A 15-Minute Louisville: Guiding Growth to Improve Livability

Learn how three downtown-adjacent neighborhoods in Louisville, Kentucky are leveraging neighborhood planning to ensure future development leads to a more livable and resilient community.

2020 continues to teach us all valuable lessons about how we experience the built environment in urban neighborhoods. While we’ve adjusted to being inside remote working and learning, we’ve also been outside as much as possible as visits to parks have skyrocketed. It has never been more apparent how important the availability of nearby park space is to the physical and mental health of a city. It is now incredibly evident that many neighborhoods in our cities lack available or accessible open space. Furthermore, across the Midwest and South, our core neighborhoods continue to feature streets and spaces designed for vehicular travel and are often lacking basic necessities, such as wide sidewalks and street trees. Despite a pandemic, many neighborhoods continue to experience development pressure and resident displacement resulting from gentrification. The resulting dynamic is one in which neighborhood planning can play a central role – guiding growth to improve livability for everyone.

In the last few years, the mayor of Paris committed to transforming the French metropolis into a 15-minute city, or one in which all services for residents are available within a 15-minute walk. This approach to urban planning and design continues to challenge car-driven distances in favor of walkable neighborhoods. Working with Louisville Metro Office of Advanced Planning and Sustainability, the 15-minute city approach has influenced our recent work on the Butchertown, Phoenix Hill, and NuLu Neighborhood Plan in Louisville, Kentucky. Located between downtown Louisville and its eastern in-town suburbs, this plan sets a vision for the next ten years for three rapidly-growing communities. In the last decade, new residents, restaurants, and breweries have flooded into an area already bustling with a unique sense of place and identity. With the advent of the pandemic, development proposals have charged ahead with the opening of a new soccer stadium and a new botanical garden.

Butchertown, Phoenix Hill, and NuLu continue to attract significant developer interest, with various active developments and master planned districts in the pipeline.

With a public process started prior to the pandemic, this plan’s engagement included a public meeting that resulted in more than 360 comments/ideas, an online survey with 400 responses, and a door-to-door canvassing to have one-on-one conversations with more than 30 residents. With the advent of the pandemic, the planning team adjusted the engagement strategy to focus on online meetings with an engaged Neighborhood Advisory Group representing residents, business owners, and community leaders. This engagement revealed a desire for a walkable and well-connected neighborhood, responsible and sustainable growth, and a renewed focus on transforming Beargrass Creek.

The year-long process included a pre-pandemic public meeting and door-to-door neighborhood canvassing, followed by online meetings.

Considered one of Louisville’s top “hidden gems,” Beargrass Creek is currently a partly channelized waterway flanked by industrial or underutilized properties. Extending southeast toward Cherokee Park, this corridor has been the subject of public imagination for years, with multiple planning studies dedicated to re-imagining the creek into a naturalized stream bordered by a greenway and linear parks. Our engagement revealed a community desire to champion this project and provide a coordinated framework for implementing this vision.

Beargrass Creek connects the Ohio River with Louisville’s eastern neighborhoods, though remains largely hidden from view for most Louisvillians. The corridor has captured the public imagination the last few years, with various planning projects re-imagining the waterway as a naturalized stream anchoring a linear park system.

This plan’s overarching goal is to anticipate growth and develop a proactive approach in which new developments benefit new and existing residents of all income groups. To accomplish this, the plan:

• Identifies opportunity sites along key corridors or near destinations that are expected to re-develop and recommends zoning and form district updates to incentivize walkable and compact developments.

• Sets a connectivity framework based on converting one-way pairs into two-way complete streets, and right-sizing intersections to encourage a walkable and bikeable community.

• Transforms existing barriers into gateways that feature the community’s sense of identity with murals and creative lighting.

• Sets an implementable vision for a long-imagined Beargrass Creek Greenway that includes open space and new development facing the creek.

• Champions missing middle housing types as a strategy to increase affordable housing products within the neighborhoods.

Clay and Hancock Streets were recognized as key north-south corridors to prioritize connectivity improvements and development opportunity.

The Witherspoon Street underpass was identified by the community as a major barrier in connecting Butchertown and the Soccer District with Waterfront Park. The plan recommends a placemaking and lighting strategy to improve the pedestrian experience between these destinations.

These recommendations aim to create a 15-minute community, accessible for residents of all income groups and ages. Implementation strategies empower what is already an active and engaged network of residents, business owners, and leaders to build a more livable and resilient community.