September 25, 2006

In 2001, the Mayor’s Institute on City Design sparked Fayetteville (AR) Mayor Dan Coody’s vision for how urban design could be used to enhance and protect Fayetteville’s unique character. Coody recently celebrated the adoption of City Plan 2025, a comprehensive planning document designed to capture the benefits of rapid growth while mitigating the costs. City Plan 2025 features six goals: 1) make appropriate infill and revitalization our highest priorities; 2) discourage suburban sprawl; 3) make traditional town form the standard; 4) create a livable transportation system; 5) assemble an enduring green network; and 6) create attainable housing.

These goals seek to enhance Fayetteville’s livability as well as implement key smart growth elements to address the tremendous growth in Northwest Arkansas. Northwest Arkansas is the sixth fastest growing Metropolitan Statistical Area in the country, and Fayetteville has been growing at a compound rate of 2.4 percent over the past six years, placing a burden on infrastructure and public services. While growth has brought tangible benefits, it also created a need for a comprehensive plan that addressed these issues and captured citizens’ ideas and vision for the future of Fayetteville.

Coody led a collaboration between Planning staff and urban design team Dover, Kohl and Partners to gather public input through myriad methods and create a product that enabled residents to visualize positive change over time and outlined specific policy actions and programs. Over 700 citizens provided input through focus groups, online forums and four hands-on design workshops that were held during a ten-day intensive charrette. Residents were asked to designate where a projected future population increase of 40,000, along with their jobs and services, should locate in and around the city. Citizens worked in groups of 8-10 people, using sticker dots to represent future population. This exercise enabled citizens to symbolize density in the areas they thought would be appropriate for infill or new development. The public participation culminated in an unprecedented policy summit of elected and appointed officials, which included the city council, planning commission, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville School Board and Washington County Quorum Court.

Throughout the process, Coody emphasized the need for a comprehensive plan that addressed sustainability, which charrette participants echoed. Participants concentrated Fayetteville’s predicted growth within the current city boundaries in order to conserve resources and tended to create clusters around potential light rail stops, anticipating transit-oriented development. The goals, objectives, sector map and benchmarks for the next five years reflect this emphasis on sustainability. The ambitious initiatives that the city will address over the next five years are:

• Adding four neighborhood plans to the city that are each complete, compact and connected. These Master Plans will shape the development future of four strategic areas within the City and serve as areas to pilot “green building” and “density bonus” programs;

• Establishing a tiered road impact fee system to encourage infill;

• Establishing a transfer of development rights program;

• Strengthening the development and infrastructure concurrency policy so that city-wide infrastructure capacity becomes a determining factor when approving new development;

• Allowing as-of-right development for traditional neighborhood development and within Master Plan areas;

• Modifying regulations to increase the supply and quality of attainable housing, which includes providing density bonuses to developers in exchange for attainable housing units within their developments; and

• Establishing an inclusionary zoning policy.

Since City Plan 2025’s adoption on July 17, several actions have put the Plan in motion. A partnership of three local developers hired Duany, Plater-Zyberck to facilitate a charrette in August for a new development that incorporates the elements of a complete neighborhood by offering a variety of housing types and a residential commercial balance. Another local developer has partnered with Urban Design Associates to design a complete neighborhood that will include a 200-acre regional park adjoining a 700-acre mixed-use development. Coody has entered discussions with state legislators about bringing enabling legislation for transfer of development rights programs to the next legislative session. By citizen request, a “Guide to Action for Implementing City Plan 2025” has been made available to community members who want to assist in implementation.

These developments stemmed from the widespread participation and education during the planning process. Hundreds of citizens attended charrette events and the website received over 125,000 individual visits during the planning process. The Plan departs from previous comprehensive plans by emphasizing traditional neighborhood design and town form. Enabling the public to visualize the expected products of implementation led 93 percent of the 200 attendees at a Work-in-Progress Session to state that they believed the Plan was headed in the right direction. Second, City Plan 2025 includes benchmarks for the next five years with actions that need to be taken by city staff and elected and appointed bodies. These benchmarks provide direction for city government and enable Fayetteville citizens to track implementation progress.

City Plan 2025 won the Achievement in Comprehensive Planning Award from the Arkansas Chapter of the American Planning Association for its quality and innovation, and the City Plan 2025 website won the Achievement in Technology Award. The awards will be presented at the state conference on September 28.

City Plan 2025 can be found at http://cityplan2025.accessfayetteville.org.