


photography from the Chesapeake Bay watershed by Bill Emory
Dear Commissioners,
I appreciate your efforts to address displacement pressure, it is a great challenge.
People need safe places.I think of the decades of back and forth with the Council and the Commission over the disposition of a handful of lots on Market Street and you all are contemplating catalytic changes to thousands of lots.
Wow.I hope you are as wise as Solomon. I pray that your recommendation to Council doesn’t have as many unanticipated/untoward effects on our City as the arrival of the automobile.
As you strive to do good strive also to limit the damage.
The City is a sensitive living thing.
Good luck
The discussion continues.
The implementation of the draft zoning ordinance will further decrease the City’s shrinking tree canopy. How low can the canopy percentage go? The code writers say we can’t ask developers for more than 20% canopy coverage, the State’s maximum requirement.
But developers and landlords can be incentivized,
the code’s green-scape zones and setbacks can be adjusted
and we can ask our City Councilors to join us in this goal.
Look at the money. The City takes in 100 million in real estate tax, the city spends one thousandth of that planting trees.
We talk the green City talk, let’s start walking the walk.
Trees and density can coexist, you just act. Plant a $10 tree in the ground, care for it, and step back.
In 1975 the City had a plan to plant a multitude of trees in the commons, in the right of way. In the Woolen Mills 90 trees would line East Market Street from Firefly to the Rivanna. Shade, walkability, habitat, carbon sequestration, oxygen production, stormwater control! Of the 90 trees, one has been planted at 1606 E Market.
Square that lack of follow through with the Standards and Design Manual chapter 9.6.4 which reads
“Trees must be installed along all rights-of-way regardless of location of overhead or underground utilities.”
Ask the City to plant the commons and to support designs that incorporate nature in housing plans.
I am a small scale, affordable housing provider going for 100% canopy.
We can get this done.
In the words of Wangari Muta Maathai:
“We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.”
“Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking.”
"Since the city and consultants first introduced the Future Land Use Map in 2021, right up until the most recent pop-ups held by consultants and NDS on the Draft Zoning Ordinance (DZO), residents have asked for visualizations of what actual Charlottesville streetscapes could look like under the new regulations. Neither the city nor its consultants have obliged. We believe that while visualizations do not function as arguments for or against the DZO, they are an indispensable tool for residents trying to form an opinion on various aspects of the proposal. We have therefore prepared several simulated visualization of specific blocks in Charlottesville -- both to provide the tools that residents asked for and didn't get and to show that there was no difficulty involved in preparing visualizations that could have reasonably prevented a competent consultant or NDS department from providing them. You can find the videos below. We anticipate the we will add more over time. If you have an area for which you'd like to see a visualization, please reach out to us via email. Please bear in mind that the purpose of the videos is to help give viewers a concrete sense of height, massing and coverage. These are not architectural renderings or surveys and are necessarily approximate. We do not suggest that the generic 3D models we used are predictive of the architectural styles developers would use or that the blocks we simulate are more likely than others to be redeveloped."--A Nonymous