Memphis unified development code

Memphis does not staff full time employees solely dedicated to energy code enforcement. The city verifies energy code compliance through plan reviews and site inspections. The Memphis and Shelby County Office of Sustainability and Resilience and local partners launched the Sustainable Workforce Initiative, a two-year program that includes energy efficiency workforce development. The Tennessee Regulatory Authority sets the rates and services standards of the investor-owned natural gas, electric, and water utilities.

To learn more about the state requirements for electric and gas efficiency, please visit the Tennessee page of the State Database. The Department of Public Works is the municipal utility that provides wastewater treatment and stormwater management services for Memphis.

In , MLGW had no savings from natural gas efficiency programs. MLGW implementation of Share the Pennies program to provide home weatherization grants for low income qualified residential customers. Repairs include AC condenser replacement, attic access hatches, attic insulation, duct replacement, furnace replacement, leaks gas and water , water heater replacement, window and door replacement, and health and safety improvements.

The program uses a set of prescriptive measures and inspections, EcoBUILD helps building owners construct and maintain energy efficient properties. The City of Memphis does not advocate for better access to utility data for ratepayers or the establishment of data-sharing agreements between the city and its utilities. To achieve this goal, TVA will need to reduce emissions by 3. While the MLGW programs focus on energy efficiency, water efficiency is included in My Account analytics and self-audits, low-income repairs, and customer communications to help preserve and protect the aquifer system.

The Energy Education webpage includes information on both energy and water efficiency. The city does not have a comprehensive energy management strategy in place for its water and wastewater utilities.

MATA also provides the public transportation for the city and the broader metropolitan area, including bus and trolley service. Its area of jurisdiction encompasses Memphis, and many surrounding cities and towns. Memphis adopted a Unified Development Code in that incorporates form-based elements and overlays to encourage mixed-use development.

The Memphis 3. The City of Memphis Bikeway and Pedestrian program monitors and estimates emissions saved based on numbers of miles traveled, and is seeking to measure mode shift in the future. There is a car sharing program currently available to the residents and visitors of Memphis, zipcar. At this time, the City does not have a formal policy in place to provide dedicated on-street and off-street parking for carshare vehicles.

Explore Bike Share is reducing the fleet slightly for winter months, but for April to June roughly bicycles and e-bikes electric assist are available. Expansions are also planned for areas in the city surrounding new bike infrastructure such as Binghampton and University of Memphis. Downtown and Medical District areas have also seen an increased density of bike share docking stations over the past year. The Transit Connectivity Index measures transit service levels.

This was an area where developers weakened original recommendations which called for local governments to get more serious and fairer about notifying the public of proposed developments so it could have better opportunities to have a voice long silenced in the decisions that ultimately changed the face of too many of their neighborhoods. These overlay districts included requirements unique to that particular area, based on the tools of the form-based code concept.

The proliferation and overuse of PDs were cited early as a problem area by the national code experts hired to draw up the UDC. The PDs have amounted to a government-aided assault on numerous Memphis neighborhoods as developers wrapped every project in the PD flag to sidestep the stricter and more reasonable code. The opportunity to bring coherency and transparency, if not sanity, to the use of the PDs was a major reason we were so supportive throughout the UDC process.

The loss of the opportunity to drain some of the politics out of the process by getting local government legislators to approve the UDC and then vesting professional planners with the responsibility for applying it. The game-changing potential of the UDC was to remove politicians from a process that now marginalizes, if not frequently ignores, professional planners in local government.

The hope was that the UDC would represent the vision established by City Council and County Board of Commissioners, and except in specific instances, it would be planners who make decisions on applications within that official framework. The public lost this battle before the UDC was approved, and the suspicion is that the changes allow for even more political machinations. In the year since the UDC was approved, something unpredicted has happened in Memphis. There is a growing cadre of citizens calling for a more livable city and fighting for bike lanes, better neighborhood redevelopment, and better urban design.

There is a hunger for change, and it now seems to include a number of City Council members. They have become well-acquainted with the price that Memphis pays for planning problems, and finally, they understand that any highway is not always a good highway see I and that any investment in a neighborhood is not always a good investment.

Last week, the Land Use Control Board — long a rubber stamp for a pro-developer point of view — approved the changes despite pleas for the changes to be delayed. It was said that if the changes were not approved, the process would have to start all over and more time would pass. Why this is a problem is a mystery to us, because public understanding and support would seem to trump speed any day. The changes are now on their way to City Council and the Board of Commissioners, and before the legislators consider them, we suggest the following:.

In addition, it would be helpful to convene a group of American Planning Association members to provide advice about the changes. There is the widespread feeling that the discussion of changes was too limited. City Council members are elected to guide the future of Memphis, and it is hard to remember when injecting the political interests of Shelby County Government has resulted in added value to the development of the smarter growth principles that Memphis support.

The overuse of PDs in Memphis produces development with little concern about its contextual impact. So far, there is no case to justify the overuse of PDs and if anything, the UDC should make their controls more stringent. That so many citizens share his passion is a good thing and it should be protected and expanded. Surely, there is a way to ensure that the UDC achieves its fullest potential and that it is based on the broadest possible public input.

Thank you SCM for bringing these issues to light. The public should not have to dig so deep and do so much homework to find out that the neighborhoods they thought were going to be protected will no longer be afforded that luxury. And the protection should not be a luxury, it is a right. Memphis are you ready for the next wave of sprawl? Ready to subsidize development outside the limits of the City again?

The City undertook a major zoning code overhaul in to replace the previous code from , which had been making it difficult to create infill development. One positive example of the new relaxed code bringing economic development to the city is the easing of parking requirements within the UDC. Previously new businesses had to provide one parking spot for every square feet of building space, but the new code reduces the requirement to one spot for every square feet.

Under the UDC, if a planned development is adjacent to existing parking lots the new development can share parking facilities with a neighboring property. If the new development is near public bus stops, even more parking requirements can be waved. Redevelopment of the site became viable under the UDC thanks to more flexible standards. The new, less restrictive parking requirements not only entice developers, but also serve to encourage people to try other modes of travel such as biking and walking, a current priority for the City.