Dallas, We Have a Plan: Zoning Could Get Easier And Faster, Says Director of Planning and Urban Design

Dallas leaders recently took on the tasks of overhauling a 35-year-old development code, drafting a comprehensive future land use map, and digitizing boxes of paper records. It’s a long, arduous process, but the end result will be well worth it, according to the city’s director of planning and urban design. 

Julia Ryan has worked in municipal planning for 15 years, primarily in Fort Worth, and was tapped to lead Dallas’s Planning and Urban Design Department about a year ago. 

She inherited a bit of a mess, with antiquated policies and procedures, no plan governing future land use, and zoning cases that take eight or nine months to go from application to city council. 

“The end result here is predictability and transparency,” Ryan said. “We want people to feel more confident in the land uses around the city. We’re specifically looking at not putting industrial next to your house. For the average resident, that’s out there just trying to get to work and raise a family and get their errands done, we want to make sure the quality of life is there. We’re also looking at equity and efficiency. Future land use is an important tool, but we’re also looking at the micro-scale of a person just trying to live their life.” 

Once those ambitious goals are met, Dallas developers should be able to process a rezoning application in the industry-standard time frame of about four months, Ryan said. 

Some of the streamlining could be accomplished by creating a one-stop shop — moving PUD offices, Development Services, and Economic Development from Dallas City Hall and the Oak Cliff Municipal Center to a new location off the Stemmons Corridor in Northwest Dallas. 

Ryan said she’s heard rumors of a move, but there’s no official word on if or when that’s going to happen. 

Zoning And Rezoning

The challenges are many, but Ryan said solutions have been identified, and the city’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 allocates funding for the problem-solving initiatives. 

The most heavily-criticized and visible problem is zoning. 

Dallas Builders Association Executive Officer Phil Crone brought this up earlier this month. 

“We need to fix our zoning problems,” Crone told CandysDirt.com. “Having more than 1,200 [planned developments] is absurd. The more we can simplify zoning and increase what can be built by right, the better we can prevent [a permitting backlog] from happening again. More importantly, we can put an end to the exclusionary history of zoning that’s still being written in our city.” 

A planned development, or PD, is described in the city’s Zoning 101 document as a district that tailors the uses and development regulations for an area. 

Ryan explained that by-right development would be, for example, if a developer wants to build a single-family neighborhood in a space already zoned R-5, they don’t have to go through a zoning process. Because there are so many PDs, rezoning is almost always required for new development. 

So that’s one problem. Another is that the city has had difficulty attracting and retaining quality staff in the planning department. 

“It takes six months at a minimum to train up new staff,” Ryan said. “It’s very complicated, very technical, very variable. We have a hard time finding experienced planners who can jump right into the Dallas way of zoning. This work is so mentally draining, and we’ve been giving them case after case after case.”

The city’s Human Resources Department has worked on pay equity and classification for the PUD staff, which has helped, Ryan said. They’re also looking at ensuring that employees have an appropriate workload. 

The department operates on a $6.7 million budget and has about 55 employees when fully staffed. 

Providing electronic zoning services also is going to make the process quicker and more efficient, Ryan told District  1 Councilman Chad West during an Aug. 9 budget hearing. 

“Right now all of our processes are on paper so we do waste a lot of time moving paper from place to place,” she said. 

That problem also has contributed to a two-year backlog in the permitting department. 

“If you want to look at a PD, you have to go into a physical room with boxes,” West pointed out during the budget hearing. “It’s ridiculous.” 

Development Code 

The city’s development code was written in 1965 and last updated in 1987. 

“Now we’re trying to build this modern city, so instead of overhauling the development code, we’ve just continued to build and build on this existing foundation,” Ryan said. “We’ve done these Band-Aid code amendments that provide a lot more complexity. The PD system has caused a lot of problems. We want to do base zoning instead of PDs — standard requirements and setbacks, where it’s the same if you’re in an R5 here versus an R5 in another part of town.” 

The department was allocated $2 million in a mid-year adjustment for a consultant to guide the process. The code needs to be simplified so people don’t have to hire an attorney or have a master’s degree in zoning to understand it, Ryan explained.  

“People aren’t going to have to look through thousands of pages to know how many parking spaces are required or what the setback is for this sub-PD,” Ryan said. “If you’ve heard about 1,100 PDs [in Dallas], that’s basically 1,100 different zoning documents.”

Pieces of the development code will be revised incrementally, Ryan added. 

“What’s important to me are some quick fixes we can incorporate into the zoning code to make the zoning process easier,” she said. “If you’ve ever tried to read a zoning code or a PD, it’s not a great experience. We want to make it clear, make it more visual. We’re not going to just sit and rewrite the whole code. We want to start with more confusing areas.”

The city’s budget overview also addresses the development code overhaul as a strategic priority. 

“Over the years, this antiquated approach to zoning has led to the proliferation of over 1,100 Planned Development Districts and a patchwork of individually customized and unpredictable development standards across the city,” the document states. “The comprehensive reform of the city’s development codes, Chapters 51, 51A, and 51P is underway to develop a modern, updated, and user-friendly development code that is streamlined, consistent, clear, and aligned with all city plans and policies. The code reform will include a general modernization of the development code to provide clarity, improve overall functionality, and achieve greater sensitivity to the existing and future fabric and character of the City of Dallas. This effort will focus on portions of the development code that are either deficient, outdated, overly complex, or that otherwise unnecessarily inhibit development.”

Future Land Use

Public meetings will be scheduled in the fall for the public to give feedback on ForwardDallas, the city’s comprehensive future land use map. A draft of the new document is expected to go before city council late next year. 

The future land use map will display what kind of development is compatible in a particular area. 

“For example, if we have some vacant land next to a neighborhood, and industry wants to build there, we don’t have policies with teeth to restrict that right now,” Ryan said. “With this technical analysis, we can say, ‘That’s not a recommended use.’” 

Environmental justice — such as not placing industrial use next to residential — is a priority, she said. 

“Just looking at some of the history in how zoning has been done in Dallas, a lot has been done through deed restrictions,” Ryan said. “It’s a lot more discretionary zoning. I’m not sure how we got to this point where we don’t have future land use or a development code that provides us with the tools that we need to operate efficiently. I think where we’re going and what we’re trying to do is really think about how we fix the system. We’re looking at the big picture, the long term. The budget is there to do what we need to do. It’s important that the community understands what we’re trying to do and for us to be able to talk to them throughout the process and have the dialogue. I’m hopeful this will be an exciting discussion.”