What’s next for Austin? CodeNEXT seeks to provide a roadmap for growth
As people continue to move to Austin in droves, the city’s residents, business community and civic institutions are focusing on how to best align our land use standards and regulations with what is important to the community. To that end, they’ve created CodeNEXT: a new City of Austin initiative to revise the Land Development Code, which determines how land can be used throughout the city.
But first, a little background: Austin’s existing Land Development Code was written nearly 30 years ago, when Austin’s population was half the size is now. The code determines the rules and processes that regulate where and what type of development may occur. Consequently, it has a significant impact on our daily life, including the spaces where we live, work, and shop; and the design of our streets and public spaces.
To address the city’s rapid growth and respond to the ensuing pressures and opportunities, the City Council adopted the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan in 2012. One of the priority programs that came out of that initiative was the need to update our Land Development Code in order to create the kind of places we want, and to address critical issues such as resource scarcity, affordability and access to healthy lifestyles.
The resulting CodeNEXT is a tool for how to implement that plan. The long-term goal of CodeNEXT is to provide an updated code that is easier to use and understand and improves our quality of life. Recognizing the needs for Austin to grow in a “compact and connected” way, it will focus on what can be built, where it can be built, and how much can (and cannot) be built.
On January 30, the City of Austin released the first draft of CodeNEXT, the revision of Austin’s Land Development Code. On February 1, it hosted an open house event at the Palmer Event Center for attendees to find out more about the new code. They took a self-guide tour, discovered how the new code is different than the old one, and learned how to provide feedback.
So what’s next for CodeNEXT? Although the January 30 CodeNEXT proposal to overhaul and streamline Austin’s zoning and land-use regulations came in at a whopping 1,100-plus pages, CodeNEXT is still far from complete. Much is still missing from the proposal, such zoning maps, affordable housing incentives and traffic-management provisions. To that end, over the next several months, the public and several advisory bodies will continue to provide input and propose changes, with the City rolling out its overhaul of the code in stages. The City Council is expected to adopt a new code in 2018.
To learn more about CodeNEXT’s timeline, watch informational videos and more, visit the CodeNEXT website.
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