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WHYY By Homes across from Fairmount Park at 33rd and Clifford streets included in a new Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District. (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY) (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY) These days, everyone wants to talk to Tonetta Graham about overlays — a zoning tool that can be used to shape development in a specific area. What would normally pass for municipal minutiae is a hot topic because Graham’s Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corporation and a coalition of other neighborhood groups recently won City Council approval for a special overlay district that aims to slow gentrification by restricting the height and density of new construction. Graham and her colleagues proposed the “Strawberry Mansion Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District” late last year after watching blocks of brick rowhouses begin to change with construction that they felt clashed with the historic fabric of the community. Roof decks are banned in the new district, along with certain popular facade wrappers such as vinyl, stucco and horizontal aluminum.
By Octavia Howell, formerly of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, records residents' input on the Lower Northwest District Plan. (Matthew Grady/WHYY) City Hall wants Philadelphians to play a bigger role in shaping neighborhood growth. Last week, Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration announced residents will decide how to spend $1 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for capital investments through the city’s first participatory planning process. The residents selected to participate in that effort will form a new city democratic body of sorts called the Re-Imagine Philadelphia Steering Committee. After three months spent on the participatory planning initiative, the committee will go on for another year with its second and perhaps more enduring legacy: advising the Philadelphia City Planning Commission on its next citywide comprehensive plan.