There are few municipal functions more basic than zoning and planning, the rules and process that dictate what can be built, where it can go, and how it should be done.
In Philadelphia, most agree, that system is badly broken. An ancient zoning code and fickle political forces make building here a risky proposition for any big developer. And the Planning Commission is so weak that even skyline-changing towers can be erected with little to no meaningful input from public planners.
But momentum is clearly building within City Hall for a top-to-bottom overhaul of Philadelphia's haphazard approach to zoning and planning.
A commission formed last year is rewriting the nearly half-century old zoning code. In January, Mayor Nutter swept away all but one of Mayor John F. Street's appointees to the city's three most critical zoning and planning boards and commissions. And this month, Andy Altman started work as Philadelphia's first deputy mayor for planning and economic development.
Even City Council - not usually regarded as a bastion of solid urban planning practices - is showing signs that it might be willing to change the system.
Last week, for instance, Council Members Bill Green and Brian J. O'Neill said they favored creating a design review board to pass judgment on the look and feel of big new developments. Similar entities are popping up across the country, as municipalities seek to exert greater control over the cityscape.
It would certainly be a big change for Philadelphia.
The only design review developers have been subject to in recent years is an informal mishmash of neighborhood input and hard-to-predict directives from the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
The city's planners - who are the actual experts - frequently are cut out entirely, or briefed only when a project has all the permits and zoning approvals it needs.
O'Neill wants to change that, and he wants to see the legislation within three weeks. But that's not going to happen.
"Everyone wants to do this quickly. We have to do it thoughtfully," said Altman, the new deputy mayor.
Altman said he and Nutter were strongly committed to asserting a major role for the city's professional planners in development review, but that he did not yet know whether a design review board was the way to do it.
"You're looking at a whole system of how planning's been done in the city," he said. "We shouldn't kid ourselves, it's a massive undertaking."
