for further comment at a Land Use Plan Open House hosted by the City Planning Commission. 

Twelve follow-up public meetings were held in October to ensure that the proposed land use map reflected the vision of the workshop participants. Further refinement of the proposed land use map followed the October meetings. In all, more than twenty-five meetings were held. 

In addition to the public workshops and the surveys of citizens' attitudes and preferences, the following documents informed the 1999 Land Use Plan: New Century New Orleans Master Policy Plan (1992), New Century New Orleans Riverfront Strategic Policy Plan (1992), New Orleans Growth Management Plan (1975) and Growth Management Plan Update (1987); many neighborhood-specific plans; and demographic statistics since 1980 as well as projections for 2002. Furthermore, the 1999 Plan is guided by a planning philosophy that balances the client-based, small-scale, immediate-change orientation of contemporary planning with the ideas-based, large-scale, long-range values of traditional planning. 

The 1999 Land Use Plan encourages development that takes advantage of recent changes and trends in land uses citywide. For example, the plan is informed by the successful private redevelopment efforts such as those in the Central Business District and the Warehouse District; which suggest that declining industrial and office uses can be transformed into major generators of economic activity which significantly improve neighborhoods in the process. The continued development of the New Orleans Medical Center as well as the new development of the University of New Orleans' Research Park at the lakefront signal the increasing importance of higher-skilled workers in the city's employment base, and should lead to other residential and commercial developments to serve their needs. The development of Jazzland in New Orleans East broadens the city's appeal to tourists with children and will undoubtedly sponsor development of support facilities nearby. And the comprehensive redevelopment of the public housing communities should spur the rehabilitation of some of the vacant residential units throughout the city. These are only a few examples of recent changes and trends that have informed this plan, and whose likely effects are included. More specific examples are included in each of the ten chapters which describe the individual Planning Districts.

Each Planning District chapter begins by providing information on the district's geographic boundaries, its development history, demographic statistics, and current land use. Next is a discussion of public participation in the plan, which synthesizes both graphic and narrative comments by community members regarding current and future land use in specific areas of the city. Each chapter then discusses the land use recommendations which the 1999 Land Use Plan puts forward in order both to bring about the future that citizens foresee and to resolve land use conflicts. Concluding each chapter is a discussion of proposed land use for the Planning District as well as the proposed land use plan; this concluding section provides a stepping stone to both the Master Planning Process and revision of the city's Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance. 

Concerns Expressed at Citizen Workshops

This land use plan addresses problems and inconsistencies caused by the way land is currently used in New Orleans, and it offers several professional suggestions for achieving commonly-held aspirations for the city's future development. 

Three broad issues which affect land use were at the forefront of most citizens' minds at the workshops: population loss, blighted property, and the land use decision-making process. Almost every suggestion, every comment about existing land use conflicts, and every future development scenario was based upon the hope that these three issues could be resolved, and that the city's future would be improved. 

The community workshops revealed four common problem areas regarding land use in the city. The problem areas are briefly listed below, and more fully developed in the ten individual chapters describing Planning Districts:

1. Integrity of residential neighborhoods is threatened by intrusion of incompatible commercial and industrial uses.

2. Inadequate protection and enhancement of existing neighborhoods where there is a pleasing mixture of different land uses. There is a lack of vision and workable guidelines for redevelopment of certain obsolete industrial, warehousing or commercial sites as a mixture of compatible land uses. 

3. Insufficient green space and recreation areas, especially along the Mississippi River.

4. Inadequate neighborhood participation in the city's decision-making process regarding development and redevelopment.

It is worth noting that many of these problems were reported when the City Planning Commission was creating the Strategic Plan for Revising the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, a fact which emphasizes the urgency of implementing a revised CZO in order to ensure that future development will help fulfill the aspirations citizens have for a livable city. The next sections of this overview provide a reader with the sense of how the 1999 Land Use Plan developed solutions to these four problem areas. 

Recommendations of the 1999 Land Use Plan

Participants in the land use plan workshops identified four primary problems with the way land in the city is currently used. Citizens believe that if these problems were solved, New Orleans would enjoy a slowing in the rate of population loss, reduction of blighted property, and a reliable land use decision-making process.

By the end of the process of drawing out participants' attitudes, aspirations, and their sense of what land use conflicts currently existed, we were able to define seven different strategies to address the problems. Listed below in summary form are the four problem areas, and the solutions that the community agrees would help solve them. The solutions have become the recommendations of the Land Use Plan, which provides a large-scale, long-term conception of the city's future development and forms the basis for making land use decisions. There is consensus in the community that using the following seven solutions will solve the four problem areas:

Problem Area 1. Integrity of residential neighborhoods is threatened by intrusion of incompatible commercial and industrial uses. 

Solutions: 

1. Promotion of residential integrity; 

2. Concentration of neighborhood and regional commercial corridors; 

3. Reduction of non-conforming uses; 

4. Centralization of industrial land uses

Solution: Implementation of mixed-use categories, meeting the special needs of unique areas of the city;

Problem Area 3. Insufficient green space and recreation areas, especially along the Mississippi River. 

Solution: Increase of green space and recreational opportunities, especially along the Mississippi River; create development standards that require landscaping, particularly along residential areas and public right-of-ways; 

Problem Area 4. Inadequate neighborhood participation in the city's decision-making process regarding development and redevelopment. 

Solution: Create a mechanism to organize neighborhood participation in future land use decisions.

A more complete discussion of these solutions will be discussed briefly in Chapter Two, which provides the citywide context of the 1999 Land Use Plan. Each problem area and each solution will also be discussed in much greater detail in the subsequent chapters, which concern individual Planning Districts. 

Next Steps: Zoning and Master Planning Implications 

The Land Use Plan is implemented primarily through the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance (CZO), whose stipulations direct where and under what conditions land can be developed or redeveloped. At the present time the CZO is a flawed document which neither protects neighborhoods from unwanted change nor encourages beneficial economic development. For that reason, in late 1997 the City Planning Commission adopted the Strategic Land Use Plan for Revising the CZO, which specifies how the Ordinance should be revised so that citizens can feel assured both that land use decisions will not bring about unwanted change and that appropriate economic development is encouraged. The Strategic Plan identified the following five types of problems with the existing zoning ordinance: 

1) Comprehensive vision is needed for zoning revision 

2) Land use conflicts are unusually common in the city 

3) Unnecessary complexity in the zoning ordinance 

4) Zoning enforcement problems abound 

5) Lack of assurance of consistent and equitable decision-making

The process of implementing the 1999 Land Use Plan will translate proposed land use changes into new zoning districts defined by the revised CZO, and then map these new districts onto the City's zoning map. This step not only requires diligent work on the part of planning professionals, but integrated input from community members. As stated in the Strategic Plan for Revising the CZO, the revised zoning ordinance must establish clear guidelines for future development in each of the land use classifications. The ordinance should stipulate the authorized uses allowed under each classification; each use must have well-defined operating parameters. In this way, the purview and extent of development allowed by each land use classification, such as neighborhood and regional commercial, mixed-use, and downtown, can be clearly defined and understood. The 1999 Land Use Plan will guide discussions about which zoning classifications in the revised CZO are appropriate for particular pieces of property. 

Guidelines for successfully implementing each category of land use designated in the 1999 Land Use Plan include scale (established by floor area ratios and square footage restrictions), hours of operation, and parking and landscaping requirements. In addition to establishing clear zoning categories, the Strategic Plan determined that the revised CZO should develop typical design overlays, created to address the special needs of specific areas of the city. Such areas have been identified in the process of developing the 1999 Land Use Plan. The design overlay mechanism establishes development criteria meant to enforce and retain unique characteristics. It is a method that can work to preserve historic structures by limiting the scale and exterior appearance of proposed developments in areas such as Magazine Street and St. Claude Avenue, or preserve rural residential areas such as the lower coast of Algiers, or set standards for new commercial corridors such as there are for Bullard and General DeGaulle. 

The 1999 Land Use Plan and the accompanying map are integral steps in New Orleans' Master Planning Process. The Land Use Plan is a central element in the Master Plan, and specifically carries out the vision for New Orleans articulated in New Century New Orleans, the seminal element of the Master Plan adopted in 1992 by the City Planning Commission. Articulated in New Century New Orleans are two primary goals: "vital, distinctive neighborhoods" and "well-managed physical and economic growth." Citizens in New Orleans see these two goals as essential to achieving their aspiration of a more livable community. 

The City Planning Commission has defined several other elements as comprising the New Orleans Master Plan and work is progressing with the assistance of the Master Plan Advisory Committee to complete all elements. As other elements are completed and integrated into a single Master Plan, of course, they may affect the long-term conception of future land use. The Master Planning Process adopted by the City Planning Commission contemplates such occurrences, and has directed that the Master Plan -- which includes the 1999 Land Use Plan as its central element -- be reviewed every two years to make sure it is internally consistent and up to date. As a part of this biennial review, the Commission has also directed that the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance be reviewed for consistency.

The steps described here to implement the 1999 Land Use Plan with a revised Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, as well as the Master Plan Review Process have been adopted with specific purposes in mind. The City Planning Commission is intent on bringing about the vision for the future contained in New Century New Orleans; the Commission is intent that citizens have a Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance that protects them from unwanted change and that encourages appropriate economic development; and the Commission is intent on keeping the elements of the Master Plan and the CZO well-coordinated, and up-to-date with evolving aspirations of New Orleanians.

These are high aspirations, which can only be achieved by dedicated work to bring about the vision articulated in the next eleven chapters of the 1999 Land Use Plan. The Planning Commission encourages the reader to start with the citywide chapter (Chapter 2) and then turn to the planning district where he or she lives. We hope that citizens will read all the ten planning district chapters for a complete sense of the vision their fellow citizens have for the entire city. 

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Chapter Two

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