Revise the current fiscal impact model (anticipated tax revenue vs. cost of additional services) for development to ensure that it more closely reflects the actual costs of new development.

Neighborhood Planners in the DPD will work with the neighbors to create a character guidebook.

Support community gardening programs and create an Urban Garden and Organic Farming Initiative, offering training in urban farming and help transform vacant urban parcels into community gardens.

*GrowMemphis’ primary work is aimed at training new community gardeners to transform vacant parcels into sustainable community gardens.  Currently they work with about 30 community gardens.  Recently they collaborated to design an Urban Agriculture Entrepreneur Program to help create business plans for those more interested in larger scale, for-profit urban farming.   

*Roots Memphis Farm Academy is a farmer incubator program that will create new farmers by combining sustainable agricultural education and business plan development with an incubation process that connects graduates to land, financing, and markets. Graduates of the Farm Academy will utilize currently vacant land to produce food in the urban core, providing themselves and their families with much-needed income.

Assist developers to reach their pledge for the Fairgrounds to be a “green” project and for the redevelopment to demonstrate sustainable urbanism principles in action.

Create shared design guidelines and establish a design review processes for the redevelopment of tax sale properties in order to preserve neighborhood integrity and strengthen community character.

The Environmental Resource Protection component to the Comprehensive Plan will inventory and provide guidelines for the protection of priority wetlands, aquifer recharge areas, wildlife corridors, and critical habitats for threatened and endangered species.

The Parks and Open Space and the Transportation sections of the Comprehensive Plan should connect parks and open spaces with a cohesive bicycle and pedestrian network while preserving wildlife corridors and ecosystems.

Suspend the acceptance of applications for new residential developments smaller than four-acre lots within unincorporated Shelby County while the Comprehensive Plan is being prepared and future policies should discourage leap frog development and encourage infill.

The LUCB should consist of chairmen of city and county legislative bodies’ planning and zoning committees as ex-officio members; two architects, two developers, two civil engineers, two representatives from either a neighborhood or community advocacy group (or a combination thereof), and two professional planners with two of the board members LEED Accredited Professionals.

LUCB members should obtain a minimum of 12 hours of annual training to remain members of the body.

Prepare and direct a yearly “Training and Professional Development Plan” to identify gaps in skills and knowledge for each department, taking into account emerging trends and best practices.

Greater requirements for public input should be required by DPD like electronic notices, more effective sign posting, and public board meetings streamed online.

Create a quarterly reporting system, similar to the previously produced Urban Development Report, to track development patterns.

Ordinances for “Sustainability Development Zones” where special bonuses are given for compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented, and energy-efficient development should be passed.

The UDC should include additional use standards for certain hazardous waste industrial uses including radioactive materials.

*See section 2.6.4B of the Unified Development Code for Industrial Use Standards of Radioactive Materials/Waste.

Study existing streets to determine those that have characteristics encouraging excessive traffic speeds and initiate plans for reducing lane number or widths or provide other traffic calming devices on those streets.

The UDC should permit angular on-street parking in pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods where appropriate and should limit surface parking lots in urban areas by encouraging the redevelopment of buildings on existing surface parking lots and require building facades to meet the street edge.

All technical building code committees and appeals boards should have at least two LEED Accredited Professionals.

Provide a Sustainability Impact Statement for each proposed project in the CIP and for key pieces of legislation and policy decisions; the statement would be a key factor in the evaluation process.

DPD will work with HCD and their existing neighborhood-level commercial revitalization initiatives to support locally-owned small businesses to address financing needed for building upgrades and façade improvements, improving access to low interest loans and grant opportunities and providing business management counseling.

Amend ordinances to add a maintenance code that sets higher standards for privately and publicly-owned property including maintaining the original transparency of commercial building fronts and retaining appropriate front and rear external lighting regardless of occupancy.

The Land Bank Office should prepare a study of revenue gained from the outright sale of tax delinquent properties vs. if the property is freely gifted to county government to sell for use in a redevelopment project and returned to the tax rolls with a higher assessed value due to its revitalization.

The Homebuyers Revolving Loan Program should be re-established and actively seek collaborative relationships with other relevant government, non-profit, housing, and real estate development agencies.

The DPD and HCD should work to establish an official Reinvestment Boundary and all public incentive programs should be limited to projects and areas within the official Reinvestment Boundary.

Establish an in-house design studio for the creation of best practice planning documents in order to provide design support for plans created by Memphis and Shelby County Governments. The staff should partner with local educational institutions to provide design experience to students.

A Downtown Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District should be created immediately to provide the Center City Commission with a dedicated funding source needed to fully implement the Downtown Streetscape Master Plan.

Encourage neighborhoods to use vacant government-owned lots to plant native vegetation and then transplant these to the corridors in their neighborhood. Educate the community about the importance of urban forestry and native vegetation.

The Comprehensive Plan and City of Memphis Division of Park Services Facilities Master Plan should have a goal of providing a public park within a 10-minute walking distance of every neighborhood.

Use sustainability as a guiding principle for all improvements to Shelby Farms Park in order to set the standard for our community.

*The conservation goals of the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy as outlined in the 2009-2013 business plan include:  “The plan for conservation will ensure that the principles of environmental stewardship and green and open are applied to all projects and programs.”  “Sustainable practices will be developed and implemented in the areas of energy consumption, stormwater management and solid waste management / recycling.”  “The Master Plan sets a goal of planting one million trees.”  

*Shelby Farms Playground was one of the first projects in the world to be certified by the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES). Read about it here.   

Lobby the Tennessee Legislature to establish a dedicated funding source (such as a statewide gas tax) for better urban public transit and, until then, MATA should be funded by county government and all municipal governments on a sliding scale.

Encourage MATA to acquire and implement technology to measure service performance such as Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic People Counters (APC) Devices.

*Beginning in 2012, MATA will equip buses with GPS and Automatic People Counters.  Read more here. 

Evaluate the existing trolley service and address barriers that prevent them from providing regular, reliable, and on-time trolley service, and work toward the goal of offering free service.

Offer free bus passes to private sector and government employees to encourage riding public transit.

The UDC should require all new development plans to comply with the Major Road Plan for road extensions and improvements, limiting the basis for waivers.

*See section 1.9 of the Unified Development Code for plans that are considered in any decisions that are made, including MPO’s Long Range Transportation Plan (formerly called Major Road Plan).

Partner with intermodal rail yards, port operators, trucking companies, and neighborhood residents in high-freight volume areas to identify routes most in need of improvement and routes that need to be relocated.

Organize business plan competitions to create local car-sharing and bicycle-sharing programs to test these ideas within Shelby County.

Update the Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan to incorporate changes suggested in the 2030 Long Range Transportation Plan to identify bicycle lanes that can be easily striped, contain the latest design standards for bicycle and pedestrian facilities, and be consistent with local municipal plans.

The Ride Sharing Program should consider ways to encourage carpooling, car-sharing, and bicycle sharing through prepaid gas cards and an interactive website or service for linking potential carpoolers with a goal of retooling the current rideshare program.

*Shelby County Health Department's Ride Sharing Program reduces pollution. For more information about sharing a ride click here or here. 

Amend Building Codes to require that all commercial buildings and multi-family residential buildings of 10,000 SF or more achieve a minimum of LEED Certified or equivalent and require that all new construction achieve a minimum of LEED Certified or equivalent.

Develop a public education and awareness campaign aimed at dispelling myths about the cost of green buildings and infrastructure.

Survey local developers about what incentives would be most effective in creating more sustainable projects and study major metro areas to learn how they exceed their local standards for sustainable design.

*Vivian Jaynes, a Memphis-native, completed this strategy as part of her master’s project in City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill.  Read her recommendations and case studies here.