That didn't take long. A few short months after Philadelphia enacted the long-overdue replacement to its antiquated 1962 zoning code, the City Council is already considering changes to the document, including increasing parking requirements.
A bill making its way through Philadelphia's City Council is just one of several changes being considered for the city's brand new zoning code, which was enacted in August after a four year, nearly $2 million effort, reports Holly Otterbein.
Introduced by Councilman Brian O'Neill, on behalf of Council President Darrell Clarke, the proposal "would attack a serious problem: the shortage of parking spaces in neighborhoods including Fishtown and Fairmount," says Clarke. "Critics argue that it's too soon to change the new zoning code and that it was revamped to keep projects from needlessly stalling."
"Council has proposed other zoning changes recently, but Clarke's idea has taken the most heat," writes Otterbein.
"This does not bode well," says Harris Steinberg, executive director of PennPraxis. "Council had their fingers in the old zoning code so deep that nothing could get done, and that's one of the reasons why we had to have a new code."
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