Gap analysis: planning and zoning

1. I joke often that I started my civic involvement as blowback to the failures of urban renewal and the H Street Community Development Corporation on H Street NE to bring about quality urban revitalization.

I had lived in the neighborhood since the late 1980s.

Many tens of millions of dollars had been spent on the creation of Hechinger Mall, building a bridge over the Union Station railyard for H Street, on two office buildings, which for a time housed a supermarket which failed, a strip shopping center, two HUD-subsidized senior housing apartment buildings, a set of garden apartments (Pentacle Apartments across from Hechinger Mall), the demolition of the "Trinidad" Trolley Barn, the building of the parking-fronted Auto Zone store, the demolition of an alley and its buildings for the Wiley Place Condominiums (800 block of 13th Street NE), three sets of brick modern rowhouses in the place of frame buildings, and one gated rowhouse development in the place of an alley and buildings (700 block of 3rd Street).

And the neighborhood didn't improve. (Until lately.)

I have been trying to figure out why since the late 1990s.

2. Planning vs. Zoning, combined with Political Involvement.

I am not into legal stuff, and I haven't read the Home Rule Charter, but my understanding is that the City Charter gives most authority on land use decisions to the Mayor. (With the proviso that the federal interest is represented by other bodies as laid out by various Federal laws.) Practically, this means whatever executive branch agencies deal with this issue.

But the Zoning Commission is a separate charter agency, independent, but connected to the executive branch through various needs (Office of Planning provides analysis in support of Zoning activities as does the Department of Transportation, the Building and Land Regulation Administration and the Zoning Administrator of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs implements the Zoning regulations).

The problem is that Planning and Zoning are disconnected.

People who work for the Office of Planning need to think of themselves as advocates for a better city.

And I have stated in the past, in various testimonies, that Planning and Zoning should be about maintaining and extending the qualities of a great city.

But zoning focuses mostly on the lot and individual building, as well as building mass and volume, and a little bit on the site.

Planning focuses on "areas" and comprehensive land use.

Since the processes are developer driven, both planning and zoning end up responding to and being a lot more responsive to developers rather than to the principles and vision of creating a better city.

The fact that zoning is law and planning is vision means that too often the vision ends up on the floor of the hearing room, trampled by the land use attorneys and developers who are trying to make as much money as possible with as little investment as possible.

3. And this doesn't even get into public finance questions and legislative and executive branch over-involvement and suasion in the process.

At least in Maryland (see these articles on the investigation of Baltimore's Mayor Dixon, "Dixon gifts probed" and this of Ulysses Currie, both from the Baltimore Sun) public officials get investigated when they get overly cozy with developers and businesses, and get rewards. Maybe the DC politicos aren't getting the same kind of direct financial benefits, but the suasion and unobjective involvement by public officials in such matters is no less sleazy and dirty.

(Would that the Post have a "story gallery" when it comes to these matters locally, comparable to how the Sun is handling coverage of Mayor Dixon and Senator Currie.)

At least in Montgomery County, the Planning Board stepped up to the County Executive (see "Planners Oppose Two Key Measures For Live-Music Hall," from the Post), although the County Council can still overrule the Planning Board. Since they get those checks from developers and the Planning Board doesn't, likely the Planning Board will get overruled.

4. The Committee on 100 and other good government and planning organizations in the city argue for the creation of a Planning Commission.

I see the utility of it. But I have reservations. First, I am not sure that the appointees would be any different from the kinds of connected appointees that tend to be on such commissions already. Second, so much of planning in the city has little oversight of the Office of Planning.

A planning commission, like the Planning Board in Montgomery County, should be responsible first for the land use plan, second for the transportation plan, and third for the capital improvement plan and budget (DC doesn't have a comprehensive capital improvement plan).

And it should have oversight and review power over all other city agency planning efforts, be they health and hospitals, parks, schools, higher education, public works, libraries, etc.

And it should have oversight and review power over land-use-related tax abatement proposals. Normally these go through City Council and/or the Mayor and Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, and while the Chief Financial Officer reviews and makes recommendations to City Council, currently tax abatement and legislative-executive branch involvement in zoning and land use issues isn't reviewed by the Zoning Commission in regards to the matters that come before them.

SO NOBODY IS LOOKING AT THIS IN A COMPREHENSIVE AND CONNECTED FASHION.

If such a commission wouldn't have this oversight and review power, than it would be wasted.

But with this level of independent review (granted the mayor would fire appointees that didn't do his bidding, but that is nothing new with any mayor), at least the kind of backroom dealing that is pretty typical,