On a summer day roughly a decade ago, thermometers in Scott’s Addition read a scorching 103 degrees, recalled Jeremy Hoffman, climate scientist and Scott’s Addition resident.

But at the very same time — and less than five miles down the road — residents of the West End were enjoying a balmy 87-degree day.

The difference? Concrete and asphalt, Hoffman said.

“Places like Scott’s Addition, where we concentrated industrial use, allowed for significant amounts of hardscape,” Hoffman explained. Years later, though the factories have moved out and the neighborhood is now residential, it’s still characterized by large parking lots, wide streets and massive, brick and concrete warehouses.

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“That kind of development style is what gives rise to heat islands” — urban neighborhoods with average temperatures that exceed those in surrounding areas, Hoffman said. “Very little vegetation, lots of pavement, low buildings and no shade.”

Jeremy Hoffman demonstrates riding his bike in the bike lane on Norfolk St., Monday, April 28, 2025.

Scott’s Addition is not alone. Manchester also deals with the consequences of its industrial past. And there’s an incredibly simple solution, according to Hoffman: rewrite the city’s zoning ordinance to allow for taller buildings and encourage higher density development in the area.

City officials are currently working to modernize Richmond’s zoning code, which has not been updated since the 1970s. The goal is to allow for more mixed-use development that can create more affordable housing, walkable neighborhoods and greener infrastructure by 2037.

To Hoffman, taller buildings means fewer buildings, less hardscape, more shade and more room for greenspace.

And the denser a neighborhood is built, the easier it is for its residents to bike, walk and use public transit — cutting down on the carbon footprint of entire communities.

That combination of factors makes the zoning rewrite perhaps the most critical step local officials can take to battle climate change and address the health problems and inequities caused by it, Hoffman said.

“The problems … are where you’d expect the most vulnerable people to be,” Hoffman said of heat islands. “Gilpin (Court), parts of North Side, East End, Fulton. Virtually everything about public health outcomes in those neighborhoods.”

Even some minimal changes have already had a modest impact, he said. In Scott’s Addition, where recent, incremental zoning adjustments have allowed for several buildings as tall as 12 stories to go up just behind West Broad Street, Hoffman said it’s more comfortable to take a walk on a hot summer afternoon.

Jeremy Hoffman poses for a portrait in Scott’s Addition, Monday, April 28, 2025.

Laxer rules, freer markets a solution to the housing crisis?

That’s not the only advantage to Code Refresh, according to its proponents. When it’s all said and done, the ordinance rewrite could be a silver bullet that solves, or at least softens, the affordable housing crisis, declared by former Mayor Levar Stoney in 2023.

Richmond’s 62 square miles are landlocked — bound by Henrico County to the north and Chesterfield County to the south, making it impossible for the city to expand even as its population grows.

And almost 70% of that land is zoned exclusively for single-family residences, Hoffman said, forcing developers and landowners to go through the painstaking and sometimes drawn-out process of obtaining a special use permit if they want to build multi-family homes or apartment complexes.

That’s a problem, said Will Wilson, volunteer lead with RVA YIMBY, a housing advocacy group. YIMBY stands for “yes in my backyard” — an inversion of the term NIMBY (“not in my backyard”), often used to describe a person who opposes substantial redevelopment.

Wilson said slowing development with “political processes” and red tape like the special use permits exacerbates the housing crisis by preventing the free market from increasing housing supply to meet demand.

“We want to allow individuals and developers to make decisions about their property,” Wilson said. “We don’t all have to like what’s going on across the street from us, but we can separate out our tastes from what cities should be: big enough, dynamic enough to accommodate … all of us.”

Loosening rules — for example, allowing for by-right duplexes and triplexes, expanding authorized areas for apartment buildings and raising height limits — could mean less need for publicly funded housing, Wilson said. Natural market forces are standing by, ready to provide housing. Residents are standing by, ready to receive it.

“We don’t have to wrangle so much over affordable housing provision, or how to allocate certain funds, when we can do a lot of that in the market,” he said.

Austin, Texas and Minneapolis, Minnesota , are among U.S. cities to recently overhaul their zoning codes, add to their housing supply and see prices stabilize or even drop. Minneapolis officials enacted increased height allowances and even established height minimums in some neighborhoods, and permitted by-right duplex and triplex construction on all residential lots.

Amid record homelessness nationwide, Wilson said he wouldn’t mind seeing Richmond replicate those decisions.

“These are processes that need to occur for people to operate within their own neighborhoods,” Wilson said. “They don’t have to be controlled.”

Two buildings are seen under construction on the corner of West Marshall Street and Altamont Avenue in Scott’s Addition on Friday. Though Scott’s Addition is booming, the Richmond region is not building enough housing to keep up with all the new residents.

Where are officials in the process?

Officials have checked a significant box in the Code Refresh process, said Kevin Vonck, the director of City Hall’s Department of Planning and Development Review: they’ve completed their pattern book.

A pattern book is an analysis of how the structures in a certain neighborhood conform with the current zoning ordinance. Officials will use the conformity rate to understand the “defining characteristics” of the neighborhood — and determine what it needs to thrive going forward.

“We have a number of neighborhoods that were built prior to the 1970s zoning, and then the zoning came in and imposed requirements,” Vonck explained. “In many neighborhoods, we basically made what already existed illegal.”

Why does that matter?

“If the buildings were to disappear, you couldn't build them back as is,” Vonck said.

That means that, rather than harming historic neighborhoods — as some fear Code Refresh will do — it will actually help preserve them while allowing for more dense development, according to Vonck.

In other words: officials aren’t refreshing the code to change the character of Richmond’s neighborhoods. They’re refreshing the code to ensure it matches the “reality on the ground.”

For example, Oregon Hill is full of homes that are technically too close together or not far enough from sidewalks and streets, the pattern book found. And the handful of small shops on South Pine Street are generally not permitted in the neighborhood.

But if officials revamp Oregon Hill’s zoning designation — that is, allow for the buildings to be built nearer to one another, and for some commercial development — the neighborhood will become both conforming and denser, all without seeing its character altered, Vonck said.

“We want to get as much of the existing fabric conforming as possible,” he said. “So, this is change that allows what’s there to conform, but also does so in a way that doesn’t totally disregard the rules and say ‘anything goes in this neighborhood.’”

It hasn’t been perfect, Vonck acknowledged — some residents have criticized the process and expressed fear that it will end with the decimation of charming, old homes. But Vonck doesn’t think so.

“Cities are organic creatures, right?” he said. “They’re always evolving. The only way they’re static is when they’re dead, and I don’t think anybody wants a dead city.”

What’s next?

After hosting three open houses to engage with the public and invite feedback, Code Refresh’s Advisory Council — a group of citizen volunteers appointed by the city’s Planning Commission, City Council and Stoney — are holding meetings to consult with officials on the path forward.

The next meeting will take place at 4 p.m. on May 15 in City Hall’s fifth-floor conference room.