3.0 Guiding Principles
These are our Guiding principles
We support the Memphis 3.0 goals of ending suburban sprawl, increasing density within the City, promoting a walkable and bikeable city, and making public transit work.
We recognize that most neighborhood residents, including those who participate in Memphis 3.0 public meetings, do not understand that large sections of their single-family housing neighborhood may be designated for multi-family and duplex land use on 3.0's Future Land Use Planning Map (FLUPM).
The Memphis 3.0 Future Land Use Planning Map is insufficient planning. It is not enough to measure a distance from anchors and label these large developed areas, multi-family or duplex. Without the Small Area Plans that Memphis 3.0 suggests, the FLUPM does not properly account for existing zoning, land use, or property conditions. Without Small Area Plans, these re-zonings could seriously destabilize very stable neighborhoods.
We believe the next step toward implementing the goals of 3.0 is targeted planning through the development of Small Area Plans with community engagement at the neighborhood level.
We should learn from our past. We support a program like the Memphis Housing and Community Development (HCD) in the late 1970's that heralded healthy neighborhoods as essential to a high quality of life in the city and the overall success of the city as a whole.
Many of the vibrant midtown neighborhoods of today—Central Gardens, Glenview, Evergreen, Annesdale Park among others—benefited when multi-family and duplex zoning was down-zoned to single family, some in the 1970s, some in the early 2000s.
This recovery was led by an increase in owner-occupied single-family housing. These owners invested in restoring existing homes, developed active neighborhood associations and participated in civic decision making to preserve and strengthen their neighborhoods.
Over-zoning for commercial development and shrinking retail due to online shopping, has resulted in vacant buildings and vacant lots along many major Memphis streets. These parcels provide the opportunity to redevelop vacant and blighted sites with multi-family buildings that would also patronize adjacent public transit routes. In many cases, such development will restore the mixed residential and commercial use that existed before.
We believe this kind of redevelopment that respects our neighborhoods and the people who live there will go a long way toward achieving the density goals of the Memphis 3.0 plan.
We call on the Division of Planning and Development and the City to put a moratorium on decisions based on the FLUPM until the map incorporates Small Area Plans for the city's affected neighborhoods.
