Bozeman’s Interneighborhood Council voted last week to write a letter in support of the Centennial Park zoning proposal. Emily Talago, who chairs the board, said she thinks it can sometimes feel disenfranchising for residents to hear their neighborhoods “spoken about in such a way that is so devoid of people.”
She commended the residents for thinking critically about their neighborhood’s zoning.
“It’s two perspectives — you’re either over-zoned, or you’re underbuilt, right? I mean, somewhere in between there is the right thing,” Talago said. “You’re not just looking at a map with different shading for different zoning designations … there’s a built environment and there’s people living already.”
“It’s not this 2-D thing. You have to go look at what is there? What’s on the ground? How does it function? Who’s there? What are they doing? You know? How do they feel about it?”
Nora Shelly with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reached out to me to discuss two neighborhood initiative to change their zoning to better match the existing built environment. They came to the Inter-Neighborhood Council to request a letter of support. This is the type of process I helped re-establish for INC– to provide a process by which neighborhoods can formally make recommendations or communicate with the City Commission.
Near-downtown residents eye less-dense zoning in Bozeman’s development code rewrite
BOZEMAN CHRONICLE — The two requests came from neighbors near Centennial Park and in the Bon Ton Historic District south of downtown. Both are in small pockets of R-4, residential high density zoning, and adjacent on some sides to areas of lower-density zoning. Read more.