CNU -Florida Position on Amendment #4

"The CNU Orlando Advisory Committee encourages you to vote NO on AMENDMENT 4 tomorrow. The Advisory Committee believes that Amendment 4 could constitute a serious setback to furthering the principles of the New Urbanism in Florida.




Over the past several decades, there has been a significant shift back to living in our central cities and compact walkable neighborhoods. The market has demanded an alternative to the compartmentalized, vehicle-centric suburbs and the real estate industry has responded with urban revitalization and New Urban communities. Amendment 4 threatens to stop this progress and freeze outdated Comprehensive Plans that mandate development patterns in their current dysfunctional state. If Amendment 4 had been approved 20 years ago, wonderful urban communities like Celebration (plan update Dec 13 1993) and Baldwin Park (1997 and 1998) that now serve as nationally recognized examples of good development may never have been built. The obstacles to needed approvals would have been too great, including a required vote by the entire electorate of Osceola County and the City of Orlando, respectively.



Amendment 4 expresses a very real frustration with growth patterns in Florida, a frustration that New Urbanists share and have been working to find and promote solutions to for last 20 years. However, the Amendment 4 proposal is not the best or proper solution to growth management in Florida.



Amendment 4 would require that all Comprehensive Plan updates--including land use map changes, policy changes to outdated requirements and the addition of new, better standards--would go to costly public votes. This brings up many challenges. Amendment 4 proposes a single solution to a complex and important set of issues that face communities on a daily basis. This simplistic approach will have numerous unintended consequences that may serve as a roadblock to increased application of the principles of New Urbanism.



• It would discourage adoption of new standards that promote and support urban, compact, walkable and transit oriented developments and sustainable economies which conserve and enrich property values over time.



• It could encourage parochial and potentially short-sighted decisions.



• It could actually increase the influence of special interests by encouraging aggressive public relations and media campaigns to sway the electorate.



• It could encourage sprawl by privileging poorly located and designed development that is already in many approved comprehensive plans over better development plans that respond to the changing market but have not yet been incorporated into local plans (including infill projects like Baldwin Park).



• It will cause growth issues to be addressed on a piecemeal basis, without consideration of the number of factors that go to supporting more holistic solutions.



• It cannot guarantee better land use planning.



Amendment 4 is not the answer. Local comprehensive plans are intended to evolve over time as a community grows and matures. Amendment 4 encourages the status quo, which in many communities and counties will mean a low density, sprawling pattern of development.



For these reasons, CNU Orlando Advisory Committee urges you to VOTE NO on AMENDMENT 4.



As always the defining document of the New Urbanism and CNU Orlando is the Charter of the New Urbanism: http://www.cnu.org/charter. "