The R-4A Mixed Use Zoning District is the highest capacity residential zoning district outside of downtown, and as such it has the potential to help achieve many of the housing- and urban design-related goals of the Anchorage 2040 Land Use Plan. As a Senior Planner with the Municipality of Anchorage, I contributed to a text amendment that would make the R-4A zoning district easier to use and interpret while ensuring it reflects the goals of the Anchorage 2040 Land Use Plan.
Overall, the text amendment sought to consolidate and simplify design standards, allow a higher proportion of commercial uses without extra reviews, allow a wider range of commercial uses, supplement the minimum housing density requirement with incentives for additional housing, permit phased developments to balance commercial and residential uses, and allow new types of housing units.
In addition to working on the proposed text amendment language and engaging stakeholders, I developed a series of models, visualizations, and info sheets that helped convey the implications and rationales for the changes proposed in the text amendment.
For example, I developed the below SketchUp model and zoning text table for the Community Discussion Draft of the R-4A text amendment. The model and table were proposed to be included in the zoning code so that the design standards could be more easily interpreted.
In addition, I created the two info sheets below that shared with the public as part of the Community Discussion Draft. They contain visualizations and explanations that help illustrate the proposed design standards in the text amendment and convey why they are important.
