Please Send this Letter about Zoning to our Elected Officials

May 7

Please email this letter below to all of the addresses that follow the letter. Cut and paste the addresses into the "To" on your email. This includes both mayors, the City Council, the County Commission, the Land Use Control Board and DPD.

RE: Reasons to slow the UDC process

TO: Elected and Appointed Officials

These are some suggested changes to the proposed UDC text that would benefit Memphis neighborhoods:

Residential corridors are an asset to the city and a source of neighborhood pride. They should not be removed,
Administrative approvals should not be allowed to take power from the LUCB (city planning commission), the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission and eliminate citizen access to our elected representatives,
By mislabeling this work as a district conversion, DPD's current proposals effectively rezone our neighborhoods without required public notice
The rezoning map is inequitable; it concentrates the new districts that allow dense development in some parts of the city but allows low density to remain in others. Changes during the process have removed all increased density originally proposed along the Poplar & Walnut Grove corridors while refusing to even consider changes that respect established neighborhoods in other parts of the city.
DPD has made arbitrary decisions about where more dense development should be allowed that are not based on studies of land use and existing conditions and without community engagement at the neighborhood level.
DPD has refused to even acknowledge reasonable compromise proposals that could accomplish many goals of Memphis 3.0 while respecting established neighborhoods and the citizens who work hard to protect and improve them.
The proposed new UDC document has not been carefully prepared and, even since adding page numbers and making it searchable, it contains numerous inconsistencies that will confuse and not expedite the processes
DPD should not be allowed to ignore calls to slow the process when compromise solutions can be developed that accomplish the same goal while respecting the functioning neighborhoods of Memphis.

Please grant us 90 days to review the entire 315-page proposed UDC text and create compromises with DPD. We've discovered these modifications in the two weeks that DPD made public a searchable and page-numbered text.

Our goals align with those in the proposed UDC. Many of our specific zoning compromises (https://midtownmemphis.org/memphis-30/density-we-support-e5rf7) are simply seatbelts on what DPD is proposing. The next 3.0 update begins in two-and-a-half years, and we suggest using that as a test period: if corporate landlords prove themselves beneficial to our neighborhoods, we can expand their access.

Please Send this Letter about Zoning to our Elected Officials

Specific Zoning Compromises