Alma Gates: DC needs a planning commission

By Alma Gates

Washington, DC, shares its land area with the federal government — or is it the other way around? It doesn’t matter: There’s a finite amount of land available for development within the 10 miles square known as the nation’s capital, and land use is meant to take guidance from the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

When the city’s streets were planned and built, a classification hierarchy was established to reflect a certain level of anticipated use, although at that time planners could not have anticipated daily use by the two adjacent jurisdictions, Maryland and Virginia. Some streets reflect neighborhood establishments; some feature commercial development, and others offer a means of access to both. That was the plan, but today proposed change threatens neighborhood streets as well as the very character of established neighborhoods. And it appears planners are paying little attention to the balance between cause and effect.

Zoning and planning are vastly different processes. The zoning regulations set legal land-use constraints on individual parcels throughout the city. The Comprehensive Plan is the city’s key planning document and provides a framework for future city growth and development; presents policies on elements meant to guide various aspects of development throughout the city; directs predictable outcomes; states how the functional elements in our built and natural environment interface with each other; and sets forth express guidance for achieving the plan’s goals.

A Planning Commission would strengthen the work of the Zoning Commission; would be responsible for preparing and protecting the Comprehensive Plan; would ensure that zoning actions are consistent with a broad range of public policies; and would fill a gap in the planning law as set forth in the Home Rule Act. Currently, the Office of Planning drafts zoning regulations, and it has overseen the recent amendment process for the Comprehensive Plan.

As far back as 2006, it was apparent that development in the city was out of scale. Paul Farmer, then executive director of the American Planning Association, remarked, “The planning commission should be the body that looks long-term to the future of the city and … how all those pieces fit together. The planning commission needs to be populated with people who can take that broad view, and who represent a variety of stakeholders, but don’t get bogged down in details.”

The Home Rule Act assigns the mayor the role of “central planning agency,” which means the mayor has the option of delegating planning functions to individuals and/or agencies under his or her control. A DC Planning Commission would act in an advisory role to the mayor. It would provide a now-missing system of checks and balances necessary for a more adequate interpretation and implementation of the DC Elements of the Comprehensive Plan.

Today, the need for balance in long-range planning is critical. Open space is quickly disappearing. Development is being driven by profit rather than vision and gets a green light whenever the city sees there will be sufficient return to the city on investment, regardless of long-term impacts. Take, for example, the Wharf development, where one of the city’s most significant viewsheds has been replaced by a curtain wall of buildings and only those wealthy enough to afford “water views” benefit. Infrastructure across the city needs upgrading. Affordability is at a crisis level and likely the most pervasive topic whenever new development is proposed. Inclusionary zoning has become a boutique middle-income housing program. Amenities provided by developers are tokenism. As new development spreads into established neighborhoods, construction of bigger homes are driving up real estate taxes and almost ensuring older residents on fixed incomes can no longer live where they have made long-term investments. As a result, gentrification is claiming the city’s storytellers and those who were willing to stay when things weren’t so grand. The character of many established neighborhoods is also being changed by new out-of-scale development that lacks the vision of the Comprehensive Plan.

A system of checks and balances is critical to future development in the city. Planning drives decisions about capital spending, but the decision-making process we have today encourages cynicism and often a feeling that the deal is done before it ever reaches either the Board of Zoning Adjustment or the Zoning Commission. And an effort is afoot that would upend the certainty offered by the Comprehensive Plan, with some advocating use of the current Comprehensive Plan amendment cycle to empower the Zoning Commission to ignore the Comprehensive Plan.

The necessity for protecting strategic long-range planning for the city will continue as long as planning and zoning for the city are done with a focus on economic development despite guidance provided in the Comprehensive Plan. The city needs to turn its eye to the future and establish a Planning Commission to bring balance to a broad range of public policies that address and affect development in the city.

Alma Gates is a longtime resident of the Palisades in Ward 3.

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