Draft of the Riverside Avondale Zoning Overlay.

I'm not sure you knew about it (I sure didn't), but sometime last year RAP and others sat down to develop a comprehensive zoning overlay for the historic district. I'll paraphrase the overlay, and highlight a few things that I think are important, but I encourage you to read it yourself, and provide comment. It's not every day a community takes the time to imagine its future. If you consider yourself a part of this neighborhood you probably have opinions about that development. So, read and respond! I will pass your comments along to those whose job it is to care.

Draft of the Riverside Avondale Zoning Overlay

Basically, because standard zoning rules do not recognize the "small lots, high lot coverage and other aspects of the neighborhood's unique residential development pattern," and the Riverside Avondale area has been negatively affected by these rules and by "design standards which do not recognize the unique character of the various neighborhoods and mixed use centers within this area," and considering future development of the area, and hoping to keep its unique built character intact, special zoning "zone" (for lack of a better word) was created for Riverside and Avondale.

When I returned from New Orleans I had picked up this really interesting idea from one of my fellow LISC Americorps members from San Diego: do detailed and frequent surveys of your community to find out what folks are thinking, wishing, hating, fearing, needing, etc.

I suggested this to Matt and he reminded me of the zoning overlay, the draft of which just happened to come in last week.

While it doesn't address the unique social environment of the historic district (a completely separate can of worms), it is fairly comprehensive on form and aesthetics. How does this neighborhood function? Where is commercial activity best located? How should new construction be regulated to fit into the existing built environment? How should parking lots be landscaped and connected to pedestrian streets? Down to how big planters on sidewalks and how tall the plants in them should be.

I don't think there's anything deeply controversial about the overlay, but any time a community visions itself and its future to this level of detail and solidifies those ideas into written regulations we have a mandate to nitpick over those details, and I have a few things to bring up.

First of all, I'm not sure how the meetings were advertised, but I never heard anything about them. That's not cool. All of Jacksonville needs to become more transparent and communicative, and this neighborhood is no exception.

A few specifics I wish were addressed that aren't (that may have been if had known about the meetings):

-BICYCLES! There's nothing in the plan that requires bicycle racks for new developments. When you get down to the level of describing exactly what size pot and what height tree shall be placed on sidewalks I think you can mandate bike racks. They could be per block, or per x feet of road frontage, or per x commercial or residential units...It wouldn't have to be incredibly dense, I think the amount of bike parking at Publix, et al. is fine. It's just a really good detail to pay attention to.
-PLANT SPECIES. While we're recommending that a tree in a planter be "two (2) times as high as the height of the pot." and that, "tree species are appropriate for street planting conditions", why not ask that drought tolerant natives be considered first? Easy way to conserve water and fertilizer.

Great parts of this zoning plan, things that make me smile, include:

-PUBLIC SPACE. Minimum provisions for new developments to provide open public space adjacent to public streets. This standard includes community gardens as one example of how to provide public space.
-PARKING. It seems like there's been careful attention paid to positioning parking within the built environment to minimize its impact on the streetscape. I like this.
-OVERALL AESTHETIC. Whoever did attend these meetings seemed to capture rather well the look and function of Riverside and Avondale. Most of the recommendations for how to build new stuff amidst the older stuff sound spot on.

Things that seem silly and inconsequential (to me, I'd be curious for input from those involved as to why these things were deemed important):
-"No sale, display or storage of secondhand merchandise shall be permitted." What about vintage shops and antiques?
-Under regulations for signage, "The use of florescent colors is prohibited."Apart from the typo, and although I'm no fan of fluorescents myself, I just don't understand why this matters. I'm sure, in fact, that tasteful and interesting use of those colors is possible. The resolution of my nitpicking is not nearly so fine as this!

And a few things that make me feel a little weird:
-Under allowed uses for Commercial, Residential and Office buildings, "Employment office (but not a day labor pool).
-Rather strict regulations on commercial signage and street art. I'm not even sure that the particular restrictions are a problem, but I never like to see that a community has thought too hard about restricting visual expression, or anything that they call "art". On the other hand, since the majority of these signs would likely be advertisements (a word that isn't used in the draft, but perhaps should be), I would happily agree to their limitation.

So that's it. I cherry picked this report, and I know very little about zoning districts and their methods of functioning. I hope that someone with a bit more knowledge can comment. It's always fascinating and important when any group of people decides on any aspect of their future together. I think the resulting document deserves our attention.

Think hard this weekend.

Saturday from 9am to 5pm the UNF Ethics Center is hosting a Symposium on Jacksonville's response to climate change. Come think hard about this global issue and how it will affect us here on the first coast. Visit the event website for detailed information.

There's also a brief mention here, because we're preparing the locally-sourced lunch.

(For those of you who didn't know, I help run the Jacksonville Carbon Neutral Initiative when I'm not at RADO...that's actually how we met. We were both at the environmentally-themed Summertime in the City event that this guy put on in July. Although after our office meeting today with this guy, and RADO's possible future collaborations with these guys, I feel increasingly successful in my mission to blur the lines between my two nonprofit ventures. I'm so nonprofit... Is that something to brag about?)

See you Saturday!

New Orleans.

On October 21st I left for a week-long AmeriCorps training session and service project in New Orleans.

I didn't take any photographs--I was too wrapped up in thoughts to remember my camera before we went out to the work site on Caluda Lane in St. Bernard Parish. I regret this oversight now, but at the time it made sense just to experience without the mediation of a lens and that sort of intent. I can see in my imagination the pictures I would have tried to make. The NCCC member named Hank that was in charge of our house; the pecan orchard down the road; the akita puppies that hounded us at lunch; the wall I helped build, and the roof truss that fell on my hand; the normal-looking suburban homes (small and low, a lot like those in Arlington), destroyed, with FEMA trailers parked in the yard--the one home with "KATRINA YOU WON" scrawled in spray paint across the front wall.

Jack Wilson from Operation New Hope (one of LISC Jacksonville's other CDCs) just sent this slide show of images. The photos from the work site are the ones worth paying attention to. I'm digging through Flickr to find more.

There's a lot to learn from New Orleans, positive as well as negative. The negative lessons might appear obvious, but deserve some attention. Just judging from the fact that we ardent AmeriCorps volunteers were building new homes in St. Bernard Parrish, I don't even think that the city itself is studying these lessons hard enough, and might be setting up for a repeat. You can see in Jack's pictures the mudline on the houses on Caluda Lane. It's a flood zone. After two days of moderate rainfall our worksites had ankle-deep standing water in places. We were told our houses were built above FEMA flood plain levels, and it was clear that what we were building was better off than the existing neighborhood (all the homes were previously built on-grade, ours were raised up about 5 feet).

But there is a ton of literature on the future of New Orleans, and the most rational of the thinking about it suggests that rebuilding in the lower parts of the city (the poorer, underserved parts), is unwise. Here are just a few articles I have read, in ascending order of academic density:
Slate.com
Geology.com
Geoscience World

Last Friday I had further occasion to think about this issue. The Florida Coastal School of Law held their annual Environmental Summit, and the topic was climate change and sea-level rise. Not surprisingly, New Orleans is often cited as an ominous example of things to come. The most sobering fact I reacquainted myself with at the summit was the city's rate of subsidence. Subsidence is like erosion, it's the ground leaching away and sinking. Down in the delta, the annual flooding of the Mississippi River used to counteract the subsidence, but since the river has been managed by levees and canals, silt-rich floodwaters no longer replenish the banks. That wouldn't alone increase the rate of subsidence all that much, but the extraction of resources such as oil, gas and groundwater from the earth below the region is also destabilizing it.

New Orleans is sinking two inches per decade.
Over the same period, sea level rise from thermal expansion of ocean water has increased (and the rate of increase has increased) at three times the background rate from the past century.

My friend from Chicago asked of our homebuilding efforts, "Are we just building sand castles at low tide?"

Positively speaking, the social center of New Orleans has an unbelievably charming built environment and relationship to live music. Two- or three-story buildings with porches above and shops below form sheltered walkways between restaurants, bookstores and bars. On Friday night every tiny club had a band playing old jazz songs. People dance, for real. It made me envious for Jacksonville. I really would like to see that sort of density of social interaction here. It doesn't have anything to do with amount of people. Our city is larger, population wise. It's an issue of history, architecture, and culture.

Maybe after the Good Ole Boy political corruptness reaches a certain apex it actually increases quality of life...Maybe it's the french. Maybe it's the river. Maybe it's just a confluence of interacting factors. I don't know.

Point is, I learned a lot.

One last link, this one to what sounds like an incredible act of theater that I wish I could drive over to witness. JCNI has an event this Saturday...we're catering an all-local luncheon at the UNF Ethics Center's Symposium on Climate Change. But if we weren't, I would be in NOLA watching this:

Waiting for Godot in the lower 9th ward.

RADO on the news.

Watch this video to see a real-live RADO home-owning family on First Coast News.

It's almost too good to be true. The Roses are exactly the type of family you would hope to assist with a more affordable home in a nice neighborhood. A young couple with an adorable toddler. She's a teacher, he's a pastor.

PERFECT.

Harvest Gala fundraiser this Saturday.

Join us this Saturday, November 3rd at the Five Points theatre for our second annual Harvest Gala. Anytime Ian's in charge of the tunes it's a great time, plus the Main Ingredientz Crew will be break dancing and we have some really fun stuff to silent-auction off during the event (lots of local gift certificates, B&B stays, Talleyrand Festival tickets, art...and tons more).

All to benefit your friendly neighborhood CDC!

Party starts at 7pm. Tickets at the door ($15 per person or $20 for two, which gets you started with two drink tickets...cash bar after that).




















See you there!