City planners want to simplify development. Residents worry that retiring neighborhood plans means loss of voice

Tammi Laninga, an associate professor of urban and environmental planning at Western Washington University, acknowledged there can be resistance among community members to zoning changes that increase density or loosen restrictions in their neighborhoods. 

Laninga recently led a cross-university course in which students helped the state Department of Commerce create a state zoning atlas where users can compare land use regulations across jurisdictions in Washington to find out where barriers to housing exist. 

Students had to gather zoning information from city and county websites, then try and standardize all those disparate zones into more general categories. In the case of Bellingham, that took a long time, Laninga said. But she’s encouraged by the trend of simplifying codes. 

“Some codes are so complicated they don’t even make sense anymore,” she said. “A code becoming simpler allows for a wider variety of uses in a bigger area.” 

Laninga noted the Lettered Streets neighborhood is a “living example” of the coexistence of different housing styles and commercial uses — many of which were built before World War II but would no longer be allowed by current Bellingham code.