Neighborhood Planning in Louisville

 University of Louisville Department of Urban and Public Affairs 

Charles Ames, Charlotte Caldwell, Jeremy Chesler, Mark R. Long, Rob Monsma, Pierce Tomoki Stevenson, & Jennifer Wilson

Dr. Kelly Kinahan, AICP

The Capstone Studio 2021 was tasked with analyzing the current neighborhood planning process and implementation in Louisville, Ky., and forming recommendations from our findings. We used racial equity as the main analytical filter for the information gathered from our research.

A message from Capstone 2021 students:

• Black and other non-White people, as well as people who don’t own property or run businesses, are outnumbered or under-represented throughout the planning process.
• The team producing this report is predominantly White, which reflects both the University of Louisville’s and the urban planning profession’s status as predominantly White institutions.
• The process of racial equity requires those most affected by structural racism to be meaningfully involved in the creation and implementation of the institutional policies and practices that affect their lives.
• We call on the UofL’s Department of Urban and Public Affairs and Louisville Metro Government to redouble their efforts to recruit and hire planners who reflect the racial and ethnic composition of Louisville.
• We hope and believe that this report and StoryMap can serve as a foundation to inform future efforts led by the people most affected by racial inequity.
• We are grateful for the diverse mix of people who helped us and informed this document. We thank them for their time and contributions.

Questions to be answered by Capstone Studio research:

1. How do the current neighborhood planning process and implementation of neighborhood plans in Louisville align with the values of racial equity and social justice?  
2. How do other cities place racial equity and social justice at the center of their neighborhood planning processes? 
3. How can Louisville’s neighborhood planning process better align with the values of racial equity and social justice? 

Process Overview:

• Auditing existing neighborhood plans with a focus on how existing non-residential policies and recommendations may be promoting inequitable outcomes.  
• Analyzing the existing neighborhood planning process in Louisville, with a focus on internal use/staff review and plan implementation. 
• Examining the neighborhood planning process in selected U.S. cities. 
• Creating a policy document with a series of recommendations to help reorient the neighborhood planning process in Louisville towards racial equity and social justice.

Project Framing:​

Louisville’s neighborhoods have evolved over generations. Some have thrived while others have struggled and languished. The reasons for these disparate outcomes are many but the inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities have devastated historically marginalized communities, particularly Louisville’s majority-Black neighborhoods. Our goal is to shine a light on these systemic injustices in the context of neighborhood planning and provide a framework of solutions our community can use to create a more just future for all its residents.  

“As an outcome, we achieve racial equity when race no longer determines one’s socioeconomic outcomes; when everyone has what they need to thrive, no matter where they live. As a process, we apply racial equity when those most impacted by structural racial inequity are meaningfully involved in the creation and implementation of the institutional policies and practices that impact their lives”​ -(Center For Social Inclusion, 2007)

• ​Place​
• Population/Community​
• Economics​
• Services

“A combination of geographical boundaries, ethnic or cultural characteristics of the inhabitants, psychological unity, or concentrated use of an area’s facilities” (Park & Rogers, 2015) ​

Neighborhood as Place:

• The Neighborhood Unit emerged as an urban planning concept in the first half of the 20th century.
• Most of Louisville's currently defined Neighborhoods were established during this timeframe.
• 2,000-5,000 people within a five-minute walk of school or business center ​.
• Defined boundaries​.​
• Exclusionary zoning, racist deed covenants, redlining and other exclusionary practices created segregated neighborhoods leading to exponential inequities between Black and White areas.

“The unjust social burdens of ‘dark ghettos’ are mirrored by the unjust advantages conferred upon White neighborhoods of affluence.” ​-Goetz, Williams, Damiano, Whiteness and Urban Planning, 2020

Neighborhood as Population:

• Twentieth century planning separated populations by race and economic class​.
• Single-family zoning is often used to limit density and access to housing by lower income, Black and other marginalized groups. ​
• Residents hold a mental map of their neighborhood, not always reflective of official boundaries.​

​

Neighborhood as Stage for Economic Activity:​

• Minimum population necessary to support business​.
• Economic stimulus must match the needs of the residents not the desire of developers​.
• Investment can have citywide impact.​
• Citywide economic growth is not enough to help all neighborhoods.

"Unlike a body of water, a rising economic tide does not lift all boats. Rising economic tides lift nearby boats." (Galster, G., & Tatian, P. 2009. Modeling Housing Appreciation Dynamics in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods.)

Synthesis of findings and trends​

1. Plans were not created with racial equity in mind – and do not consider how burdens may be sustained disproportionately by Black and other historically marginalized communities.
2. Plans often don’t consider effects on other neighborhoods or larger county-wide development.
3. Plans that discuss community vitality and economic development have a top-down approach.
4. Prior land uses and zoning dictate future land uses and plan recommendations. 
5. Mobility sections do not focus on transportation needs and impacts on Black people and other marginalized communities or disinvested residents.
6. Community involvement and engagement varies widely across plans and often was not documented. 
7. Some plans are written in technical terms without consideration of a wide audience. An example that was clearly written with readability in mind was the  James Taylor-Jacob School Neighborhood Plan , facilitated by Center for Neighborhoods staff.
8. Some plans downzone a large number of parcels, resulting in the inequitable outcomes of wealth preservation and exclusion. Examples are the Glenview and Mockingbird Valley plans.

Recommendation from Existing Plan Audit:

Metro staff, consultants, community groups, and neighborhoods should use existing tools as part of an internal review framework to orient neighborhood planning around racial equity. 

To better understand how neighborhood planning is done in other cities, we analyzed the planning processes in Seattle and Indianapolis, and compared them to the process in Louisville.

The below chart outlines the key differences in neighborhood planning practices between these cities.

Seattle Lessons Learned 

• Seattle’s process resulted in concrete benefits
• In addition to the implementation of recommendations, the City Auditor found other benefits that accrued to the neighborhoods
• Seattle’s Neighborhood Planning Office’s adopted an approach of a “self-organizing” model for neighborhoods and a city commitment to building a “very elaborate web of trust”
• Some challenges of Seattle’s collaborative, bottom-up approach: failure to establish clear expectations, overlapping planning areas resulted in conflicts, and a lack of consistent framework

Indianapolis Lessons Learned

• Regularly scheduled updates and accountability
• QoL planning in Indianapolis ensures that plans are more action-oriented and have a broader purpose than the typical elements of a neighborhood planning with a focus on equitable access to resources
• The implementation of recommendations from Certified Plans is not possible without the robust network of Community Development Corporations (CDCs)

Interview Process:​

Seventeen people were interviewed, contributing approximately 20 hours of material​

Process

           Through a series of interviews, we analyzed the initiation, execution, and implementation phases of the neighborhood planning process in Louisville. The purpose of these interviews was to examine the internal use and staff review process for neighborhood plans within LMG and the plan implementation process within and outside LMG. We also sought to understand how positionality within or outside the neighborhood planning process informed the perspective and understanding of the interviewees in respect to the process as a whole. Given the variety of actors engaged in neighborhood planning, the Capstone Studio interviewed people from the following groups of stakeholders to obtain a diverse perspective of both the neighborhood planning process and implementation: Metro planning staff, employees of other public agencies, neighborhood residents, non-profit representatives, former planning commissioners, and real estate developers. Questions varied slightly based on the interviewee but generally focused on the following topics:

• contextualizing their role in planning and implementation,
• what they felt the role of neighborhood planning should be,
• how plans are used in city governance,
• effectiveness of current planning process,
• institutional knowledge gained from participating in the process and implementation of plans, and
• recommendations for increasing equity in the process and outcomes.

Interviews were recorded using the Microsoft Teams video conferencing platform and generally lasted one hour with a few exceptions when time allowed. Recordings supplemented the interviewer’s notes to produce a summary of each, which informs the findings and recommendations. All interviewees consented to the inclusion of the interview content in the report and Story Map without their identities being revealed.

Key Findings and Recommendations from Interviews

(1)  Documents without actions: Interviewees consistently responded that the document produced from the neighborhood planning process focuses too much on goals and visions without actionable steps that either the neighborhood, LMG, non-profits, or developers find useful. The result is a lengthy process with the most common outcome being the plan sits on the shelf although this varies depending on the material resources available to the neighborhood or actions taken by their Metro Council representative to implement legislative elements such as area-wide rezoning.

(2)  Lack of Representation on Boards/Commissions: The process of appointing citizens to both the Planning Commission and other community advisory boards tends to favor private business interests over neighborhood residents. The balance of the Planning Commission does not prevent implicit conflicts of interests from undercutting adopted Neighborhood Plans. Appointed boards do not reflect the diversity of experience that exists in Louisville.

• Interviewees recommended restructuring the process by which citizens are appointed to Community Advisory Boards and the Planning Commission to reflect the diversity of experiences within the community and limiting the exposure of these boards to conflicts of interest.

(3)  Inequitable and Limited Funding: The distribution of Neighborhood Development Funds (NDF) is equal rather than equitable meaning the allocation does not account for the greater needs of places disproportionately affected by structural racism and disinvestment and some funds go unspent where they could benefit other districts to a greater extent. NDF funds are also too small to implement large scale planning projects, yet they are among the few funding streams available for plan implementation. 

• Interviewees recommended restructuring the distribution of NDF funds based on need (e.g. more funding to districts with higher poverty rates or lower median household incomes) to create equitable outcomes and financing mechanisms for areas most in need.

(4)  Siloed Public Agencies: Public agencies are too siloed from one another both in the production of the plan document and implementation of recommendations. In particular, the lack of a relationship with JCPS leaves a void of young voices being involved in the process and leads to inequitable documents.

• Interviewees recommended identifying representatives from a variety of governmental agencies who can make themselves available to participate in the planning process to produce stronger connections between communities and public agencies.

(5)  Community Organizing: The process needs to be more focused on capacity building and more robust community organizing so that more neighborhood residents know how to use planning documents, engage LMG agencies, and lobby their councilperson in accordance with the plan.

• Interviewees recommended establishing a robust pre-planning process with organizational partners that creates a mechanism for citizens to guide the process for their community from inception, to plan production, and implementation. Allocate funding for citizens to participate in pre-planning activities including community organizing.

(6)  More frequent updates: Plans need to be updated more frequently and LMG needs to allocate money towards a permanent or semi-permanent presence within each community.

(7)  Space for communication between residents and developers: The planning process needs to produce an opportunity for creating dialogue between residents and developers to find common interests, ascertain a tangible vision of what the community wants, identify economic development opportunities, and build trust between both parties.

(8)  Request for Proposal (RFP) process: The RFP process used to solicit consultants to create neighborhood plans needs to be reformatted to incorporate community input and choice in how the process is run. The influence of private planning firms on producing plans leads to planning documents that have no teeth and benefit consultants over the community. Documents are too lengthy and often inaccessible to community residents because of overly technical language or formats that are not user-friendly.

• Use the RFP process to increase the percentage of the overall planning budget required to be spent on Community Engagement.

(9)  Limitations of top-down frameworks: Pre-determined frameworks such as required elements and comprehensive plan’s CHASE (Connected, Healthy, Authentic, Sustainable, Equitable) principles are not always context sensitive or do not produce actionable outcomes. The top-down approach leaves little room for the neighborhood to determine what is included in the process and final document.

• Interviewees recommended allowing residents to have more control over determining the process and included elements. Retain consultants who can facilitate capacity building, robust community engagement strategies, technical support, and create networking opportunities between neighborhoods, organizations, and private investors to address the needs and recommendations within the produced plan. 

(10) Learn from existing processes: Recent processes that have broken down should be evaluated as an example of how increased neighborhood control can benefit the neighborhood, consultants, and LMG.

The interactive map below allows users to see how neighborhood planning impacts zoning within their community. The Capstone Studio developed a model (see below for details) in ArcGIS which extracts parcels within each neighborhood where the most recent zoning prior to adoption of the neighborhood plan (left of the slider) differs from zoning as of January 2021 (right of the slider). Neighborhoods outlined in red indicate those audited by the Capstone Studio.

This tool creates one method of evaluating how neighborhoods have used the planning process to implement rezoning recommendations, oftentimes through a process called areawide rezoning. This process allows neighborhoods to work with Louisville Metro Government to rezone part or all of the study area included in the neighborhood plan. While some neighborhoods used this process for explicit urban design goals within their plans, others used it to downzone multiple parcels to essentially exclude further housing development. Our audit found several examples where plans called for rezoning parcels from R4 to R1 which resulted in the minimum developable area to increase from 9,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet. We include an example of how many additional homes have been developed within this 31,000 square feet difference below and cite this as an example of how neighborhood planning has been used in Louisville to exclusionary and inequitable ends.

Neighborhoods outlined in red indicate those audited by the Capstone Studio. Some parcels include parentheses in their zoning code to indicate they are within an overlay district.

Use the links below for more information on the impacts of racism on planning and zoning and current reform efforts and the Land Development Code in full.

Metro staff should devote resources to capacity building and shift decision-making power to communities, changing from a top-down to a community-driven approach.   

Why: The legacy and present-day effects of systemic racism directly shapes the neighborhood planning process through the continued exclusion of predominantly Black and marginalized neighborhoods from decision-making power.

How: 

1) Reorient the process to focus on community organizing and capacity building.

• Dedicate staff and resources to building relationships with neighborhoods. For example, in Seattle’s original program, the city assigned project managers to neighborhoods, created an interdepartmental team to coordinate funding and guidance, and established a city-wide advisory committee with representatives from different neighborhoods.

2) Increase the flexibility of the planning process and plan document to better meet the needs of marginalized and historically disinvested neighborhoods.

• For example, in Indianapolis, Quality of Life plans offer an action-oriented approach that covers elements like housing, health care, crime, education and childcare that typical neighborhood planning skips.
• Incorporate specific steps the community needs to take to create assets they identify as critical to community development. Create connections between the community and organizations who can help implement the plan and address community needs. 

Metro staff, consultants, community groups, and neighborhoods should monitor the progress of, evaluate the outcomes of, and more frequently update plans.  

Why: Communities are only involved sporadically in the planning process, with no real monitoring or feedback loops in place to determine if a plan achieved desired outcomes or if the plan has resulted in inequitable outcomes for a neighborhood. The evolving needs of neighborhoods require plans be more adaptable. 

How:    

1) Neighborhood defined measures of success should be part of part of the planning process and these should be used to guide implementation and evaluation of a plan.

• Mutually agreed upon accountability measures between the NPAG and Metro should be incorporated into the planning process.   

2) Use the growing network of Community Development Corporations in Louisville as on-the-ground implementation partners and as a network to monitor plan implementation progress. For example, in Indianapolis, Quality of Life plans are reviewed quarterly through a neighborhood summit hosted by CDCs, which is a useful accountability mechanism.   

3) Create a more formalized internal review processes to understand the impact of neighborhood plans. For example, in Seattle the Office of City Auditor conducted an audit of the planning process and created a scoring system to see how well the plans had been implemented.

Metro should increase representation of community members and people outside of real estate development on the Planning Commission, on the Board of Zoning Adjustment, and in Neighborhood Plan Advisory Groups.  

Why: To balance community interests with the disproportionate power of private investment and development interests; Planning Commission’s requirement that members have relevant professional experience leads to under-representation on the commission.  

How:    

1) Ensure citizen members represent historically marginalized and under-represented communities. Use racial justice guidelines in appointing members to the Planning Commission or other boards.

2) Establish a program for pro bono and student public service hours legal representation for neighborhoods and community-based organizations in collaboration with Brandeis School of Law oriented to land use, zoning, and planning. 

Metro staff, consultants, community groups, and neighborhoods should use neighborhood planning to strengthen connections between Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), neighborhoods, and Metro Government. 

Why: Schools are a foundational part of neighborhoods and currently JCPS has minimal, if any, involvement in the neighborhood planning process. Classroom involvement in the planning process would produce an intergenerational knowledge base. 

How:    

1) Require at least one meeting centered on schools during the neighborhood planning process and encourage inclusion of school personnel, teachers, parents on advisory group.

2) Encourage JCPS hire a planner to act as liaison between the school district, neighborhoods and Metro Government. 

3) Incorporate the neighborhood planning process into the JCPS curriculum for in-person or e-school experiences.  Past Capstone Studio projects  (2018 and 2019) could be used as a baseline for creating lesson plans to integrate planning concepts. 

Metro staff, consultants, community groups, and neighborhoods should use existing tools as part of an internal review framework to orient neighborhood planning around racial equity. 

Why:  There are no policies or internal guidelines for reviewing plans to help correct bias and consider unintended consequences or who may be impacted by proposed changes; discretionary authority for reviewing plans resides solely in the hands of the government.

How:    

1) Build from the racial equity framework developed by the Capstone Studio as a means of ensuring the planning process is oriented towards racial equity.

Conclusion

We’d like to close by returning to the basic question underpinning any effort to make this process more equitable: What and who are neighborhood plans for? We’ve looked for answers in a lot of places, but the best source is the people themselves. We should be sensitive to the times and trust people to know what they want and need. Right now, a lot of people say they want greater influence over how their neighborhoods are developed and who’s doing it. The neighborhood-planning process could be the framework for people, who normally lack access to higher levels of power, to find and exert some of that influence. This will take time. It’s going to spark conflicts and it’s going to try everyone’s patience at times. But the current process already does that, and too often leaves too many people unsatisfied. This is difficult work, and so we wish good luck to everyone trying to make the system more equitable and effective.