Desert Vernacular: Green Building and Ecological Design in Scottsdale, Arizona - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 490

people state for living in Scottsdale include desert beauty, open space, and a quiet, clean
and safe environment. 13 These attributes have been nurtured by city ordinances, pro-
grams and guidelines intended to protect the community's esthetic and environmental
qualities. To this end, the city has adopted the following planning and environmen-
tal instruments: (1) General Plan and Character Area Guidelines; (2) Sensitive Design
Principles; (3) Green Building Program; (4) Environmentally Sensitive Lands Ordinance
(ESLO); and (5) Native Plant Protection. Each of these instruments will be discussed in
the following sections.
28.4.2 Scottsdale's General Plan and Character Area Guidelines
The General Plan is a statement of goals and policies that work as the primary tool for
guiding the future development of the city. It is an expression of our collective vision and
direction for the future of Scottsdale and how we want future growth and the character of
the community to occur over the next 10-20 years. 14
On a daily basis the city is faced with tough choices about growth, housing, trans-
portation, neighborhood improvement, and service delivery. A General Plan provides
a guide for making these choices by describing long-term goals for the city's future as
well as policies to guide day-to-day decisions. As such, Scottsdale's vision is to be a
community that 15
• Demonstrates its commitment to environmental, economic, and social sustainabil-
ity and measures both the short- and long-term impacts of our decisions
• Creates, revitalizes, and preserves neighborhoods that have long-term viability,
unique attributes and character, livability, and connectivity to other neighbor-
hoods in the community and that fit together to form an exceptional citywide
quality of life (i.e., the whole is greater than the sum of its parts)
• Facilitates human connection by anticipating and locating facilities and infra-
structure that enable human communication and interaction and by promoting
policies that have a clear human orientation, value, and benefit
• Respects the environmental character of the city with preservation of desert and
mountain lands and with innovative ways of protecting natural resources, clean
air, water resources, natural habitat and wildlife migration routes, archaeological
resources, vistas, and view and scenic corridors
• Builds on its cultural heritage, promotes historical and archaeological preserva-
tion areas, and identifies and promotes the arts and tourism in a way that recog-
nizes the unique desert environment in which we live
• Coordinates transportation options with appropriate land uses to enable a
decreased reliance on the automobile and more mobility choices
• Maintains or improves its high standards of appearance, aesthetics, public ameni-
ties, and levels of service
• Recognizes and embraces change: from being predominantly undeveloped to
mostly built out, from a young town to a maturing city, from a bedroom commu-
nity to a net importer of employees, and from a focus on a single economic engine
to a diverse, balanced economy
• Simultaneously acknowledges our past (preservation of historically signiicant
sites and buildings will be important) and prepares for our future