The city of Atlanta is updating its Comprehensive Development Plan, the sprawling policy document that will determine how the city can be built out for years to come — and officials want your help.
Called “Plan A,” the state-mandated Comprehensive Development Plan translates the overarching Atlanta City Design Plan crafted in 2017 into actionable policy goals that are being incorporated into the city’s massive zoning code overhaul, which is currently underway. Atlanta adopted Plan A in October 2021 and is now working on the five-year update.
The actual zoning code, last updated over 40 years ago, dictates how public and private entities can create housing, expand transportation infrastructure, and otherwise reimagine our built environment.
If it sounds like the city is developing a plan within a plan, that’s because it essentially is. Tim Keane, Atlanta’s planning commissioner until Jahnee Prince took over in late 2022, put it this way in a 2021 interview with Atlanta Civic Circle:
The way we’re approaching reform is based on Atlanta City Design, the document that sets the framework for everything else. Everything else is a reflection of that. Period. So now the [Comprehensive Design Plan or Plan A] is supposed to be a reflection of that, and basically puts in place general policies about land use and zoning. It’s not the law itself. CDP is the state-mandated requirements that set forth policies that then become law.
So Atlanta City Design, that’s the framework and the guiding document. Then you have CDP, which is one of a number of different policies that the city adopts related to land use and zoning and transportation. And then the third part is the actual [zoning] ordinances, which is kind of the implementation — how you actually put those ideas into law.
State law requires Georgia cities to update their respective Comprehensive Development Plans every five years. That includes Atlanta’s Plan…
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