Our zoning code needs an upgrade. Its last overhaul was in 1947 by noted St. Louis villain Harland Bartholomew. It has density maximums and parking minimums. That is bass ackwards. Year after year we lament St. Louis’ population decline. I don’t recall anyone ever throwing a party to celebrate an increase in the number of parking spaces. The code has height maximums where would one more story really be the end of the world? It makes some lots undevelopable due to an arbitrary minimum lot sizes. Sometimes it’s easier to build low productivity auto-oriented places than the traditional productive places that make St. Louis a city. The antiqued regulations haven’t keep up with modern building techniques, financing, uses, sustainability goals, and preferences as well as drive up rents and slow projects getting out of the ground.
In fact, a lot of the existing human-scaled buildings are illegal under the current zoning code if proposed to be built today. Our zoning code should make it easy to build places like those that are loved and endure and make it harder for the types of places that make our city more financially fragile, dangerous, polluted, and ugly.
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