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ee ee .0 Rear Yard Setback. A special rear yard setback is unnecessary, especially in light of the history of home buying and lot development. Homebuyers demand a reasonable back yard. This was demonstrated by developments long before zoning was established in this country. The acquisition of a back yard is why people have historically moved out of the city, and out of apartments. Surveyors and landscape architects who design residential developments know it. Developers and homebuilders certainly know it. The only real health-safety-welfare rationale for a rear yard setback is to provide for drainage along the back lot lines. Again, the general provision for a minimum 5 foot setback from all property lines would provide this. If for some reason the design for a site plan seems to concentrate a lot of water along the back lot line more room for drainage can be accomplished with a required drainage easement, extending ten feet on either side of the rear lot line. Minimum Frontage. As I said, I was very pleased to see that the current draft of the ordinance has dropped this requirement. I do worry a bit that it may creep back in, so I have kept some of the discussion about this issue in my memo. If nothing else, it provides a perspective on rationale for dropping the minimum frontage requirement. A minimum street frontage of 80 feet provides hidden minimum lot size requirement. Minimum frontages larger than 40 feet are excessive because they ignore the possibility of houses designed so the narrow axis of the house can be set parallel to the street. This is the traditional relationship of building axis to lot front. There are many such house designs that are very attractive and functional. Several are shown in Randall Arendt's book Conservation Design for Subdivisions: A Practical Guide to Creating Open Space Networks. Many of Arendt's house examples fit on 50 foot wide lots and some even fit nicely on 40 foot wide lots. Also, a smaller lot width allows for affordable housing for empty nesters, first time homebuyers, and low income homebuyers. The narrower the lot, the less street length is required to support and serve the lot. One of the chief benefits of Open Space Development Design is the reduction of road pavement needed to serve lots. This lowers both environmental and economic costs in a manner similar to that discussed above. Section 4.11 Street Standards The standards given in this section make a refreshing change from the tendency toward oversized roads found nearly everywhere else in the metro area. Subsection (4)(A) on Road Right-oj-Way Width. The 66 foot width is very out of date. The 66 foot dimension comes from the old Gunter's chain used by surveyors to measure distances. It was 66 feet (4 rods) long. It was easy to put the middle of chain on the right- of-way center line and set stakes at the chain ends to measure out right-of-way widths. An acre is one chain by ten chains. Today, surveyors use 100 foot steel tapes and lasers to measure distances. The 66 foot dimension no longer has convenience as a reason for existance. Further, land area committed to right-of-way width is too valuable to be marked out in the traditional wasteful manner. Public right-of-way generates no assessed value. A 66 foot right-of-way consumes 0.73 acres per mile more than a 60 foot right-of-way, and 1.94 acres per mile than a 50 foot right-of-way. The 50 and 60 foot dimensions for two-way streets I have given in the recommended changes are taken from Recommended Guidelines for Subdivision Streets: A Recommended Practice by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (1984). Rationale for OSD changes 5 Sykes