Blurry Vision: Toward Informed Visions in Richardson’s Planning

Over the course of a few months, Richardson through its Plan Commission and City Council, have had to decide the fate of the vision of the Interurban District just north of Main Street. A repeating pattern has emerged. A pattern repeated so much that it should now be considered adopted city policy. That new implicit policy is that our mutually agreed upon and adopted visions, plans, and zoning should be abandoned and altered whenever a developer asks for an exception. This policy stance was never announced or vetted by the council or the general public. I think this is dangerous to the future success of the City. I want to address why I think it happens. In a future installment I wish to discuss how to fix it.

Source: Main Street/Central Form Based Code, City of Richardson, Altered by the author.

I believe the following is true: It is now an indisputable fact that when Richardson sets a plan, policy and zoning ordinance down that it almost never draws a line and sticks to it. On far more occasions than not, the City Plan Commission and the Richardson City Council will ignore its own planning and zoning work and grant significant, if not egregious exceptions, to both visions and zoning. This has happened in multiple places throughout the city. It will happen again. It is happening as I write this. For the record, I think this is a betrayal of the implicit agreement with the citizens, and the stakeholders.

All of this is a bit ironic. Richardson has an informal slogan, “The Richardson Way,” to promote success. What is “The Richardson Way?” It is, “Plan the Work. Work the Plan.” The city (with a previous council) had brochures printed that featured it and a sign that said, “The Richardson Way” hung in the (now demolished) Mayor’s office. It would be more appropriate to say, “Plan the Work. Ignore the Plan” or “Plan the work. Get worked over.”

The issue is far greater than the fate of one small district. This pattern has repeated itself in so many places in our city over so many years and with many different members of our city council that it would be hard to believe that a person, company or entity investing their resources into Richardson where their success depends on adherence to the vision, zoning, and plan should trust that the City will not alter it at any time. 

We have Concepts of a Plan

There seems to be a short memory as to why “study areas” and “reinvestment areas” were studied in the first place. They were under performing and it was generally recognized that their development patterns are, in great measure, what led to their decline. Ignoring our planning sets the community on a path of forgetting the past and then being doomed to repeat it. It can be strongly argued that we are doing so now.

We have been ignoring our planning and study for a very long time. A series of drive thru restaurants and typical retail strips, all of which required special permits or zoning changes, were passed near the corner of Belt Line and Plano Roads. Some developers stated the purpose was to subdivide properties with the implicit understanding they would be sold. Some involved pole signs. Multiple studies from Richardson going back 20 years stated that property fracturing and the difficulty of assembly afterward is a contributor to decline and significant barrier in recovery from decline. (Examples: Tri-City Retail Study, 2002 and “Metroplex Dallas Inner-Ring Suburbs,” Chapter 9 from Regenerating Older Suburbs.)

Previous city councils realized that separate legal rights of signage meant that multiplication of pole signs not only lead to increasing visual pollution but acted as a barrier to property assemblage and redevelopment. They removed those signs being allowed “by right” and they would frequently reject them when proposed. However, in recent years, several have been added to the Belt Line and Plano Road intersection because, “We already have these signs” without remembering that the intent was to curtail their infestation. Nonetheless, the Richardson City Council, under the Voelker era of Mayorship, not only repeated these mistakes but encouraged them. Now, as if by magic, that intersection and surrounding properties are slated to become a reinvestment study area in our new Comprehensive Plan.

In the case of the Interurban District, multiple cases have come forward that directly conflict with that specific vision. By “directly conflict” I do not mean that they merely want a zoning exception because there is some minor technical such as being a few parking spaces short. I mean that these exceptions require a zoning change because they are not at all intended to be allowed under the intent of the district. The argument at the level of the City Council then becomes whether or not to stick to the “vision,” whether the exception harms that vision, or just abandoning it all together.

Mark Steger, perhaps the best commentator about the bones of the City of Richardson and whom every elected, appointed official, and citizen should read frequently, has written about these cases:
https://www.marksteger.com/2022/06/bad-things-come-in-threes-city-council.html
https://www.marksteger.com/2024/08/council-recap-imagine-sky-full-of-signs.html
https://www.marksteger.com/2024/08/a-different-proposal-for-form-based.html
https://www.marksteger.com/2024/03/council-recap-outdoor-storage-is-new.html

How do we get these district visions? 

When the 2009 Comprehensive Plan was passed it included six study zones. These areas were considered lagging behind, declining and/or lacked significant recent investment. Part of the process for planning, studying and rezoning them was to create a “vision” for that area or sub-areas contained within them.

Incidentally, not only does Richardson abandon plans habitually, it does not finish its planning. Only four of the six reinvestment zones were studied and zoned since 2009. Rather than add them into the new Comprehensive Plan update, one of the two not studied is being excluded despite still being in need of study, planning and rezoning. (That would be the Promenade-Coit Road-DalRich area.)


After public and stakeholder input, these ”visions” get proposed to the City Council by staff and consultants. At some time into the process the City Council spends time wordsmithing them and then that word smithed result becomes the vision statement. After the council has changed the wording, I have never seen the council insist on public feedback to ask, “Do you think we got this right?” There is no feedback loop. Then these can be attached to the zoning ordinance for the district and available documents. So after the staff and consultants – allegedly – incorporate public input, the proposed vision is manicured without any checks and balances and then… that is that.

In the case of the Interurban District, the zoning ordinance states the vision is to, “create an edgy, mixed use district built upon the existing bones of the district, focusing on adaptive reuse of existing buildings and targeted infill development.”

Our initial Main Street/75 planning report from 2012 is 298 pages long. I have read the whole thing albeit around when it was adopted. (Whew!) I’ve read most of the zoning ordinances based on these reports.  So my conclusions here are based on those and from watching (more recently) a few years of city council decisions in these districts.

Before I take in all of that background, discuss issues and solutions let us recap a summary:

• Richardson spends time and money re-planning districts in the city.
• This includes citizen and stakeholder input.
• It then adopts visions for those districts.
• It passes zoning ordinances for those districts and produces marketing and descriptive materials about the desires and vision.
• Occasionally, it gets requests from property owners or businesses to grant significant exceptions to these zoning ordinances.
• Many of the purchases of the properties requesting these changes occur after these changes and visions are in place. In other words, the new owners knew that these standards were in place when they bought their property.
• Most of the time these exceptions are contrary to the vision and intent of that district.
• The City Council and City Plan Commission almost always grants these exceptions.
• These exceptions, more often than not, do long term damage the city’s productive interests and goals in these zones and areas.

Getting to Why?

The main defect in all of this and how to solve it all revolves around the same thing.  That is this:

Why?

There is next to nothing stating why we are doing any of this. Why plan a district? Why change the zoning? Why is it stagnant? Why should we stick to it?

There are lots of Hows and Whats. How we collected input. What we are studying.

Then because there is no sense of why we are doing this it becomes unclear the purpose and value of certain choices such as visions or zoning regulations.

Don’t believe me? Watch any city council meeting or CPC meeting where a proposal contradicts the vision. I challenge you to find any discussion on why a vision, or purpose or regulation is there. You will usually find no such depth and if you do it is quickly glossed over.

Council members and CPC members almost never ask why something is the way it is. “Why is XYZ the standard here that the applicant wants to change? What does that standard accomplish?”

It does happen on a rare occasion but then the staff answers in a manner that does not strike to the heart of why we changed the zoning ordinance from one thing to another in the first place. This has led to council members to make arguments based on what they think and believe in the moment and with no input on why these regulations or standards are there.

That is the fundamental problem. The why of things in the hierarchy of our planning and goals is not articulated let along agreed upon. The whys are simply absent.

Without the why both regulations in these districts and the why of visions, then these visions and regulations can seem like arbitrary choices. But they are by and large NOT arbitrary. The regulations are often inserted for time tested technical reasons. Thinking of them as arbitrary leads council members to say things like, “I am skeptical as to whether this is the right vision so I am inclined to grant this exception.” Without knowing why the regulation is what it is, then that kind of comment is completely unsubstantiated.

You might not yet be convinced so let me give a concrete example from an actual City Council zoning deliberation.

At its February 26, 2024 meeting, the City Council approved permanent outdoor storage of construction materials in a parking area of a building in the Interurban District. When asked what materials these were the answer came back, "It could be lumber, it could be steel, it could be aluminum, it could be, he does a lot of concrete."

Apparently, this is, “edgy, mixed-use district built upon the existing bones of the district.”

Construction materials next to the sidewalk... Yes, you heard that right.

One council member said, "Outdoor storage is allowed by right. I think this is a tremendous enhancement to what's there now. And I think slightly moving the storage from where it is currently allowed by right to another part of the property is not problematic from my standpoint. We're going to put eight foot shrubs that are going to screen this, and putting up a nice fence."

Outdoor Storage is the new Hip (Concept Plan)
"By right” storage location in red and
proposed location in orange.
Source: City of Richardson

That “outdoor storage is allowed by right” is not technically incorrect. But it is highly misleading and leads to incorrect conclusions. Before coming to these conclusions someone should have asked a why question or two. “Why is this regulation like it is? What is it intended to accomplish?”

Asking that question or one like it leads directly into a statement as to the purpose of the vision and the regulation itself. Without it the council member is flying blind.

Asking why leads to the following. Let us ask, “Why are the regulations like they are in a district like this?”

Answer: It is more complete to say that most allowable activities are allowed BEHIND the building frontage including outdoor storage. Most structural activities (such as building outdoor storage) are prohibited between the building frontage and the public space. (i.e. between the frontage and the sidewalk).

So the difference is WHERE the activities are allowed. Most allowed activities are allowed BEHIND the building frontage and most activities are prohibited IN FRONT OF the building frontage. Outdoor storage is allowed “by right” only as a consequence of WHERE structural changes are allowed; not WHAT they are. Thus, saying it is “allowed by right” and only that, resulted in a fundamental misunderstanding of regulation.

You can probably guess my next question. Why is where these occur the important factor? Because the purpose of this type of zoning is to build, over time, public space where people want to be and that they can comfortably move through. What makes urban places where people want to be are “the edges.” That includes an, “edgy, mixed use district built upon … existing bones.”

What makes up the edge and how the private interfaces with the public is a skill of urban design.

The public realm is forever for all citizens. Every architect or developer who designs a building that shapes the public realm should recognize his or her responsibility to contribute positively to the common good… One distinction between the urban designer and the painter or sculptor working alone is that the urban designer never starts with a truly blank canvas or plain piece of marble; there are always existing conditions that constrain and unlock the artistic response, as each successive round of work builds upon the layers that precede it.
-- Victor Dover and John Massengale, Street Design : The Secret to Great Cities and Towns, John Wiley & Sons, 2013

That regulation regarding the WHERE is about "the existing conditions that constrain" so that "each successive round of work builds upon the layers that precede it." It isn't about nudging a bit of something that is allowed by right.

Let’s look at some examples of the public realm including private-public interfaces that either have or have not taken these principles into account.

The Great, The Good, and The Ugly (some from Richardson and some not.)
You can click each to see a larger picture.

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These are designated (a) through (i) going left to right and top to bottom starting with the upper left.
First Row - The Great
Second Row - The Good
Third Row - The Ugly
a, b, and c courtesy of Victor Dover, et al.

(a) Tenth Street, Port Royal, South Carolina. Prior to 1995, the road was wide and treeless, and the lots were largely vacant. The town swapped some of the right of-way … and now a walkable, treelined street.
(b) Steenstraat, Bruges, Belgium.
(c) Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, New York. Rowhouses and their stoops shaping street space. In New York, houses are set back six feet to make room for the stoop, but stoops are allowed to extend beyond that and into the public sidewalk
(d) Belt+Main, Richardson. (Not yet open.) On the left planters form a potential secured place for table seating and outside activity. The middle is a sidewalk and the right provides trees as a street buffer. This is excellent framing of public and private and maybe the best in Richardson.
(e) Jasmine Café and Market, Sherman Street, Richardson. Rather than parking in front, the building is pushed to the street with parking in back. Notice the seating is up above the sidewalk making both patrons and pedestrians comfortable. In the background you can see it has spawned a second narrow building which is an example of what is supposed to happen in an urban environment.
(f) Al Bhagdadi, Greenville Ave, Richardson. You are asking why I included this picture. I did because this is a great example of an existing old building up to the street reused. What makes it The Good is that you can envision the sidewalk rebuilt and front facades of these buildings improved and now without tearing anything down the existing fabric is connected to the street.
(g) Outdoor Storage is Hip and Cool, Bishop Street, Richardson. This is the result of not understanding and implementing these principles. Do you want to be there? Do you want to build next to this? No fence and bushes yet but we do have construction materials by the sidewalk so one out of three isn’t bad.
(h) Main and Greenville, Richardson. This is an example of a public improvement in an urban area that is supposed to be walkable but is instead made more uncomfortable. It went from good to worse. A older building that was built properly to the sidewalk with slant in parking was demolished to create a right turn land (not pedestrian friendly) and create a gap. It feels hot and exposed. There is not reason to stop at this park.
(i) Scottsdale and Floyd, Richardson. ADA Gone Wild. The street was reconstructed along with the sidewalks. In making it ADA compliant no care was taken to make it friendly. This is a high use pedestrian corridor where kids on bikes, parents with strollers and wheelchairs now have to make four right turns to cross where before they had to make zero.

So now we have visual examples of good and awful design much of which is predicated on WHERE stuff is.

What Why Gives Us

Now let’s evaluate the reasoning in the council member’s statement with this new found understanding.

The council member says further, “…slightly moving the storage from where it is … to another part of the property is not problematic. …. shrubs that are going to screen this, and putting up a nice fence”

Oh yes, it is problematic. It isn’t “slightly moving it.” With understanding where things occur is a structurally important element of urban design, then allowing concrete, steel pipe and who knows what to simply run up to the sidewalk is EXACTLY what one is NOT supposed to do in an urban district. In fact, the regulation is designed to prevent precisely that kind of thing. This is not true merely in our Interurban District but any district whether that district is here, El Paso, Des Moines, Iowa, or Takayama, Japan.

So knowing the Why leads to a completely different understanding of what is important and how to interpret the same facts. Instead, we are currently witnessing a tug of war over interpretation of vision statements which is untethered from greater contexts or any nuanced understanding of the purposes what all this darned stuff we are doing.

The Council voted for this 5-2. The two dissenters did so based on the protest of a property owner who had purchased a property and moved their business based upon the vision. In other words, a property and business owner with a current operating commitment was, more or less, told that his or her investment, that happened to be in line with the full spirit and intent of the district, is less important than a future business that is entirely contrary to that vision and intent.

Who is going to put good urban investment in ANY district in Richardson if plans can be given up so easily?

So what we have is the city council spending a significant amount of effort discussing irrelevant and unsubstantial things. Where should a dumpster go? Could we have different building materials? (which cannot be regulated by cities beyond building code.) Could we have a different fence? And in one past case, can we put a mural on the side of a car dealership? All… completely irrelevant to future success, vision and attempting to avoid the degradation of the past.

The conclusion here is this. We need to incorporate why into our planning and visions then we can have real and informed discussions and deliberations about the direction of our community, what that direction means, and how we can more easily avoid cycles of decline.

So a major cause of our throwing away the work and stakeholder input of these visions and our direction as a city comes down to not understanding why. Articulating that clearly can lead to stakeholders, citizens and the City having a truly shared vision that they will uphold and defend.

So how do we do that?

This is Part 1. In the next part, I will talk about how we get the ideas of why into the planning and visioning process and documents and connect it to all of the other parts so that our community can truly have a shared vision.

Thanks for reading.

Special Thanks to:
Victor Dover, FAICP, CNU Fellow, and of Dover-Kohl Partners
The staff of the McDermott Library at the University of Texas at Dallas who went above and beyond the call of duty.
Several planners, and other people "in the business" whose input I greatly appreciate.