As the City Planning Commission hearing on the Zoning for Quality and Affordability text amendment approaches tomorrow, do you still find yourself unsure about why they are proposing changes to the “building envelope”?
Watch a 9-minute video summary of CHPC’s Building Envelope Conundrum study that highlights some of the zoning issues the text change attempts to solve.
RELATED PUBLICATION
The Building Envelope Conundrum
CHPCs board members are on the front lines of developing affordable housing. As such, they provide valuable insights into how the city can construct more housing, and improve its design and quality.
We decided to take a closer look at how the building envelope rules within contextual zoning can sometimes result in fewer residential units being built. We examined seventeen sites to see how much the building envelope rules affected residential construction.
Our study found that eight out of the seventeen buildings were unable to use all of their allotted floor areas because of the building envelope rules. In other words, it is often the building envelope that determines the development capacity of a new building rather than its floor area.
This study explores the impact of the building envelope rules in contextual districts on a number of recent residential developments.
