City releases “post-pandemic” questionnaire to gain insights, adapt city’s Richmond 300 master plan

The City’s long-term master planning and land use initiative, Richmond 300, has been ongoing for some time and seeks to shape what a future Richmond could look like through extensive studies and an update to the city’s zoning map. The entire project is meant to take into consideration future needs and what Richmond could become.

With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting every facet of life and the possibility that it could lead to long-term societal shifts and changes, the city has addressed this and is asking what changes should be considered through a new “post-pandemic” questionnaire it’s asking citizens to fill out.

The questions in the questionnaire seek to drive participants to ponder one major question, according to officials: “Do you think this pandemic will cause permanent behavioral shifts in how individuals, households, and businesses use and relate to Richmond’s built environment? If so, how?”

In it, the city acknowledges:

We are probably still too close to this pandemic to truly understand its effects on the built environment, but since the Master Plan will come out in late-May, we want to have something in the plan related to any longer-term effects of the pandemic on land use planning in Richmond. We first created this questionnaire to gather the thoughts of the Richmond 300 Advisory Council and PDR staff, and now we are expanding our ask to the broader Richmond community.

Take the questionnaire here.