Table of Contents

Biophilic Planning

This city’s zoning ordinance ensures that developments provide common open space for residents to use and connect with nature. The Open Space Set-Asides zoning ordinance creates standards for new developments to provide open-spaces and protect natural areas.

Climate Change

The city’s zoning code contains regulations to help address the impacts of climate change. It creates a coastal resilience overlay district to encourage development that increases at-risk areas’ resilience to sea-level rise and storm-related flooding events aggravated by climate change (§3-9-18). The code also establishes an upland resilience overlay district to encourage development in areas with reduced risk to these impacts (§3-9-19). And it presents a Resilient Quotient to ensure that development incorporates resilience practices such as reducing risks of flooding, managing stormwater, and promoting the use of alternative energy (§5-12).

Hazard Mitigation

The city’s zoning code requires all new development to enhance site and community resilience, with an emphasis on resilience to sea-level rise and coastal storms and flooding.

Its Resilient Quotient regulations establish a point system for all new development projects, which requires applicants to select resilience measures from a menu of options to achieve a minimum score (§5.12). Categories include risk reduction, stormwater management, and energy resilience.

It also provides alternative minimum standards for single-family development that exceed the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s floodplain development standards (§5.12.5).