As part of an interdisciplinary team led by Lisa Wise Consulting, Siegman & Associates will be working with City staff, elected officials, and the public at large to update Columbus’ 70-year-old zoning code. WOSU reports:

“Columbus officials want to make it easier to build in the city and encourage the type of growth that supports public transit and affordable housing.

To do so, they must reform zoning codes implemented decades ago that were designed to segregate the city based on class and race and pushed polluting industries into the neighborhoods where Black people, poor white people and immigrants lived, said Glennon Sweeney, senior research associate at The Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.

The effects of the policies are still present today, reflected in the health outcomes and wealth distribution among the city’s neighborhoods, she said.

The code isn’t just racist, the piecemeal maze also makes it complicated, time-consuming and costly to create the types of projects the city wants to see developed.…"

Continue reading at WOSU.

Image courtesy of Lisa Wise Consulting