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A. General Criteria. The Lower Density Residential designation is applied to areas that provide predominantly single-family structures (attached or detached) on individual lots. Application of individual zones to specific areas in the City should enhance and support the integrity of existing neighborhoods, provide for a range of choices in housing styles and cost, and encourage compatible infill development and redevelopment.

B. Lower Density Residential Zone (R-2, R-4, R-6, R-9) Location Criteria. The Lower Density zone designations defined above can be appropriately applied and maintained in areas meeting one of the following criteria:

1. Blocks, intersection-to-intersection street segments, or areas with defined physical edges, which have at least eighty (80) percent of the existing structures in single-family residential use on lots whose average size falls within the minimum and maximum lot size standards of the zone to be applied. Half-blocks at the edges of single-family zones with more than fifty (50) percent single-family structures, or portions of blocks on an arterial with a majority of single-family structures, shall generally be included. This shall be decided on a case-by-case basis, but the policy is for inclusion.

2. Blocks, intersection-to-intersection street segments, or areas with defined physical edges, which have less than eighty (80) percent of the existing structures in single-family residential use but in which an increasing trend toward single-family residential use can be demonstrated; for example:

a. The construction of single-family structures in the last five (5) years has been increasing proportionately to the total number of constructions for new uses in the area, or

b. The area shows an increasing number of improvements and rehabilitation efforts to single-family structures, or

c. The number of existing single-family structures has been very stable or increasing in the last five (5) years, or

d. The area’s location is topographically and geographically connected to, and compatible with, existing single-family residential development, with physical edges (such as major arterials, topography, waterways, open space, existing natural or landscape screening, etc) that separate and buffer the area from Higher Density Residential, Commercial, and Industrial.

3. Areas with sensitive physical, environmental or natural resource characteristics that make lower intensity development advisable and appropriate.

4. Areas that meet the above criteria for designation as Lower Density Residential shall not be rezoned for nonresidential uses, except NC (Neighborhood Commercial), unless the change has been adopted as part of a sub-area planning study.

5. No vacant or underutilized land areas (per Vacant Buildable Lands Model criteria) within the City shall be rezoned R-2 or R-4 for new residential development. Land use and zoning designations for residential lands being annexed into the City shall be converted to City designations in accordance with VMC Table 20.230.030. (Ord. M-3946 § 6, 2010; Ord. M-3730 § 9, 2005)