We’re reading the amendments to DC’s Comp Plan. Here’s what it says about land use.

On Tuesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser and Office of Planning Director Andrew Trueblood not only released citywide targets for affordable housing production by neighborhood planning area, but also made public amendments to the rest of the Comprehensive Plan—all 24 chapters of it. The Comp Plan guides how the city will grow in the years to come. The council recently passed the Framework element of the plan. This is our first look at OP’s proposed updates to the rest.

GGWash will be paying particular attention to the land use, housing, and historic preservation sections, as well as the area elements of the Comp Plan as it’s revised. We’re slowly and thoughtfully working through the amendments to each section. Here’s what we found notable in our first pass at the land use text amendments.

What changed regarding land use?

OP’s summary of its proposed major policy themes to the land use section is broken into four sections: supporting growth; providing housing, particularly affordable housing; improving resilience and equity; and balancing competing demands.

The most considerable amendments, in our view, are within the “supporting growth” category, which OP summarizes as:

• Shift expectations from purely attracting growth to supporting growth, with clear expectations for future development.
• Maximize District assets to effectively utilize land, including consolidating and co-locating similar uses and operations.
• Identify transit stations, corridors, large sites, and neighborhoods to accommodate growth.
• Re-emphasize that corridors and transit-rich areas can support growth

A good chunk of OP’s amendments reshape the land use chapter to aggressively affirm transit-oriented development by illustrating that it should be a priority in all neighborhoods with access to high-frequency transit. Since the city doesn’t actually have a codified transit-oriented development policy, which is standard in lots of other municipalities, this is a good thing.

Though the recently-passed amendments to the Framework element went a long way to clarifying how Planned Unit Developments (PUDs) should work and what kind of benefits they should provide, the Land Use element, starting with Section 309.15, tackles this further. It prioritizes PUDs that deliver “public benefits including housing, affordable housing, and affordable commercial space” (page 38 of 72, Land Use).

There is a full, new section that speaks to supporting growth, 303.1 (page 9 of 72, Land Use), in a way that’s fair and cognizant of the needs of different demographics. It says:

“Supporting growth through an equity lens provides opportunities for understanding that vulnerable populations and neighborhoods need additional attention to share in the prosperity of the District. Vulnerable and underserved communities suffer from high and rising housing costs, persistent unemployment, worse health than their affluent peers, and potential displacement. There are economic disparities in area throughout the District.

Adding a supporting growth lens places a different emphasis on development guidance and expectations. Growth cannot be ignored, as it is necessary for continued prosperity and revenues to provide for social supports and municipal services. A change in the Future Land Use Map designations can have impacts on the value of the designated and neighboring properties, the capacity of the infrastructure and civic services, as well as the short- and long-term expectations of development. Previous benefits and amenities used to catalyze growth are now necessities for supporting growth: affordable housing, transportation improvements, infrastructure improvements, open space development and maintenance, sustainable and resilient design, and arts and culture.”

A couple of lines about inequitable growth, and how future growth is inevitable, may not be enough to mollify critics who believe DC deliberately courted a white, educated creative class in the late aughts in order to stabilize its tax base at the expense of its longtime residents. And it won’t immediately redistribute the wealth that has accrued in DC over the past 15 years, as people—lured by downtown jobs, falling crime rates, better schools, and proximity to transit and amenities—moved back to the region’s core.

But this is light-years better than the 2006 Comp Plan, which welcomed a sort of big-box economic growth in the form of large-parcel redevelopments, while simultaneously sheltering certain neighborhoods from any effects of growth.

Those neighborhoods, largely within the Rock Creek West, Near Northwest, and Near Northeast planning areas, have long held the political and social cultural capital that has allowed them to wall themselves off from any of the changes that accompanied DC’s population growth. This power was reflected in the city’s foundational land use text.

Specific changes to the land use chapter’s language that we’re particularly fond of include:

• Deleting “stability” from Section 302.1, and adding “a discussion on supporting growth” to Section 303.1 (page 9 of 72, Land Use): This is the description of the land use section’s goal. Removing “stability” from the line “to sustain, restore, or improve the character, and stability, affordability, and equity of neighborhoods in all parts of the city” acknowledges that neighborhoods don’t stay the same; this line also adds “affordability, and equity,” reinforcing a shift in the city’s principles.
• Deleting Section 306.9 (page 27 of 72, Land Use), which beings with, “To avoid adverse effects on low and moderate density neighborhoods, most transit-oriented development should be accommodated on commercially zoned land.” Low- and moderate-density neighborhoods—which are defined by the Future Land Use Map, and which often have within them a Metro station or a high-frequency bus line—shouldn’t be off-limits from transit-oriented development. This, also, is an example of how the text amendments to the Comp Plan link to the FLUM, which isn’t a legal document but is given equal weight to the Comp Plan.
• Substantially amending Section 309.10 (page 37 of 72, Land Use) to the following:
  

  

• Similarly, discouraging “mansionization” (Section 309.16, page 37 of 72, Land Use), whereby smaller, “naturally affordable” homes are torn down and replaced with larger single-family homes, and replacing “protect single-family homes” with “respect” in Section 309.12 (page 38 of 72, Land Use)

How do I look at all of this stuff?

Everything lives on plandc.dc.gov. Scroll down: The links to most of what is relevant are in the bottom left-hand corner.

The full PDF of the amended 2006 Comp Plan—so, the document in which you can see OP’s redlines, which are amendments—is here. Summaries of OP’s changes to each section are here. The current and proposed Future Land Use Maps and Generalized Policy Maps are here.

You can see OP’s recommendations on amendments submitted during the 2017 open call here. The Housing Equity report with affordable housing targets, which isn’t part of the Comp Plan, is here.

And how can I get involved?

The public has 60 days, until December 15, to review what OP put outyou can email your thoughts to planning@dc.gov). Advisory Neighborhood Commissions have until January 31 to submit resolutions.

Keep in mind that whatever you, or your ANC, submits to Office of Planning will be reviewed by the Office of Planning. But, just like the Framework, the rest of the Comp Plan is a piece of legislation that’s voted on the by the council. So next year the council will take it up, though we don’t yet know when. There will be a public hearing, then a first and second reading; second reading doubles as the final vote.