Buffalo launches effort to revamp land use plan, zoning code
An ambitious two-year effort to create a new land use plan and zoning code for the City of Buffalo is underway. Much progress has already been made since the project kick-off in September 2010:
- Mayor Byron W. Brown and Brendan Mehaffy, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Strategic Planning, introduced the process to a Community Advisory Committee, composed of neighborhood leaders who will advise the City on outreach efforts, in October 2010.
- More than 200 citizens attended three “listening events” in November 2010 to start the conversation about a new plan and zoning code for the city. The community expressed what it values about the places where they live, work, and invest in the city, describing qualities that make a “great” neighborhood and even the qualities that make a neighborhood “not so great.” All told, citizens described a vision of great neighborhoods as places of activity, diversity, mobility, prosperity, security, and beauty.
- The Community Advisory Committee convened again in December 2010 and January 2011 to follow up on the three, citywide listening events and to get to work on getting all citizens involved in the upcoming neighborhood workshops, which will get in depth about the public’s vision for each of the neighborhoods in Buffalo.
For more about the November meetings, see the slide show here. For an introduction to the Buffalo Green Code Project, see the slide show here.
The next step will be to focus the planning conversation on specific neighborhoods throughout the city. In late February and early March, the City is hosting a series of neighborhood workshops to engage citizens to communicate their vision for the future of their neighborhoods.
Details of the nine neighborhood workshops were recently released. Learn more here.