Agenda - Planning Commission - 12/03/2008

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special exceptions, conditional uses, and den- sity, and building height, setbacks, and lot coverage. Rural zoning has generally not promoted villages as places to live and work. Zoning ini- tially came to rural areas about 50 years ago as a way to regulate the creation of new build- ing lots in the countryside. Typically, a farm couple would want to subdivide a few lots for their children, without using much valuable farmland. Because the new lots would rely on . on-site septic systems and wells; local govern- ments employed zoning that u~ually allO\~ed a minimum lot size of between a half-acre to three acres in size. This so-called "large lot" zoning became popular in part because the residents did not have to pay municipal sewer and water bills, and could live outside villages and cities where property taxes were higher. In its landmark 1973 state planning legis- lation, Oregon required commercial farm and forestland to be zoned for very low densities, such as one house per 40 or 80 acres in the case of farmland, and one house'per 80 acres and 160 acres for forestland. Yet the Oregon legislation recognized what some have termed "the right to a rural lifestyle" by allowing coun- ties to designate rural residential zones with three- to five-acre minimum lot sizes. For instance, there are more than 250,000 acres of rural residential zones in the Willamette Valley, where most Oregonians live. But the rural residential zones consist mainly of lower quality soils and are situated in areas where the rural residences will not conflid with com- me"rcial farm and fo~estry operations. In short, . Oregon-style rural residential zoning is an attempt to bring some order to rural housing, rather than to encourage development in vil- lages. ." ~ o ~ ~ I ;3 3 c m o " .. ZONING PRACTICE 11.08 AMERICAN PIJ\NNING ASSOCIATION I page 37 7