Item 8: Ordinance Establishing Chambers Special Area Zone

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~e l\.tgi~ttt-c19uatb Guest Viewpoint Published July 10, 2005 Eugene zoning laws sacrifice livability By Paul Conte, Esther Foss, and Matt Purvis Eugene cherishes livability, but our zoning promotes blight. Eugene hates sprawl, but we're unwittingly pushing people away from the urban core by our indiscriminate approach to density. Trusting too much in oversimplified catch-phrases, such as "higher density reduces sprawl," rather than a pragmatic sense of how housing markets really work, Eugene may have done more harm than good over the past twenty years, allowing deterioration of core neighborhoods and stimulating population flight to the fringes. For two decades now, we've ratcheted up the allowable density across many established, close-in neighborhoods so that three, four, and even more, rental units can be added on modest-sized lots. Imagine a long-time resident family's surprise when a looming duplex or triplex arises next to what had previously been their relatively private and quiet back yard. These "infill" structures can be thirty-five feet high or higher and can extend across the entire lot, except for five feet of setback on each side. With the additional units comes mandatory on-site parking, meaning that a significant portion of the lot usually gets paved. Take a walk through Eugene's Westside, where we live, to see this blight taking hold - over-built, badly-designed, and poorly-sited duplexes and triplexes jammed in the backyards and alleys of what has been for decades a healthy, stable, compact nei ghborhood. Take a walk on the wild side, West University neighborhood, to see the end result. Cute "granny cottages" are a common image of in fill, but what's actually being built is typically poorly designed, cheaply constructed, and sited so there's no longer adequate open space to support the large trees and extensive "greenscape" that are characteristic of mature neighborhoods. While thoughtless infill degrades older, core neighborhoods, development burgeons near the urban growth boundary and in satellite communities. Not surprisingly, low-grade infill doesn't appeal to economically mobile families, so such development doesn't lessen the pressure for Eugene to grow outward. And each time another looming multiplex arises in an established neighborhood, one or more families leave to regain in some other area the attractive environment that infill has destroyed. Some of these families end up resettling farther away from the city's core.