City fails to give full picture of zoning reforms (Cincinnati Enquirer 4.14.24) Zinser Op-Ed 004

I received a call one afternoon from a neighbor. She had been speaking with another neighbor about the meeting of the West Price Hill Community Council the night before. They discussed information presented at the meeting about “Connected Communities.” She wanted to know what this was all about?

Even though I had been at the meeting, I had to admit that other than it being some type of zoning proposal, I did not really understand what it was all about. But I promised to look into it.

When I serached the internet for “Connected Communities,” the only thing that came up was information about Cincinnati’s proposal. So, I went to a website of one of the national organizations for cities and municipalities ( a ‘special interest group’ ) to see what I might find. What I learned is that Connected Communities is what is called “Upzoning” and numerous cities across the country were enacting zoning laws that were “upzoning” single family zones to multi-family zones. The putpose was to achieve greater density by squeezing more housing into neighborhoods. Minneapolis, for example, eliminated all single family zoning in the city.

It seemed to me that the city was again hiding the big picture from the city residents and was engaged in a public relations effort instead of true community engagement. This Op-Ed was an attempt to blow the whistle on the true nature of the Connected Communities proposal.

 

 

City leaders doing a sales job on proposed zoning reforms _ Opinion