Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

4. Add an Activity Nodes overlay to the UDO.
In the interest of ultimately providing all neighborhoods with essential services within
walking distance, the City should start with a nodal development overlay as a pilot.
Standards for such an overlay should be structured to foster the essential characteristics of
pedestrian‐friendly, human scale development:
• Design elements that support pedestrian environments and encourage
transit use, walking, and bicycling;
• Transit access within walking distance (generally ¼ mile) of anywhere
within the node;
• Mixed uses and a commercial core so that essential services are within
walking distance;
• Parks and other public and private open spaces within walking distance; and
• A mix of housing types and residential densities.
5. Implement regional planning: Toward a Unified Comprehensive Land Use and
Transportation Plan.
As we revise the use of the existing built environment, we must simultaneously plan for the
shape of the future built environment. In a post‐peak era, we should be aiming for
development patterns that lead to higher population density in areas designated as activity
nodes, and that foster mixed use, walking, biking, and transit use. (See Transportation
chapter). Right now, transportation planning is largely separate from land use planning
and land use planning is a largely self‐contained effort: Indiana University, Monroe County,
and the City of Bloomington all draft and implement their plans independent of each other.
Without coordinated planning, there is little hope for a comprehensive vision to guide
development as transportation fuels become more expensive and are not as readily
available. However, such cooperation is precisely what is called for in the City’s GPP. The
GPP directs the City to “[s]tudy the feasibility of creating a consolidated planning
department for the City and County as a method of improving planning and development
management .” 140
140 2002 Growth Policies Plan, Implementation Measure ACC‐3, p. 22.
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Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force
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