5 Reasons You Should Participate in the Denton 2040 Plan
City designed for cars.
Photo by Ben Schumin, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
City designed for people.
Photo by Ontario Growth Secretariat, Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Copyright: Queen’s Printer for Ontario.
Submit your vision for Denton by September 30th, 2021 via the Denton 2040 Virtual Open House: cityofdenton.com/denton2040
A comprehensive plan is a vision document for how a city wants to grow and what its priorities are. These plans are typically updated every five to ten years. Denton’s last comprehensive plan update, Denton 2030, occurred in 2015.
Why should you care or get involved? Here are five reasons why.
1) It impacts biking and walking.
Denton will be growing in the future. We need to decide how that growth will look. Do we want low-density sprawl that puts everything so far apart and requires roads so large that we have to drive everywhere? Or do we want more compact development that allows us the option to walk, bike, roll, or take transit for more of our trips?
For a city or neighborhood to be considered “walkable” or “bikeable,” residents should be able to access most or all of their needs in less than a 15-20 minute walk, roll, or bike ride. Communities that make this possible have fewer cars clogging the roads, because driving is less necessary.
Reading: What Makes a Place Walkable (Strong Towns)
2) It impacts your tax rate.
Some types of growth are more expensive than others. When residences and destinations are spaced far apart, we spend more money per person on infrastructure and services. Most single family neighborhoods in Denton don’t generate enough property tax revenue to cover the ongoing cost of their roads, pipes, and services. As a result, they are subsidized by the rest of Denton, which keeps everyone’s tax rates higher than they would otherwise need to be.
Compact development generates more tax revenue than it costs to provide the roads, pipes, and services for the development. It adds more to the city budget than it takes.
Thinking about the future, do you want Denton to continue adding mostly low-density development that requires you to subsidize it with your tax dollars? Or would you rather see more compact development that pays for its own infrastructure and services?
3) It impacts your personal finances.
Transportation
Have you ever sat down and calculated how much you spend owning and maintaining your car(s) each year? According to the H+T Index, most Denton households spend more than $11,000 each year on transportation. We have to, because it’s too dangerous or too difficult to walk or bike to most places, and the buses are too infrequent to be a reasonable option.
What if Denton was built so you didn’t have to drive everywhere? What if you could own just one car or maybe even choose to go car-lite? What if you didn’t have to pay $11,000 per year on transportation and could spend just $480 on an annual DCTA transit pass or around $100 annually to maintain a bicycle? What would you do with all of the money you saved?
Readings:
The High Cost of Transportation in the United States (Institute for Transportation & Development Policy)
Breaking the Cycle of Automobile Dependency (Planetizen)
Housing
A growth plan that focuses on low-density housing and restricts smaller, denser, more affordable housing causes both purchase and rent costs to increase.
When the supply of housing doesn’t meet the demand for housing, prices for housing go up. Building primarily single-family home developments introduces fewer housing units into the market than compact development, and the price point for homes is typically more than most people can reasonably afford.
Denton is proud of its art and music culture, but what if artists and musicians can’t afford to live here?
Reading: Sprawl and the Cost of Living (City Observatory)
4) It impacts the environment.
Sprawling development consumes more greenspace per person than more compact development. This continually pushes development outward to the rural periphery of the city, disrupting habitats and making nature more difficult for residents to access.
Auto-oriented development generates more air pollution, more water pollution and increased flood risk due to impervious surfaces.
Readings:
Driving Down Emissions (Smart Growth America)
Development encroaching on the rural periphery (Photo from: Environment & Resource Management).
5) It impacts your health.
The way Denton is designed impacts your health in a variety of ways. The design of the place where you live influences how much you spend on medical services and the likelihood that you develop a chronic illness.
Air quality - Cities that require a lot of driving create more pollution than cities with more transportation options. Air pollution from transportation directly impacts your lung health and likelihood of developing chronic illness.
Opportunities for physical activity - The CDC recommends 30 minutes of daily physical activity for adults to prevent chronic illnesses. However, only half of U.S. adults meets this minimum recommendation. People who live in auto-oriented cities are less likely to meet this daily recommendation than people who can walk, bike, or take transit for at least some of their daily needs.
Social connection - People who live in walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented communities have more social interactions than people who don’t. Traveling by car cuts people off from each other, while walking, biking, or taking transit provides opportunities for incidental interactions and connections with both friends and strangers.
Beautiful places - Think of cities that are beautiful. What makes them attractive places? What draws you to them? Do you visit them because of their wide roads and large parking lots? Or do you visit them because of the destinations, the people, and the experience you have walking or rolling down the street?
Get Involved
What kind of Denton do you want? Help shape the future of Denton by participating in the Denton 2040 Plan process.
Submit your final feedback by September 30th, 2021 via the Denton 2040 Virtual Open House.
An online interactive group planning activity for Denton 2040 is scheduled for Wednesday, May 26th at 6:00 PM (Registration Required).
The first public meetings took place on March 25th [Video] and April 5th [Video].
