Scranton Abington Planning Association Zoning Ordinance Updates

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Client

Project Description

GOAL:  To develop a set of zoning ordinances that accounts for the needs of nine (9) municipalities while still retaining each of their distinctions.

EPD worked with nine (9) municipalities of the Scranton-Abington Planning Association to develop a series of complementing form-based Zoning Ordinances. These ordinances were comprehensively enacted in late 2023. The work focused on highlighting each community’s land use and historic character strengths so that the balance of urban and rural landscapes remains intact. Further, the land use balances aim to ensure the potential corridors and areas of non-residential and residential development are coordinated with desired development scale, site access and impacts of parking/circulation.

The nine (9) form-based codes embrace both innovative policies and standards as well as necessary regulations required by the PA Municipalities Planning Code.
An additional element of the effort was to evaluate which development issues would best be handled in the Lackawanna County Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance. Issues such as off-street parking, lights, landscaping, etc. often best addressed in SALDO rather than a Zoning Ordinance. ArcGIS webmaps and an online database for the communities were used to optimize information accessibility.