St. Louis Planning Commission Adopts New Land Use Plan to Restore Urban Qualities Like Walkability and Mixed-Use Neighborhoods

The City of St. Louis Planning Commission has given unanimous final approval of the comprehensive overhaul to the City’s Strategic Land Use Plan (SLUP), which serves as the guiding legal document for land use policy in St. Louis, laying out the vision for how to best use land in the city, block by block, and guiding future development.

“It’s been 20 years since St. Louis last comprehensively updated its land use plan, and best practices for building cities have changed drastically in that time,” said Mayor Tishaura O. Jones. “Over the past century, American cities have increasingly prioritized cars and sprawl, becoming less inhabitable to the people who actually live here. With the new SLUP, we are truly turning a corner in making St. Louis a more walkable city full of life and growth. This new plan is one part of the hard work in the city to reverse decades of population loss through quality investment in people and place.”

The Planning Commission’s adoption of the updated SLUP finalizes a roughly 18-month process that has relied heavily on public input and has drawn on best practices from around the nation.

The new plan explicitly seeks to strengthen and rebuild the urban qualities of walkability and neighborhood connection - qualities that were vital to St. Louis’ history and vibrancy when it was one of the most populous cities in the country. Racialized disinvestment, wide and fast roads, and suburban-minded land use policy eroded this legacy, contributing to the City’s population loss. The new SLUP is grounded in the firm belief that undoing those mistakes and doubling down on the qualities that make St. Louis distinctly urban can help reverse population decline, reconnect communities, and help St. Louisans thrive.

For example, the updated SLUP calls to:

• Promote development and mixes of uses near existing and planned bike, pedestrian, and transit infrastructure.
• Support active uses (e.g., restaurants, retail, and offices) on ground floors in key corridors so they are walkable and vibrant.
• Ensure residents are supported to remain in their communities through growth and change.
• Allow a greater variety of community-serving uses in many neighborhoods, including supporting the historic pattern of neighborhood-serving businesses tucked in between places where people live (as currently seen on The Hill).
• Support a range of different building shapes and sizes, including historic buildings and new construction, across the city.

The new SLUP also aims to make it easier to build new housing across the city. For example, the SLUP calls to increase the supply and diversity of housing options, including through “missing middle housing,” housing types like Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), and universally-designed, aging-friendly housing. New and more diverse housing benefits the entire city, as it will help turn around population decline, but also supports existing residents by better meeting their housing needs.

Recognizing the north-south disconnect in St. Louis, the SLUP proposes that central areas - largely between the Arch and Forest Park - should serve as connectors to knit the city together through walkable and human-oriented corridors running north/south. It also seeks to reconnect the many parts of the city that have become separated by the many highways running through St. Louis.

Implementing many of these ideas will rely on zoning changes; the City will next be working to comprehensively overhaul the City’s zoning code to ensure that the regulations for development fully align with community priorities, as expressed in adopted plans. This process will include further community engagement, to begin in the coming months.

“The new Strategic Land Use Plan was a long time coming and is a big step for the City,” said Don Roe, executive director of the Planning & Urban Design Agency. “This plan gives us the solid foundation we need to take on the big, long-overdue project of updating the City’s zoning code. Alongside the great neighborhood planning work underway, the SLUP gives us a north star for what we’re trying to achieve as we create a modern, 21st-century zoning code.”

The new Strategic Land Use Plan is one part of the broader effort to make St. Louis a more urban and people-oriented city. Later this year, the Planning and Urban Design Agency will also seek adoption of an updated Sustainability & Climate Plan, as well as the Transportation & Mobility Plan, the first plan in decades to reenvision how transportation infrastructure is built and maintained in St. Louis, and which will support the City’s strategic efforts to make our streets more people-friendly. After approval, both the SCP and TMP will become part of the City’s Comprehensive Plan, alongside the SLUP. Other policies, strategies, incentives, and other public and private investments will advance the implementation of these guiding documents.

The final draft of the SLUP can be read here. The SLUP, as adopted, will be posted within weeks.

About the Strategic Land Use Plan (SLUP)

The SLUP serves as St. Louis’s “city plan for the physical development of the municipality,” which means it authorizes what kind of development can happen where. For example, the City’s Planning Commission reviews redevelopment plans, zoning text amendments, and rezonings created by people who are doing new development projects to make sure they conform with the SLUP. The Planning and Urban Design Agency also reviews zoning variances and other adopted plans to make sure they are in line with the SLUP. And the SLUP can also guide proactive policy changes, like redevelopment plans and zoning changes. In other words, the SLUP legally establishes the community’s aspirations for what future development should happen in different places.