Charleston County, South Carolina

Unified Development Ordinance 
   

For Charleston County, Duncan Associates revised it’s development standards ordinance to implement the recommendations of a new comprehensive plan prepared by Wallace Roberts & Todd. Charleston County, with its many coastal island resorts and prime agricultural areas, stands in sharp contrast to the ever- expanding local communities of Charleston, Mount Pleasant and North Charleston, which comprise one of South Carolina's fastest growing urban areas. The development standards drafting effort focused

on improving consistency with the mandates of the South Carolina Comprehensive Planning Enabling Act of 1994, which includes both plan implementation and zoning administration requirements. The County was also streamlining and modernizing its permitting and approval procedures, coordinating its regulations in fringe areas with local municipalities, and consolidating all land development regulations into a single unified document. Working with a Technical Support Committee made up of local stakeholders, a new development standards ordinance was prepared that combines both zoning and subdivision regulations, The new code places special emphasis on lands abutting existing cities (Charleston and Mount Pleasant), and the preservation of agricultural and environmentally-sensitive lands, including the fragile coastal "sea islands". The code also follows and implements the goals and policies of the new County plan, including a two-tier system of rural and urban standards to support the County's desire to maintain existing rural character and prime agricultural areas. New "easy-find" formatting features, expanded tables and graphics, common definitions, and a simpler numbering system also contributed to making the new code an overall more "user-friendly" document.

Period:    January 1997 - December 1999               Contact:    William Miller
Team:      Duncan Associates                                                  former Planning Director
                                                                                          803.740.3200