New Orleans’ Master Plan: Proposed Changes

New Orleans’ Master Plan: Proposed Changes

Katherine Sayre of the Times-Picayune writes that the City Planning Commission on Tuesday (Feb. 7) will consider a wide range of proposed changes to the city’s five-year-old master plan with a goal of refocusing the vision for New Orleans on the longer-term future and away from Hurricane Katrina recovery (NOLA.com).

The master plan, approved in 2010, was designed to take the city through 2030. But the Planning Commission opened the plan up to public input for changes, now that the city has reached a decade post-Katrina. “While disaster recovery was the immediate priority, the need to plan for the city’s long-term future is also necessary,” the commission’s guide for the master plan amendment process says (NOLA.com).

The City Planning Commission will consider 121 proposed amendments Tuesday.  You can read all of the proposals here, and here’s a look at just a select few:

Housing

The HousingNOLA partnership and Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration have requested several changes around housing to include goals outlined in HousingNOLA’s recent 10-year housing plan for the city:

• Emphasize retail and mixed-use developments along transit corridors.
• Target “catalytic investments” in neighborhoods with limited market activity.
• Prevent displacement of residents in neighborhoods increasingly in demand and seeing higher prices through creation of affordable units and home renovation resources.
• Preserve and expand affordable options in the highest-price neighborhoods.
• Enforce fair housing policies.

Transportation

The commission’s report notes that since the master plan was adopted, several of the transportation goals have been achieved, such as securing money for streets through the $1.2 billion settlement with FEMA and boosting bikeways from nine miles to more than 100 miles (NOLA.com).

Proposed additions focus on:

• Providing reliable Regional Transit Authority with quicker travel time, improved customer service and more options.
• Taking into action the city’s “complete streets policy” that requires consideration of all transportation modes in projects.
• Developing an environmentally sensitive transit system.

Parks

• Providing parks in underserved areas at request of the Eastern New Orleans Neighborhood Advisory Commission.
• Integrating art into public spaces by the Arts Council of New Orleans.
• Establishing systems to prevent the city from losing acreage dedicated to parks and green space “to specialized uses such as golf courses and stadiums or to intensive and commercial uses such as restaurants and event facilities.” The request was made by NOLA Parks for All.

The City Planning Commission meets at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall (NOLA.com).

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