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

The City should establish or encourage the establishment of a city‐wide car sharing
program. Car sharing reduces the need for personal vehicle ownership and the demand for
parking. It also stands to save residents money and would allow local businesses and non‐
profits to economize on their fleets.
4. Land use: make the best of the existing built environment.
The goal of post‐peak land use planning with regard to transportation is bringing daily
necessities closer to where people live, so that biking, walking and transit become more
feasible and automobile trips become shorter. This can be done by facilitating changes in
land use toward increased density and mixed use. Since the built environment changes
rather slowly, the priority within the first five years is to make the best of what we have, by
starting the process of changing how existing structures can be used.
As outlined in the previous chapter on Land Use, one obvious improvement would be to
encourage even more mixed uses in our zoning laws, making it possible for small
businesses to locate closer to where their customers live, thus reducing the need for
automobile trips and facilitating walking, biking, and public transit. Another improvement
would be to allow more flexibility for home owners to divide up an existing building into
smaller units, to add wings, or to add granny flats, in order to create additional dwelling
units. 172 These measures increase population density, and may meet a growing need for
fairly inexpensive housing close to activity nodes, as more people want to live closer to
where they work and shop. Besides facilitating walking and biking, increasing density is a
very important aspect of making public transportation cost‐effective and attractive for both
riders and providers. To start that process, community involvement and support are
necessary. Ideally, the process of allowing a more flexible use of the existing built
environment should be propelled from the “bottom up.”
172 Permitting granny flats in residential districts has been a source of much local controversy. Please see the
Housing chapter for further discussion of granny flats.
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