PD0.5 Connectivity

Requirement

Purpose

Promote multiple road connections off-site to improve vehicular ingress and egress and improve pedestrian connections to adjacent uses.

Criteria

No street or pedestrian networks can be gated.

Facilities such as health care campuses, military bases or education facilities may be gated only for safety purposes.

Urban

Design the community for through traffic. Use forms like loop roads and urban grids to their fullest possible extent. Create cul-de-sacs only where natural features need protection. Additionally, optimize non-vehicular network links to surrounding uses.

The project must: 

• Connect to the off-site road network 
• Provide at least one road stub out to each adjacent undeveloped parcel (with appropriate easement for future road construction) 
• Provide a non-vehicular pathway averaging 800 linear feet along the edge of the project’s boundary adjacent to developed parcels AND averaging 2,500 feet along the project boundary adjacent to undeveloped parcels.
• Block lengths must be no greater than 650 feet in length in commercial and mixed-use areas, and 1,200 feet in residential areas.

Conservation

Projects are required to link to or accommodate a future vehicular connection if either of the following conditions exist: 

• A project has existing adjacent development

OR 

• Regional land use plans allow development at density greater than or equal to one unit in five acres within one mile of the boundary of the site's development footprint, or within ¼- mile of the project boundary

Future connections must be documented with a recorded easement. The project must: 

• Connect to the off-site road network 
• Stub out to adjacent undeveloped property (with appropriate easement for future road construction) 
• Provide a non-vehicular pathway averaging 800 linear feet along the edge of the project’s developed area (where it abuts the property boundary) AND averaging 2,500 feet along the undeveloped project boundary.

Use design features that Design the community entrance signage to preserve the rural viewshed and enhance the character of the existing community and landscape.

Connections are not required where existing buildings, bodies of water, critical slope areas or other natural areas designated for preservation prohibit through streets.

AND

Design the community to preserve a conservation viewshed along boundary roads by: 

• Preserving a 50-foot mixed mature forest buffer 
• Enhancing a 50-foot mature hardwood buffer with native evergreen trees and shrubs 
• Restoring a 150-foot minimum (300-foot average on sites 100 acres or more) tree buffer 
• Providing a 500-foot buffer maintained as pasture or crop field between any external road and the developed area of the site

If a view of the developed area is not possible due to significant grade change, the buffer is not required.

Verification 

• Conceptual site plan clearly indicating buffers, road and pedestrian networks, and the distance between each external connection. 
• Permitted site plan clearly indicating road and pedestrian networks and easements for future road construction, if required.