ForwardDallas Isn’t Going to Make Everyone Happy, But Will it Address The City’s Messy Land Use History?

We get it. The ForwardDallas comprehensive land use plan only informs zoning; it doesn’t assign it or regulate it. It’s not necessarily about housing, affordable or otherwise. It’s simply a guiding vision document that creates “placetypes” based on what kind of development should generally occur within the city limits. 

So why is everybody so mad about it? 

Interim Planning and Urban Design Director Andrea Gilles provided a briefing on the land use plan during a Feb. 7 Dallas City Council meeting. During the 2 ½-hour meeting, Gilles took some heat from council members who wanted to better understand how and if the document would address challenges the city has been facing. 

And it wouldn’t be a Dallas City Council meeting if the issue of density wasn’t addressed. 

“ForwardDallas does not call for the elimination of single-family residential neighborhoods,” Gilles said before the question even came up. “In fact, it very much talks about how there are certain areas where the predominant land use is single-family and it will remain single-family. I think there is an opportunity, given the continued discussion, to look at how we massage the language to make the intent and the purpose more clear.” 

ForwardDallas Draft Plan Proposes Accessory Dwelling Units ‘By Right’ Citywide

The ForwardDallas comprehensive land use plan will likely be adopted this summer, but there are some big hurdles to clear, including at least one council member who says she won’t vote for it as it stands today. City staff has met with the Comprehensive Land Use Plan Committee 31 times, Gilles said, and is now working alongside the City Plan Commission.

“We will not be able to make everyone 100 percent happy with this plan,” Gilles said.

Public hearings will be held as part of the CPC and City Council vetting process. 

Community Concerns About Increased Density in Single-Family Neighborhoods

District 12 Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn again asked for a single-family placetype and said she wouldn’t support a land use plan that doesn’t protect single-family neighborhoods.

There’s been a lot of talk about the need for affordable housing, Mendelsohn acknowledged. If Dallas is to grow by 300,000 people by 2045, as predicted by the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the city needs to add less than 8,000 housing units per year, Mendelsohn said. 

“I think we have an affordable housing crisis, but the reality is there’s a pretty decent vacancy rate in District 12 for multifamily,” Mendelsohn said. “There’s a lot of discussion about adding density into single-family neighborhoods as if there is no other land available, which clearly, have you met Southern Dallas? Because they’re desperate for single-family homes.” 

Assistant Director of Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization Thor Erickson quoted the following statistics for housing units under construction: 

• 2,550 units via the Housing Finance Corporation 
• 2,826 units via the Public Facility Corporation projects 
• 10,290 units via the city’s development program

Dallas resident Melanie Vanlandingham, a landscape architect, has been critical of what she calls “the push for small mini-lots.” 

“ForwardDallas does not include any category at all for single-family-only neighborhoods,” she said in a comment on a CandysDirt.com story about minimum lot size reform. “Instead, staff lumps ALL residential uses together, and proposes allowing multifamily up to TEN units to be built next to ANY single-family home anywhere in the city.  This would indeed set the stage to eliminate traditional single-family neighborhoods … ForwardDallas needs to be stopped in its tracks before it proceeds any further.”

While city planners have attempted to explain why they created a “community residential” placetype rather than a “single-family only” designation, it was District 11 Councilwoman Jaynie Schultz who said it best. 

“The challenge with … single-family residential as a placetype is that it would look like one of those pixelated pictures because that means no churches, no schools, no small retail. What community residential means is the things that a community of residences needs to be a strong community. That’s why it has to include other uses besides one home per family.” 

Gilles agreed to look at each individual council district and gather information that would reflect what that geographical area wants. 

“ForwardDallas is not changing any [planned developments],” Gilles said. “It’s not changing any historic districts. It’s not changing any conservation districts. ForwardDallas, a land use plan, cannot do that. All of those will remain in place unchanged.” 

Why Does Dallas Need a Comprehensive Land Use Plan?

ForwardDallas is needed, proponents say, because the city is growing and has an unmanageable number of planned developments. Industrial development is encroaching on neighborhoods, and while some areas welcome duplexes and triplexes, others don’t want that kind of change. 

“The entire city does not have a land use plan,” Gilles said. “There are big, big chunks of the city that have absolutely no land use guidance. When you all get zoning cases, it can be difficult in these areas where you don’t have land use policy, because you kind of start from scratch. And what is your baseline justification for saying this isn’t appropriate here, or this is appropriate here?” 

A plan cannot tell you that “you must do this,” Gilles explained. 

“That is when you get to your zoning or your development guides,” she said. “This plan is laying out the vision for what we’d like to see certain areas develop into.” 

The comprehensive land use plan doesn’t take anything away from neighborhood plans or corridor plans, she added. 

Most of the neighborhoods south of Interstate 30 don’t have a neighborhood plan, said Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins, who represents District 8. He expressed concern that the planning staff wasn’t robust enough to implement ForwardDallas.

District 9 Councilwoman Paula Blackmon pointed out that “downzoning” in the 1980s harmed a lot of communities and said she hoped this plan would “make it right.” 

Gilles said that cities are dynamic and change happens. 

“If we’re not strategic about it, I think we keep twisting ourselves up into these individualized processes every single time we do something with zoning or development or infrastructure,” she said. “We’re going to keep going down this path of [planned developments] for everything. That does start to bog down the system. This isn’t going to solve everything but it does help us be more strategic and streamlined about our development.”