CLEVELAND — After nearly 100 years, new zoning plans came to Cleveland as the city planning commission approved a new zoning code that aims to focus on the proximity of basic living needs.

It won’t happen overnight, but the City Council passed a new zoning code that will change the living experience in Cleveland over decades, empowering city planners to strategically move toward making Cleveland a “15-minute city.” 

“We as a city just want to make it possible for clevelanders to be able to access all the things they may want or need within a 15-minute walk, bike ride, transit trip, or even a car ride,” said Matt Moss, manager of strategic planning initiatives at the City of Cleveland Planning Commission.

A “15-minute city” is an urban planning concept that gained traction in Paris in 2020. The concept is based on proximity and walkability, which is a contrast to the zoning codes that have historically been the urban planning blue-print for Cleveland since 1929.

“So our current zoning code is what's known as Euclidean zoning, it's actually named after Euclid, Ohio, just east of Cleveland,” Moss said. “By and large, it's really just a fancy term, that means it's zoning that segregates uses...So the factories go over here, the housing goes over here, the businesses go over there…We've had a zoning code now for almost 100 years in Cleveland and by keeping uses strictly separated, it actually makes it harder to get to them.” 

Which makes needing a car make sense. Now, nearly a century later, a new zoning code that focuses on proximity may make a vehicle less of a necessity. Replacing Euclidean zoning is a form-based code that is new to the City of Cleveland.

“Form-based code is different in the sense that it emphasizes more the way buildings are shaped and how tall they are, how many windows they have on the front… and how they address the street … versus what the uses are inside of them,” Moss said.

Moss said the City of Cleveland hopes the new Form-based code will be a more equitable, efficient and understandable redesign of Cleveland for the better, “especially for Clevelanders who don't have a car."

“Roughly one in four households in the city don't have access to a car," he said. "One in five Clevelanders are too young to drive. And so it's a strategy that's focused on creating equity and equality in terms of mobility and access for all residents of the city of Cleveland.”

“And again, along the lines of those values of making it easier to have things that are easier to get to. That's really essentially what a 15-minute city is. It’s that we want it to be easier, more sustainable, safer, more enjoyable to to live in a neighborhood in Cleveland,”

Jenna Thomas, the vice-chair of the Clevelanders for Public Transit organization said anything you can do to address the systems that cause the city to be built how it is, is great.

Although she does own a vehicle, Thomas prefers to bike or take public transit over driving and says a 15-minute city is not only about proximity.

“At the end of the day, for transit riders, it’s really about service," she said. "Like, ‘how often is my bus coming? Is it reliable? Is the transit app telling me accurately when my bus is coming?’”

Although the new, form-based zoning plans will take years to fully implement, its effect may change reliance on public transit, and route efficiencies potentially for the better. Nevertheless, at present, some Clevelanders have serious concerns about navigating the city. 

“Try walking down the sidewalk after a winter storm in the city of Cleveland and tell me it’s a 15-minute city.” said Chris Martin, a coordinator of Clevelanders for Public Transit. "No amount of zoning changes is going to change how frequently the bus arrives. The best thing about a bus stop should be how little spare time you spend in it, because you're getting going where you need to go.” 

“The challenge of public transit vis-à-vis a ‘15-minute city’ is that it is not frequent enough," he said. "It's not good in enough places."

In addition to proximity and frequency, for Clevelanders day-to-day, transit funding is also a factor.

“The RTA is largely funded by a 1% sales tax that was enacted in 1975 and has not been raised,” Martin said. “Meanwhile, the population of Cuyahoga County has precipitously fallen.”

For Clevelanders who rely on public transportation, Moss also touched on possible disparities in transit funding.

“In many ways, it's difficult when we live in a state where transit funding is very low compared to pure states, like Pennsylvania, or Michigan," he said. "And in Ohio, for example, in our biannual transportation budget, less than 1% of that is funded for transit. This is funding that's provided for our transit systems across the state.” 

To tackle this, within the state, cities in Ohio are already taking steps to improve transit funding.

“Cities like Columbus and Cincinnati are pursuing transit levies to increase funding,” Thomas said. “I think that’s really essential to getting the kind of service that we need to have a 15-minute city.”

The new form-based zoning code is planned to begin in three pilot neighborhoods: Hough, Opportunity Corridor and Detroit Shoreway/Cudell.