Dallas's First Zoning Rewrite in 40 Years Is Now Yours to Mark Up: 400 Pages, Four Months, and a First Session Nov. 18
The city has released Public Draft #1 of its new development code — the first comprehensive rewrite since the 1980s, built to carry out ForwardDallas 2.0. It adopts nothing yet: virtual sessions start November 18, open houses run December through January, and the comments filed now are what Draft #2 is made of.
DALLAS — Every argument Dallas has about what can be built where runs through a code last comprehensively written in the 1980s. That code's replacement is now a public document. The City of Dallas released Public Draft #1 of its new Development Code on November 5 — a conversation draft, in the city's own framing, posted in full at DallasZoningReform.com and briefed the same day to the City Plan Commission by the Planning & Development Department and its consultant, Camiros Ltd.
The draft runs roughly 400 pages and exists to do one job: turn ForwardDallas 2.0, the land-use policy the City Council adopted in September 2024, from guidance into binding rules. The current code, the city says, has become overly complicated and difficult to administer over four decades of patchwork. Nothing in Draft #1 is adopted, and staff have been plain about the sequence — comments from this phase shape Draft #2, which then works through the Zoning Ordinance Advisory Committee and the City Plan Commission before it ever reaches the City Council.
The calendar for weighing in is long and starts next week. Virtual Lunch & Learn sessions begin November 18, a Neighborhood Summit panel follows, and in-person open houses run from mid-December through mid-January at City Hall and recreation centers across the city. Planning & Development Director Emily Liu put the scale of the conversation plainly at the briefing, as reported by Candy's Dirt: the community gets at least four months' conversation about the first draft.
For Metroplex readers, the practical point is timing. Zoning fights are usually lost before they are noticed — by the time a case reaches a hearing, the rules it is judged under were written years earlier. This is the one season in a generation when the rules themselves are the agenda, and the written comments filed at DallasZoningReform.com are part of the official record the second draft will be built from.
