Glossary of Planning Terms Access Management: Access picking fruit, feeding animals, or staying at management is the process of balancing a Bed & Breakfast on a farm. the competing needs of motor vehicle mobility and land access. Access Americans with Disabilities Act management provides access to land (ADA): A comprehensive, federal civil development while simultaneously rights law that prohibits discrimination on preserving the safe and efficient flow of the basis of disabilities in employment, traffic, including bicyclists and state and local government programs and pedestrians, on the roadway system. activities, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications. Accessory Dwelling Unit: An independent dwelling unit that is clearly Apartment: A dwelling unit used subordinate to a single-family detached exclusively for lease or rent as a residence. dwelling, as distinguished from a duplex or other two-family dwelling. It may be Archeological Resources: Places that internal or external to the main unit. have the potential to yield information about the past through study of the Adaptive Reuse: Rehabilitation or landscape and remains of previous human renovation of existing building(s) or intervention on the landscape. structures for any use(s) other than the present use(s). Architectural and Cultural Heritage: Places, people, objects, stories, traditions, Affordable Dwelling Unit: Refers to and ideas from and about the past that units required under the Affordable relate to us today. Dwelling Unit Ordinance, units are committed for a 30-year term as affordable Architectural and Historic Surveys: to households with incomes at 60 percent Studies of the properties within a or less of the area median income. community or neighborhood or of a specific property to document what exists presently Affordable Housing: A housing unit and what existed there in the past. where no person or family under 80 percent of the area median income spends Architectural Design Control (ADC) more than 30 percent of their income on Districts: Locally protected historic housing costs. Households / families can districts that are designated based on be further defined as extremely low income historical and architectural significance. (earning no more than 30% Area Median Properties in ADC districts must go through Income), very low income (earning design review when exterior alterations, between 30-50 % Area Median Income) or new structures, demolitions, or partial low income (earning between 50 -80% demolitions are proposed. Area Median Income). Area Median Income (AMI): The area Agritourism: is the practice of attracting median household income is the value that visitors and travelers to agricultural areas, occurs in the middle of the range of incomes generally for educational and recreational for the Charlottesville area. Exactly half of purposes. It includes a wide variety of all people in the area earn more than this activities, including buying produce direct value, while the other half earns less. The from a farm stand, navigating a corn maze, median is referred to as 100 percent AMI. Page 1 Glossary of Planning Terms Best Management Practices (BMP): block, block numbering area, census tract, Actions taken to keep soil and other country, or place. pollutants out of streams and lakes. BMPs are designed to protect water quality and Brown/Grayfields: A brownfields site to prevent new pollution. involves land that was previously used for industrial or commercial purposes and that Bike Lane: A portion of a roadway that suffers real or perceived environmental has been designated for preferential or contamination such as low concentrations exclusive use by bicyclists by pavement of hazardous waste or pollution and has the markings and, if used, signs. It is intended potential to be reused once it is cleaned up. for one-way travel, usually in the same Grayfields land is that which is covered by direction as the adjacent traffic lane, unless an under-utilized impervious surface, such designed as a contra-flow lane. as a parking lot. Bike Rack: A stationary fixture to which a Buffer: A strip of land, fence, or border of bicycle can be securely attached. trees, etc., between one use and another, which may or may not have trees and Bike Route: A roadway or bikeway shrubs planted for screening purposes, designated by the jurisdiction having designed to set apart one use area from authority, either with a unique route another. An appropriate buffer may vary designation or with Bike Route signs, along depending on uses, districts, size, etc., and which bicycle guide signs may provide shall be determined by the appropriate local directions and distance information. Signs board. that provide directional, distance, and destination information for bicyclists do Building, Residential: Any building not necessarily establish a bicycle route. arranged, designed, used, or intended by one or more families or lodger and that Blight: Unsightly condition including the includes, but is not limited to, the following accumulation of debris, litter, rubbish, or types: single-family detached, two-family rubble; fences characterized by holes, dwellings, townhouse dwellings, and breaks, rot, crumbling, cracking, peeling or multiple-family dwellings. rusting; landscaping that is dead, characterized by uncontrolled growth and Business and Technology: Replaces the lack of maintenance, or damaged; and any “Industrial” land use designation. These other similar conditions of disrepair and areas focus on office space, business start- deterioration regardless of the condition of ups, technology and science-based industry, other properties in the neighborhood. and light manufacturing, all uses associated with “The New Economy.” Block: An area of land bounded by a street, or by a combination of streets and By Right: A use permitted or allowed in public parks, cemeteries, railroad right-of- the district involved, without review by the way, exterior boundaries of a subdivision, review board, and complies with the shorelines of waterways, or corporate provisions of these zoning regulations and boundaries. other applicable ordinances and regulations. Boundary: A line, which may or may not follow a visible feature, that defines the limits of a geographic entity such as a Page 2 Glossary of Planning Terms Capital Budget: A plan of proposed Character: A combination of features and capital outlay appropriations and means of traits that form the distinctive nature of a financing them. structure or place. Capital Improvement: Any physical Charlottesville Housing Fund (CHF): asset constructed or purchased to provide, Fund that was established in 2007 by the improve, or replace a public facility, which City to provide a flexible funding is large scale and high in cost. mechanism for housing-related projects. By removing regulatory strings often Capital Improvements Program associated with the affordable housing (CIP): A proposed schedule of all future programs, the City has provided a unique projects listed in order of construction resource for non-profit organizations, local priority together with cost estimates and housing developers, and others. the anticipated means of financing each project. Included are major projects Clean industry (Green Industry): is requiring the expenditure of public funds, environment friendly industry. Green over and above the annual government’s Industry is producing environment friendly operating expenses, which are for the products or products that should help purchase, construction, or replacement of improve natural conditions and cause the physical assets for the community. minimal damage to environment during the working process. Capital Investment: Private sector investment in major physical Code of Virginia, The: The statutory law improvements, infrastructure, and of the U.S. state of Virginia, and consists of equipment, such as buildings and the codified legislation of the Virginia machinery that generate tax revenues for General Assembly. local government. Code Enforcement: The attempt by a Census: A complete enumeration, usually government unit to have property owners of a population, but also businesses and and others responsible for buildings and commercial establishments, farms, related land to bring their properties up to governments, and so forth. standards required by building codes, housing codes, and other ordinances. Census Tract: A small relatively permanent statistical subdivision of a Commission, The: The Planning county in a metropolitan area or a selected Commission of the City of Charlottesville, non-metropolitan county delineated by a Virginia. local committee of census data users for the purpose of presenting decennial census Community: A sub-area of the city data. Census tracts boundaries normally consisting of residential, institutional, and follow visible features, but may follow commercial uses sharing a common governmental unit boundaries and other identity. non-visible features in some instances; they always rest within counties. Community Development Block Grant (CDBG): A grant program Central Business District (CBD): The administered by the U.S. Department of commercial heart of the city, also called the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) downtown or center city. on a formula basis for entitlement Page 3 Glossary of Planning Terms communities and by the State Department Context Sensitive Design: Context of Housing and Community Development Sensitive Design (CSD) is defined by the (HCD) for non-entitled jurisdictions.