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Welcome
to the Downtown Phoenix Urban Form Project
The Downtown Phoenix Urban Form Project
is a collaborative process to comprehensively revise
downtown zoning – to shape future growth and
to help realize the city’s vision for a livelier,
more integrated and sustainable downtown. The city
has embarked on this project due to heightened development
interest: a variety of residential, retail, and office
projects are being proposed on vacant sites throughout
downtown. The existing zoning is out of date and does
not ensure that projects built will create an attractive
downtown with shade, pedestrian-oriented streets and
quality design. The zoning needs to be revised in
order to achieve a great downtown that can be an exciting
destination for the residents of Phoenix and the region.
The Urban Form Project is intended
to establish the rules that will guide downtown as it
continues to develop and transform. The actual
transformation of downtown depends primarily on the
initiative of the private sector and will be driven
by market demand for housing, office, hotel, and retail.
The city plays a key role by investing in streets, parks,
art, and other improvements and by assisting critical
“catalyst” projects such as the ASU Downtown
Campus and the biomedical center.
The study area contains about 1,500 acres, roughly
bounded by Seventh Avenue and Seventh Street, McDowell Road
to the north and Buckeye Road to the south. The geographical
heart of the city, the study area includes Copper Square,
the 90-block core of downtown, where the majority of the area's
office, convention, cultural, university, biomedical, entertainment
and government uses are located. The study area also encompasses
residential neighborhoods, historic districts, unique arts
districts and many vacant and underutilized areas surrounding
Copper Square that offer outstanding opportunities for continued
growth. Finally, the area also is home to METRO, the region's
new light rail system set to debut in late 2008.
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