Grow Smart Bay Area / Here's How / Smart Infill Strategies / Planning
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PLANNING

fairfield ugb
The City of Fairfield's urban growth boundary clearly marks where residential development stops and agricultural land starts.

STRATEGIES FOR INFILL

These six strategies will help cities and towns promote well-planned infill.

Adopt an Urban Growth Boundary: Every city that is bordered by open space
should adopt an urban growth boundary. This prevents development on farmland
and natural areas and refocuses growth into existing urbanized areas.

Publicly Identify Infill Land: Identify land that is appropriate for infill development and make this information available to the public through an online database with maps. Include known characteristics of land parcels, such as building size, planning designations, or contamination.

Update General Plans and Zoning Codes: Update the general plan and zoning codes to allow increased densities and encourage a mix of land uses in areas identified as appropriate for infill development, particularly downtown and near transit stations. Involve residents in creating a vision for how the community will change and grow. Codify this vision in planning documents to create an official blueprint that potential builders can follow.

Create Specific Plans: Use specific plans (also known as specific area plans, area plans, or precise plans) to indicate the intent to direct investment to a neighborhood. Solicit community input, do detailed planning and environmental review for a particular neighborhood, and establish a framework for coordinated infill development.

Conduct a Thorough Environmental Review: Fully evaluate the ways infill development could affect the environment and the community as part of overall planning efforts. Prevent costs and delays by conducting a thorough, overarching study that covers numerous small infill projects. Make use of exemptions provided for infill projects, if applicable.

Take Action with Redevelopment Agencies: Designate neighborhoods that are particularly stagnant as redevelopment areas under the jurisdiction of a local
redevelopment agency. Use the agency to assist in assembling infill parcels,
cleaning up polluted land, adding infrastructure and amenities, and coordinating infill development.

 

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Finding Room for Infill

The first step to encourage infill is to stop development from sprawling out onto surrounding natural areas and farms. An urban growth boundary does this by defining the limits of development. Within the boundary, development is guided by general plans, specific plans, and zoning codes. These public documents
act as blueprints to define where
and how development should occur, and how buildings should look and be used. These are powerful tools to focus cities’ infrastructure investments into target areas such as the downtown and neighborhoods
close to public transportation.

“The more information cities give the developer about the site and the community ahead of time, the more the development can actually meet the community’s needs.”
– Kate White, Executive Director, Urban Land Institute San Francisco

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