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Vision Statement
Introduction
The Southeast Orlando Sector
Plan is one of the largest urban planning and development projects
ever undertaken by the City of Orlando. The area covered by the Plan
consists of more than 19,300 acres and is within a 10 to 20 minute
driving distance of Downtown Orlando, many of the region's
entertainment attractions, as well as other regional job and
education centers. The Plan area is located directly adjacent to the
ever-expanding Orlando International Airport, which is already the
16th busiest airport in the United States and the 25th busiest
airport in the world. In addition, the State of Florida has
authorized the construction of a high speed rail system linking
Tampa, Orlando, and Miami, with the hub of the system being the
Orlando International Airport. With the Southeast Orlando Sector
Plan, the City is proactively formulating a sustainable development
strategy that builds and strengthens the livability of the entire
community.
The City of Orlando has identified the Southeast Orlando Sector Plan
area as a Future Growth Center with the Orlando International
Airport as the primary economic and employment generator. In the
near future, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority plans to
construct a fourth runway, expand terminal facilities, build new
on-site roadways, pursue regional rail transit linkages, and
actively market airport-related office and industrial development on
the airport property. In addition, this growth will generate a
significant need for convenient housing to serve airport employees.
The City's projections indicate a potential for over 13,300
residential units, 2.1 million square feet of retail space, 3.3
million square feet of office space, 1,950 hotel rooms, 4.7 million
square feet of industrial space, and 600,000 square feet of
civic/government space within the Southeast Plan area by the year
2020. Again, by 2020, the Plan area could house more than 28,000
residents.
In order to build and sustain a viable community, development must
feature a mixture of land uses which allow for increased
accessibility, diversity, and opportunities for social interaction
within the context of an integrated amenity framework. Utilizing the
neighborhood as the basic community building unit, the center of
residential neighborhoods will be defined by public space and
activated by locally-oriented civic and commercial facilities.
Employment, shopping and services will be concentrated in town,
village, and neighborhood centers that are compact and walkable. The
City will also be utilizing design concepts that provide a strong
connection between nature and the built environment.
In order to accomplish this vision, the City of Orlando has entered
into a unique partnership with the southeast area property owners,
the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, Orlando Utilities
Commission, representatives of other local, regional, and state
agencies affected by or having permitting jurisdiction of aspects of
the project, and representatives of interest groups concerned with
building successful communities. The partnership is responsible for
master planning and the technical design of infrastructure,
developing and implementing a financing strategy for the early
provision of public facilities such as schools, the preparation of
the urban design/land use plan, along with development standards and
an administrative process to implement the Plan.
What Orlando Wishes to Accomplish in
the Southeast Orlando Sector Plan Area - Building Community
Identity and community are often lost in the faceless growth of many
suburban areas. Each developer works on a separate time-line to
build and market their property. Public facilities and civic spaces
are often placed on the left-over land, if they're included at all.
The result is a series of sterile and unconnected subdivisions,
rather than a cohesive community of people and places.
The large size of the Southeast Orlando Sector Plan area, as well as
the coordinated effort underway to plan for the area, provide an
opportunity to create a unique image and character that is
immediately identifiable to visitors and residents. Like some older
communities (Winter Park or Downtown Orlando), Southeast Orlando
will be immediately identifiable through its urban design,
particularly in its streetscapes, the trees planted along major
boulevards, and the scale of local streets.
A sense of community will be nurtured through the new town's
physical structure. The area will be identified by the pattern of
residential neighborhoods that focus on town, village and
neighborhood centers; by the design of homes and commercial
buildings; and by the proximity to nature. Each residential
neighborhood will be scaled to the pedestrian, making casual
interactions possible. Schools and parks will be focal points for
neighborhood activities, rather than anonymous institutions within
large no man's lands. And commercial districts will integrate
public facilities and spaces, creating a civic atmosphere typical of
more traditional downtowns. The design and landscape improvements to
Narcoossee Road will be an extremely important first step in
developing an identity for the community.
Balanced Land Uses
At buildout, the Southeast Plan area could very well be a mid-size
town of 50,000 to 60,000 people. A full array of land uses,
services, amenities and activities are being planned to fill the
needs of the ultimate population. The Southeast Plan provides for a
coordinated approach to transportation, employment, shopping and
services, by concentrating such uses in places that are compact and
walkable. The concept of balanced land uses will create a community
which is more diverse and accessible, leading to greater
opportunities for social interaction and growth. The new
neighborhoods will include a richer mix of building types than can
be found in conventional suburban neighborhoods - from sideyard
houses, semi-detached houses, cottages, secondary units, courtyard
apartments, and mid-rise apartments to shopfronts and offices with
apartments above. Think of Park Avenue in Winter Park or Edgewater
Drive in College Park.
The new mixed use neighborhoods and communities in the Plan area
will also be places where people feel comfortable and safe. One of
the tools the City of Orlando will use to ensure the optimum amount
of safety are the principles of CPTED (Crime Prevention Through
Environmental Design). The CPTED approach results in better and
safer site design, by providing for greater natural surveillance,
territorial control, and natural access control. Generally, CPTED
assists in the creation and maintenance of a built environment that
increases the perception of safety for a normal citizen and the
perception of risk for a would-be offender.
Transportation
An equally important characteristic of building community involves
the way neighborhoods and communities are knit together via the
transportation network. As businesses have moved to the suburbs,
commute patterns have become hopelessly complex, with work to
non-work patterns becoming increasingly problematic. We often
respond to traffic congestion by widening existing roads or building
new ones. But when land is used for roads, it cannot be used for
housing, business and open space. Moreover, the public cost of
providing and maintaining infrastructure to handle new development
is huge. Funding and the space needed for coping with increased
travel demand by expanding roads simply is not available. More roads
are not always the answer to congestion. They are just a means of
moving more cars toward a given destination. That is because more
roads tend to encourage more people to drive. Soon, there are just
more places where congestion is a problem.
Pedestrian travel is the basic building block for developing a
balanced transportation system. In the Southeast Plan area, streets
will provide direct connections to local destinations, such as
neighborhood and village centers, without requiring every trip to go
onto the arterial network or the freeway system. The mix of uses at
commercial centers will encourage "trip-linking" so that
several errands can be accomplished with one stop. In addition,
travel within neighborhoods will be distributed among several
"connector streets" that lead to local parks, schools, and
commercial centers. A goal of the planning effort is to create an
area with no arterials larger than four lanes, and an interconnected
local and connector street system will help to achieve this goal.
Pedestrian and bicycle access will be provided between neighborhoods
and communities, and between all of the developments in the
Southeast Plan area, providing both north-south and east-west
connections. Neighborhood streets of varying types will be designed
to provide for pedestrian comfort and safety, and for efficient
automobile movement. Slowing the automobile and increasing
pedestrian activity encourages the casual meetings that form the
bonds of community. A fully coordinated system of pedestrian and
bikeways will be provided. Important destinations such as commercial
areas, transit stops, employment centers, parks, open spaces,
schools, and other community facilities, will be linked by these
routes. In addition, these routes will be designed in such a way
that people feel comfortable and safe. CPTED principles will be
utilized wherever possible in the design and development of
pedestrian and bikeway systems.
Transit will also be integrated into the Plan area. Placing transit
stations at the center of mixed-use commercial and residential
neighborhoods will increase ridership as it allows people to combine
errands on foot. Trunk line systems will be designed to allow
"walk-and-ride" or "bike-and-ride" rather than
just "park-and-ride" facilities as the central means of
access. When developing these new neighborhoods and communities,
access to transit will be carefully considered, especially in
relation to roadway design.
Finally, cars will be kept in perspective. Land use patterns, street
layouts and densities will make walking, bicycling and public
transit viable alternatives to driving, especially for routine,
everyday trips. Streets will be safe, interesting and comfortable
for pedestrians. Improving traffic flows will be only one of many
considerations in platting streets and designing neighborhoods.
Schools and other social amenities
The Southeast Orlando Sector Plan is focused on providing those
social amenities that are necessary to build community. These
amenities include neighborhood schools, parks, recreation centers,
convenient day-care, churches, and other public institutions such as
post offices, libraries and meeting halls. These uses and
institutions help to focus and strengthen community identity, by
providing places where people can gather and interact in a safe,
friendly environment.
In most suburbs, these facilities are dispersed, underutilized, and
underfunded. In the Southeast Plan area, they will be concentrated,
utilized to the fullest, and funded to the best of our ability. This
requires that the facilities be planned well ahead of time, before
land values increase too much. It also requires that the school and
park facilities be properly and centrally located in relation to
neighborhoods, and not simply relegated to leftover pieces of land
on the outskirts of the development. The City is dedicated to
finding and implementing innovative funding solutions for the
provision of both schools and parks, and for other institutional
uses as well.
For the Southeast area to grow in a competitive and
community-oriented manner, a new approach to schools must be
pursued. Large schools that force children into an anonymous setting
and require parents to become chauffeurs inevitably work against our
goal to create a sense of community. Small schools give children the
attention they need to build a sense of identity. Schools that are
within a short walk of most homes help to nurture neighborhood
pride. Schools that build innovative linkages to local industries
and educational institutions bring the hope of reestablishing a
commitment to education excellence and building a long-term future
for the next generation. A coordinated strategy addressing school
size, funding, phasing and management is an integral component of
the Southeast Plan.
Preservation of Natural Systems
The Southeast Orlando Sector Plan area presents the City and the
development community with significant environmental opportunities.
The Southeast Plan area is situated between two regionally
significant systems; the Econlockhatchee River (the Econ) and Boggy
Creek. The site itself includes portions of two major drainage
basins (Boggy Creek and Lake Hart), a connected system of lakes and
small water bodies, high concentrations of wetlands, and a great
diversity of plants and wildlife, many of which are protected by the
City's Growth Management Plan and Federal and State regulations.
Though much of this habitat forms contiguous corridors, some areas
have been altered by agricultural conversion, ditching, and cattle
grazing.
An opportunity exists in the Plan area to create a permanently
protected ecological system that is both regionally significant and
maintains the integrity of on-site drainage and wildlife corridors.
Sensitive site planning will ensure that natural habitats are
protected and natural features become an integral part of the
community through a designated Primary Conservation Network. These
resources will be treated as key amenities, rather than as edges to
developments. Public access will be permitted while important
natural features and sensitive habitats are preserved. Pedestrian
and bicycle paths and trails will be constructed along creek, canal
or wetland edge systems, thus serving a dual function of allowing
public access to open space and providing paths to destinations
along the edges of linear parks. Major public facilities, such as
schools, parks, and recreation centers will be linked by these open
space/bicycle and pedestrian trail systems. In the Southeast Plan
area, there is an opportunity for open spaces to shape and enhance
neighborhoods, to provide a scenic resource from roads, and to serve
as permanent wildlife corridors.
Conclusions
In order to build and sustain a community, the City believes that
new development in the Southeast Plan area must feature a mixture of
land uses, which allow for increased accessibility, diversity, and
opportunities for social interaction; all within the context of an
integrated amenity framework. By drawing on the best features of
older neighborhoods and the best new ideas of innovative architects
and planners, we can design new neighborhoods and communities in
ways that will empower and encourage people - by allowing a greater
variety of land uses closer to work and home, by providing safe and
successful walkways and bicycle pathways, by bringing people closer
together through the provision and placement of social amenities,
and by protecting the natural environment; collectively altering the
actions that inevitably lead to the proliferation of sprawl
development.
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