Via Chris Kidd at the open thread comments section of ABO, I learned that tonight and Saturday are two community workshops on the citywide zoning update focused on commercial corridors and residential areas in the City of Oakland. I second his encouragement of bike/ped/transit /urbanist people to attend and offset the likely strong showing by the NIMBY crowd.I have a more personal reason for attending. Recently I found out the house I bought a couple years back in East Lorin is completely illegal. Thus, I am going to try to get my house legalized. That and arguing for a greener, more urban conception of what Oakland could be.
3 comments:
Dang, I wish I could make one of these, but unfortunately I have to be at work when both meetings are taking place. Thanks for the heads up, though -- I hope some others are able to attend, and if you have a chance to post a report after the fact, at least one reader would appreciate it.
Good luck with the house issue, too. I assume they are flexible about grandfathering in pre-existing zoning violations, especially if you bought the house that way. Oh, wait, I'm assuming that people at city hall will be reasonable and use some common sense -- never mind. May the force be with you.
Thanks for the props, Raymond. I'm assuming you'll be at tonight's meeting rather than Saturday's?
I'm a sitting member of the Technical Advisory Group for the Residential section of the zoning update. I figured it was my civic duty to get the word out to the blogoaksphere.
The two windmills I'm tilting at in this project are restructuring rules for commercial spaces within residential zones(mostly for places like glenview/san antonio/fruitvale) and relaxing private open space requirements in high density housing zones in order to stimulate more variations in new development and a stronger incentive to push for more public open space in the selfsame zones.
I think that while holding the public meetings are essential, they're also likely to draw the same old crowd that always turns out for these projects. Hopefully, getting this out onto the internets will stimulate more conversation with different points of view that haven't been heard from before.
Best of luck at the meetings. Zoning laws can be a terror.
Dave
Southern California apartments
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