Memphis 3.0 Community Anchors: Reinvesting in Local Neighborhoods to Positively Impact Memphians

The Daniel Burnham Award-winning Memphis 3.0 Comprehensive Plan charted a bold new vision for how the City of Memphis, Tennessee would “grow up, not out” as it embarks on its third century. Opticos Design was thrilled to assist the City of Memphis as they lead the innovative 3.0 Comprehensive Plan on behalf of a multidisciplinary team of national and local consultants. It was a pleasure to be invited back to help the city implement the plan through a series of small area planning projects.

Bringing Missing Middle Back to Greenville, South Carolina

If you’ve ever been to Greenville, South Carolina, you can understand why so many people want to live there. It’s got a small-town feel, is only a short walk or bike ride into nature and has beautiful tree-lined streets with great physical character. But along with that appeal comes housing-related growing pains: higher housing costs with few choices, aside from detached houses and apartment developments. Recently, Greenville found themselves looking for an innovative approach to address their wide range of housing needs and interests. 

How to Use Building Types in Zoning

Building types can be useful in form-based codes where the goal is to enable a fine–grained mix of buildings of varied density and type in walkable neighborhoods. The approach of using building types is also effective in situations where permit streamlining is required and discretionary review is not allowed or significantly limited. For example, in California, Senate Bill 35 requires that only a community’s ‘Objective Design and Development Standards’ apply to multi-family or mixed-use projects. This means that more rather than less clarity in the standards and the community’s expectations is needed. Building types when prepared well offer that needed clarity.

Opening Doors to New, Context-Sensitive Development

Recent California state legislation (eg., SB 35, SB 330 and the Housing Accountability Act) stipulates that in certain situations, projects that qualify for streamlined review and processing must be designed and reviewed only through objective design standards. Marin County retained Opticos Design in 2019 to develop Objective Design and Development Standards (ODDS) for multifamily and mixed-use residential development in coordination with 11 separate jurisdictions within the County, the largest objective design standards application to date.