The OTHER MN Code Everyone Is Talking About

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Course Details

This case study is a success story of how Minnesota's third largest City, Rochester, was able to successfully reform its zoning ordinance to implement national best practices related to zoning and housing policy. This project was recently awarded the MNAPA Planning Excellence Award for 2022.

Key accomplishments of the Rochester UDC covered in this case study include:

  • Eliminating Rochester's unwieldy PUD process, which was previously used for virtually all development of any size in Rochester.
  • Eliminating all 84 pre-existing Planned Unit Developments and 22 Special Districts, which acted as one-off sets of overlay standards that were complicated to administer
  • Significantly furthering housing by reducing minimum lot sizes, removing artificial density limits, creating city-wide mixed-use districts, reducing parking requirements, permitting ADUs City-wide, creating affordable housing incentives that can be approved at a staff level, and implementing a simplified and predictable development process.
  • Significantly strengthening access and connectivity standards and reforming parking and landscaping standards.
  • Creating neighborhood protection standards.
  • Successfully complementing everything above using an engagement process that was able to gain resident and developer support, while educating elected officials along the way. Ultimately, this engagement process led to progressive zoning reform that was approved unanimously by the City Council.

Learning Outcomes

  • Reforming options for zoning that advance housing affordability and diversify housing supply.
  • Improve development outcomes by streamlining the development approval processes, requiring higher quality design, all while providing greater predictability in outcomes for both residents and developers.
  • Implement a zoning reform process that WORKS. Rochester's reform successfully navigated local politics, engaged hundreds of residents, and produced a zoning code that electeds, residents, and developers could all support.
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