I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago about how Ft. Collins, Colorado had embraced the concept of New Urbanism in their zoning codes, which they call the “City Plan”. After reviewing some of their online documents, I decided to do some additional investigation, to see what kind of effect it might have on church development.
I initially found four documents at their website, entitled “City Plan Structure”, “Principles & Practices”, Community Vision & Goals”, and “Appendices”. To see how many times churches were addressed, I did searches for the word “church” and the phrase “places of worship”.
In the “Community Vision & Goals”, I found a reference for the phrase “places of worship”, in which it said, “Fort Collins will be a city of cohesive, distinct, diverse, attractive and safe neighborhoods…The arrangement of land uses within neighborhoods will allow residents to walk and bicycle to parks, schools, work, shopping, places of worship, transit stops, and other neighborhoods.”
I found the word “ church” once in the “Principles and Policies” document. It was found in the Neighborhood Buffer Sub-District, and it stated that “A mix of uses will provide a buffer between the more intensive business-oriented areas in the Downtown and adjacent lower-intensity residential neighborhoods. In the Neighborhood Buffer Sub-District, the principal uses include residential, bed and breakfast inns, low-intensity professional offices, neighborhood service businesses, churches, child-care services, group homes and uses of similar character”.
These two references and a few others were the only ones found in all four documents. In addition, a map indicated that the Neighborhood Buffer Sub-District was comprised of narrow strips of land between districts that were so small that if would be difficult for a church of any size to build a new facility in them.
I contacted a zoning official at Ft. Collins to see why it appeared that churches were not included in the city plan. He directed me to another document entitled “Ft. Collins Land Use Code”, and said that to his knowledge, churches were allowed in all zones except public ones. He also thought that they had just recently removed a size limit on churches, though he added, “good luck finding any land big enough for a church”.
I checked the Land Use Code, and found he was correct, churches were indeed allowed in all zones except the public ones, so in that respect, their new code is not much different than we have in Tulsa.
There is another similarity to our local zoning code, in that they have placed a fenceline around the land adjacent to Ft. Collins, but leaves a large area that is not annexed into the city. The City Plan calls these unincorporated areas “Growth Management Areas”.
A stated goal of the City Plan is to force the city to develop in an orderly, but compact, high-density, mixed use group of communities and subdivisions. It encourages development within the existing city, and discourages development in the Growth Management Areas in an effort to urbanize the city to a greater degree and preserve other areas from development.
City Plan is essentially a master plan that is designed to shape the city into one in that minimizes the use of vehicles and maximizes walking, the use of bicycles and mass transit by controlling the development of the city. Its long-term goal is to create communities within Ft. Collins where essential services and jobs are either accessible by mass transit or are close to the average home.
One of the stated goals of the New Urbanism movement is to create a “major focus of federal, state, and local governments on the revitalization and densification of all existing cities and towns across America into walkable, mixed-use communities, with pedestrians and bicycles given top priority over automobiles, and a serious focus on bicycles as a major form of transportation. Included would be millions of affordable housing units and high quality neighborhood schools located so all children can walk or bike to them.”
While City Plan seems to fulfill this goal, it does not appear to conform to many of the other more radical goals of the New Urbanism movement. However, I question just how friendly it is, especially in regard to the development of new churches. Will the densification of the city create shortages of land in areas of the city where new churches are needed? Will the competition for land drive costs up beyond what churches can afford to buy?
City Plan will undoubtedly create some unintended consequences, but if the New Urbanists want to discourage the growth of churches, it seems this kind of plan could make things very difficult for churches to grow.