Austin Contrarian

I’ve focused on CodeNEXT’s transect zones in past posts. It’s time to look at some of the non-transect – i.e., Euclidian¹ -- zones.

CodeNEXT is really two zoning codes. There is the form-based code built around transects intended for the walkable urban core, and a Euclidian code built around regulating uses and intended mostly for the "drivable" suburban areas. The Euclidian code mostly just carries forward our existing code. There are use tables just like today, where you can look up your proposed use and read off the zones in which it is allowed. Some of the use names have changed, but they’re all there. The Euclidian code mostly keeps the same site development regulations (such as impervious cover limits), but has minimal form-based regulations.

Residential Zones

CodeNEXT's Euclidian code has 11 residential zones, compared to the current code’s 16. The new zones have names such as “Low Density Residential (LDR),” “Low Medium Density Residential (LMDR)” and “Very High Density Residential (VHDR).” Zone names no longer refer to “single family” or “multi-family,” but there are still zones that allow only single-family. “Low Density Residential (LDR)” is the new SF-2 and “Low Medium Density Residential (LMDR)” is the new SF-3.

[Aside: The acronyms bewilder me. I can’t keep the various combinations of “L” “M” “D” and “R” straight. On the chance that it’s not just me, I suggest leaving “Rural Residential (RR)” as is and numbering the rest of the zones R-1 to R-9. That would make the R-3 zone the new SF-3, allowing a catchier answer to the question, “Where did SF-3 go?”]

So what did they do to SF-3?

Not much:

• the minimum lot size, 5,750 sf, is unchanged;
• the minimum street frontage, 50 feet, is unchanged;
• the rear, side street and side setbacks are unchanged;
• the maximum impervious cover and building cover are unchanged;
• the maximum height is unchanged;
• duplexes are still allowed only on 7,000 sf lots;
• accessory dwelling units are still allowed; and
• the McMansion ordinance, though tweaked, still applies to single-family homes in the urban core.

 What has changed?

• front yard setbacks have been reduced from 25’ to 15’;
• the duplex rules have been tweaked (see below).
• the McMansion ordinance, as noted, has been tweaked (see below).

Let’s look at the last two in a little more detail.

Duplexes.

Confusingly, a duplex is not called a duplex in the Euclidian code but is instead referred to as a “two-family residential use.” This is quite confusing because duplexes are called duplexes in the transect zones. What’s more, under current code, “two-family residential use” refers to an accessory dwelling unit!

Let’s just call a duplex a “duplex.”

The confusing name change aside, the duplex rules are mostly the same as current code’s. One perplexing change: the “two-family residential” regulation table (§ 23-4E-6350) gives a maximum floor area of “850 sf total or 550 sf on a second floor.” This appears to be some kind of massing restriction, but it is a dramatic and unnecessary shrinking of the allowable size of a duplex. [Ed. It is possible that these are holdover regulations meant for ADUs -- yet another reason to call duplexes "duplexes" rather than "two-family residential!"]

One positive change: the rules allow a lot to be subdivided along the demising wall. This will allow duplexes to be sold separately without having to create a complicated condo regime, which is today’s practice.

The McMansion ordinance.

The McMansion ordinance still only applies within the “urban core” where it applies today. It no longer appears as a separate set of regulations at the end of the zoning code, but is instead baked into the development regulations for each zone.

The regulations themselves carry forward the maximum floor-to-area ratio (40% or 2,300 sf) and the side-wall articulation requirements. But the regulations also have been tweaked:

• the complicated building tent is discarded; instead, the maximum floor-to-eave height has been reduced to 23’;
• the front setback is no longer dependent on the neighboring setbacks.

One troublesome change: the height of a building beyond 80’ of the front property line is limited to one story. This has a number of really bad consequences. First, it heavily penalizes deep lots, cutting in half the existing development rights on the rear of the property. Second, it makes flag lots uneconomical to develop since flag-lot homes are almost always setback more than 80’ from the front. And, third, it limits most ADUs to one story. A 40’-deep principal house will leave only 15’ for a two-story ADU after accounting for the 15’ front yard setback and 10’ required separation between the ADU and principal dwelling.  Two-story ADUs will be feasible only on lots with a shallow principal house. The consultants had no mandate to make such a drastic reduction in entitlements, so this innovation should be removed.  

Key takeaway: If you were hoping for some liberalization of SF-3 rules in the non-transect zones, you will be disappointed. The rules are virtually the same; the changes, if anything, reduce entitlements.

Addendum: I neglected to mention one other positive change: less parking. CodeNEXT reduces most parking requirements. The parking spaces required for a single-family home will be reduced from two to one, and for a duplex from four to two. Most houses will continue to be built with two parking spaces -- that's just the market demand -- but it will be easier to put up small houses on small lots where there's not a lot of excess room for car storage.

¹"Euclidian" refers to Euclid v. Ambler Realty Company, the case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a zoning code based on the strict segregation of single-family, multi-family, commercial and industrial uses.

Disclaimer: The statements above are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the opinions of any client or other person or organization. Please see the About Me section.

The Statesman interviewed me and Jim Duncan, a member of the CodeNEXT citizens advisory group and former head of city planning, last week to discuss how we expect the Heritage neighborhood to be zoned under CodeNEXT. Applying the proposed form-based regulations to a test neighborhood turns out to be a really useful exercise. In this case, it shows that the buildings on the ground today -- including low-slung apartment buildings in the neighborhood interior -- cannot be replicated faithfully under the form-based code.

The draft code has many problems that need to be fixed before the draft zoning maps are released. The biggest one is this: the code inexplicably shoves most of the “missing middle” housing – low-rise apartment buildings, courtyard buildings and rowhouses – out of the T4 transect zones where they belong. As a consequence, the proposed transect zones cannot handle our diverse neighborhoods.

Heritage is bounded on the north and south by 38^th and 29^th streets, and on the east and west by Guadalupe and Lamar. It is not part of the University Neighborhood Overlay, but it is just north of there. It hosts a bunch of students but there are also quiet, single-family streets.

It has a diverse mix of building types. There are detached, single-family homes and duplexes; six-plexes and twelve-plexes; low-rise apartment buildings and courtyard buildings, almost all of them 2 or 2.5 stories.

The apartments are not limited to the periphery of the neighborhood. Here is a low-rise apartment building at West and 32nd, in the heart of the neighborhood:

And here is a 10-plex at Maiden and King, around the corner from another low-rise apartment building:

These tracts are zoned multi-family. And the neighborhood plan calls for them to remain multi-family. Here is the neighborhood future land use map:

Yellow denotes singe-family, brown and purple denote mixed-use, and orange -- of which there is plenty -- denotes multi-family.  

Our new code should be robust enough to handle the stuff on the ground today, especially when it is sanctioned by the neighborhood plan. But how do we zone Heritage?

Here are our options:

It’s clearly inappropriate to stick the entire neighborhood in one of the T3 single-family/duplex zones. That would exclude all of the multi-family. 

But there’s zero chance that this interior multi-family will be zoned T5. That’s for (relatively) high-density urban development. T5 allows either four-story/65 foot buildings (T5N.SS) or six-story/65 foot buildings (T5U). The Heritage homeowners tolerated some interior multi-family in the neighborhood FLUM, but I suspect a 65-foot tall multi-family building would be another matter.

That leaves T4. T4 should be a transition zone. It should permit the low-rise, two- to three-story apartment buildings that are the stuff of Heritage's interior. But T4 allows minimal multi-family. T4.IS allows a four-plex. T4.SS allows an 8-plex. And that’s it. No low-rise apartment buildings. No courtyard buildings. No rowhouses. Not even any “large” muti-plexes with 9-12 units. Much of the multi-family in the Heritage interior would be explicitly illegal under T4. (The T4.MS (main street) zone allows a bit more missing middle but is reserved for commercial corridors.)

The sharp jump from T4 to T5 shown on the chart above is a problem. Heritage cannot be mapped under the proposed code. It will be either dramatically "down-zoned” or dramatically "up-zoned.”

I have no idea how the consultants will address this in the draft maps. The only solution I see is to do something hideous like splice in some Euclidean zones to handle the multi-family tracts.

People are eager to see the CodeNEXT zoning maps. I get that. I’ve heard a lot of, “We won’t know what any of this means until we get the maps.” But the fact is we can tell now, today, that the new form-based code cannot handle development in some of the existing neighborhoods. It will be a critical mistake to release maps that are not up to this basic task. 

2/21/17 Edit: Corrected address for property shown in first photo.

Disclaimer: The statements above are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the opinions of any client or other person or organization. Please see the About Me section.

As I discussed last time, CodeNEXT introduces a new concept, “building types.” If you are developing a property within a transect zone, you must select a specific building type from the palette allowed in that zone – a “wide house” or a “duplex: side-by-side,” for example, in the T3NE zone, or a “rowhouse: medium,” “multi-plex: medium,” or “multi-plex: large” in the T5N.SS zone.

Anyone who works with the code must know which type can go where, as must anyone who cares about the distribution of housing in the city (or in their own neighborhood). But there are 19 building types and 13 transect zones (not counting open sub-zones). It is daunting to keep track of what goes where.

I posted this table of building types by transect zone right after CodeNEXT was released:

This is a useful reference sheet, but it highlights the code’s complexity rather than simplifies it.

Let’s simplify.

We can start by recognizing that many of the 19 building types are simply variations of a single base type:

• There are four flavors of detached single-family houses: the “long” house, the “wide” house, the “small” house and the “cottage” house. These differ only by their required minimum lot widths and by their maximum building footprints (which the code somewhat confusingly calls “building envelopes”). A “cottage” house is limited to 1½ stories; all of the others may be two stories. Two other building types – the “cottage court” and “cottage corner” – just involve a specific arrangement of the cottage house type around a common green space. Altogether, there are six types of detached, single-family houses.
• There are three types of duplexes: the duplex: front-and-back, the duplex: stacked, and the duplex: side-by-side.
• A multi-plex is a small apartment building that looks like a single-family house. There are two types: the “large” multi-plex, which, sensibly, is classified as a “large house” form, and the “medium” multi-plex, which is classified as a “medium house” form.
• There are two types of rowhouses: “rowhouse: medium” and “rowhouse: large.” The difference lies in the “run” of units. A medium rowhouse consists of a short run of rowhouses and is classified as a “large house” form. A large rowhouse consists of a longer run of rowhouses and occupies most of a block.
• There are a few one-ofs: “live/work,” “main street,” “courtyard building,” “low-rise,” “mid-rise” and “high-rise.” Most of these types are self-explanatory. “Live/work” units are, essentially, rowhouses with residential above ground-floor services or retail uses. “Main street” buildings units are one- to three-story buildings with retail or service uses on the ground floor and upper floor service or residential uses. "Courtyard buildings” are u-shaped buildings organized around a courtyard that is open to the street.

We can simplify things further by distinguishing between the main street zones and the neighborhood zones. The “main street” and “live/work” building types are reserved for the main street zones. The main street type will be the workhorse of the T4MS zone and (along with the mid-rise) the T5MS zone as well, but it is not permitted in any of the neighborhood interior zones. Conversely, few of the building types allowed in the neighborhood zones, such as multi-plexes or courtyard buildings, are allowed in the main street zones. The main street zones and the neighborhood interior zones are coded to be fundamentally different kinds of places, particularly considering the broad mix of commercial and retail uses allowed by right in the MS zones. When comparing transect zones, we should compare neighborhood zones to each other and the main street zones to each other.

Here is a chart that I hope simplifies the complexity of building types and transect zone. The first chart compares the base building types allowed within the interior neighborhood zones. The second chart compares the two main street zones. (I am ignoring T6 high-rise zones for now.)

This chart helps us spot an important hole in the transect zones. The T3 zones allow a variety of single-family and duplex building types. The T5 zones allow a variety of four- to six-story buildings, including almost all of the “missing middle” types of housing like rowhouses, multi-plexes, courtyard buildings and low-rise apartments. T4 should provide a transition zone from T3 to T5. T4 should provide, in particular, a space for the 2-3 story “missing middle” types of housing we’ve heard so much about these past few years. But the T4 zone is reserved strictly for two-story buildings and, worse, is missing most of the middle building types.  Consequently, the T4 zone is really just a “single-family plus” zone.

There are clearly some housing types tailored for T4 that inexplicably have been relegated to high-density zones. Medium rowhouses, for example, are classified as merely a “large house” building form but they are shunted to T5 zones that allow much larger buildings.

Or take the courtyard building, which is a u-shaped building arranged around a street-facing courtyard. The courtyard must comply with detailed regulations dictating the dimensions of the courtyard and its relationship to the surrounding apartment units. The whole point of these detailed regulations is to break up the mass of the building as perceived from the street. A properly designed, three-story courtyard building should occupy a niche in the medium-density T4 zone. But courtyard buildings are relegated to the highest density T5U zone, where they must compete with 75’ mid-rise apartment buildings. Will anyone even take the trouble of build a courtyard building rather than a less-regulated low-rise or mid-rise building?

T4 ultimately offers no real transition from T3 to T5 because it does not provide a place for the low-rise, 2-3 story missing middle.

It is a bust.

As this chart shows, we will not allow much diversity of building type in the main street zones. The T5 main street zone will allow large 5-6 story VMU-style buildings; the T4 main street zone will be limited to 2-3 story buildings, but not much else This lack of diversity will force us to get the MS zones just right on the map. Very few corridors can sustain a solid wall of commercial buildings for more than a few blocks. Let's hope we guess right.

The consultants are supposed to release their own summary charts this week, which I'm sure will be more comprehensive and elegant than mine. But my charts have the virtue of existing today. Hopefully, whatever the consultants release will make it easier for people to have rationale discussions about what the code does well and what it does poorly.

CodeNEXT has been out for a couple of weeks and even many land use professionals do not yet know what’s in the code. I doubt that anyone outside the coders themselves and (I hope) the planning staff has mastered CodeNEXT’s nuances and complexity.

I have not become a CodeNEXT expert in two weeks. But after spending more time than I’ll admit reading the code, both alone and in groups, I think I can shed light on some of the regulations. In this part, I will take a stab at explaining CodeNEXT’s transect zones.

I have to make an important caveat. The planning staff has released the draft code whole without any detailed explainers of its own. There has been no public input session other than the initial roll out event, when no one knew enough to ask intelligent questions. The form-based code contains some fuzzy concepts. The public has not been given a chance to ask for clarifications (or, at least, none have been given to date). Nor has the public been able just to ask a warm body, “Did you really mean this?” It’s possible I’ve misinterpreted something. If so, I’ll revise this to correct misinterpretations or errors as I discover them.

As with the minimum lot-size changes, CodeNEXT will upend standard setback regulations that have governed SF-3 housing for decades.

Current SF-3 regulations require side setbacks of 5' (15' for a street side yard), and a rear yard setback of 10'. The transect zones that most closely match our current SF-3 are the T3NE, T3N.DS and T3N.IS zones. (Yes, we really will be using three zones to do the work of one.) The draft code proposes doubling the rear yard setback in these zones to 20'. While it allows either side yard setback to remain at 5', it raises the combined minimum side yard setbacks to 15', so one or the other or both must exceed the current 5' minimum.

While the draft code shrinks the buildable area on the standard lots in the walkable inner city neighborhoods, it leaves the existing setbacks alone in the other zones. Wide houses on wide lots in the T3NE.WL zone will keep the standard 5' setback. One might expect the side setbacks to be larger on wide lots, given that there's more room for a house than on narrower lots. Homes in the non-transect Low-Medium Residential Zone -- reserved for the "driveable" suburban neighborhoods -- will also keep the 10' rear and 5' side setbacks.

I think I know the reason for the larger setbacks on these standard lots, misguided though it may be. The new transect regulations contain a new variety of regulation that specifies a relatively narrow and shallow footprint within which the home must be built. It is a sort of "super-setback" regulation. The goal is to hold the massing of buildings to a reasonable scale and to push the buildings to the front of the lot, close to the front setback.

But, as with the new lot depth regulations, these regulations will cause perhaps thousands of existing homes to slide into nonconforming status. There are who knows how many thousand homes built with less than 15' combined side setbacks or within 20' from the rear property line. There are untold more that have been built outside the newly prescribed super setbacks. This is quite understandably the case since the setbacks have been fixed for decades. We are asymptotically approaching the line beyond which no existing housing anywhere in the city center complies with current code.

These new setback regulations have the additional drawback of prohibiting development that the new code goes out of its way to legalize. For example, the draft allows small homes in the T3N.DS and T3N.IS zones to be built on a 25' x 100' lot if the lot existed at the time the code is adopted. (There is a somewhat similar "small lot amnesty" in some neighborhoods today.) The draft does not relax the combined minimum side setbacks for these lots, though, or at least not that I've seen. So, sure, someone can build a house on a 25' x 100' lot just as long as it is 10' wide.

Let me offer a caveat here. The consultants have released the draft code but they have yet to make an in-depth presentation to the public on how it will work. It is possible that I am misinterpreting the rules. Or perhaps I've missed a rule buried in another section of the code. I hope so. There is too much development on the ground to change the setback rules now. 

Disclaimer: The statements above are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the opinions of any client or other person or organization. Please see the About Me section.