By Mark Reddie, Regional Vice President, Southwest at RVi

Over the course of my career, I have spent more than 30 years helping communities across the Southwest plan for growth through comprehensive planning, annexation, rezoning, and subdivision design. More recently, I have had the opportunity to work alongside Chris Baker, RVi Principal in Reno, whose decades of experience in entitlement strategy and community planning have added valuable perspective to our work on large-scale master planned communities. Together, we have focused on helping clients balance long-term vision, market realities, infrastructure coordination, and community expectations in ways that allow communities to evolve successfully over time.

Throughout our work, one question continues to guide our approach: how can a community planned today continue to thrive decades from now?  

It is a question rooted in the realities of modern growth. Housing demands evolve, infrastructure priorities shift, and market conditions fluctuate, developers and municipalities are being challenged to plan communities that can respond to long-term change without losing their identity.  For large scale master planned communities, this requires more than securing zoning approvals. It requires an entitlement strategy that creates a durable framework for flexibility, predictability, design quality, and community character.     

Through our work across the U.S., particularly in the southwest, including the Solstice Foothills community in Goodyear, Arizona, Chris and I have seen first-hand how flexible zoning, a thoughtful entitlement strategy, and meaningful community engagement can help create stronger, more resilient development outcomes. The most successful long-term planning frameworks balance adaptability and certainty in ways that allow communities to evolve responsibly over time.

Entitlement strategy is no longer just about approvals 

For decades, entitlement strategy was often treated as a regulatory milestone, a necessary step to secure zoning approvals and move a development project forward. I believe that approach is becoming increasingly outdated. 

Today, the strongest communities are planned with enough structure to create certainty and enough flexibility to evolve with the people, markets and public priorities that will shape them over time. 

That philosophy shaped nearly every major decision we made on Solstice Foothills. From the beginning, we recognized that housing demand, infrastructure needs, development economics, and market conditions would continue to shift throughout the life of the project. The entitlement strategy needed to acknowledge that reality instead of assuming the future would remain static. 

At RVi, we work at the intersection of land planning, entitlement strategy, community engagement and community design. Increasingly, that work also begins before a project officially enters the entitlement process.  

As Chris often points out, “RVi is frequently involved during the due diligence and purchase agreement stages, helping developers, brokers, property owners, and investors align on transaction timing, infrastructure planning, and entitlement strategy early enough to create realistic and achievable development outcomes.”

That perspective allows us to think beyond immediate zoning approvals and focus on how communities will adapt, create long-term value, and maintain a strong identity over decades of implementation.

In my experience, flexible zoning works best when paired with strong planning principles, clear community expectations, and targeted safeguards that build trust over time.

A case study in flexible entitlement strategy

One of the biggest misconceptions in land development is that entitlement strategy is simply about securing the maximum number of units, density, or intensity for a project. In reality, particularly for master planned communities, entitlement strategy is one of the most important tools for establishing a framework for long-term success. A strong entitlement strategy can shape flexibility, design quality, infrastructure coordination, regulatory safeguards, and the ability of a community to respond to changing market conditions over time. That became clear early in the planning process for Solstice Foothills.

The original planned area development (PAD) for the property (formerly known as Rio 1900) had been approved nearly 20 years earlier and reflected a very different housing market and development environment. The challenge was not simply updating the zoning code but creating a flexible entitlement framework that could remain viable over a much longer development timeline.

We recognized early that a conventional zoning approach would likely create limitations over time. Traditional zoning districts tend to separate land uses rigidly and assume the market will remain relatively stable. But large-scale communities do not develop all at once. They evolve over decades as housing preferences change, product-types shift, infrastructure priorities adapt, and economic conditions fluctuate. Rigid zoning frameworks often struggle to accommodate those realities.

Chris describes this approach as “market proofing” entitlement strategy; creating frameworks resilient enough to respond to changing development conditions while still preserving the long-term vision for a community.

As he puts it, “Every planner has a ‘could have been’ story. While we cannot plan for everything, it is our responsibility to use the tools available to ensure good ideas and strong projects have every opportunity to be realized.”

Planning in the grey

Rather than assigning every parcel to a fixed zoning category from the outset, we used a Land Use Character Area, or LUCA, framework. This approach focused more on the intended character, function, and compatibility of different areas rather than locking each location into one permanent zoning category.

In many ways, flexible zoning acknowledges an important reality in planning.

As Chris explains, “Land use and zoning code is black and white, but good planning is often done in the grey.”

Regional plans, zoning ordinances, and municipal policies often move slower than the market itself. As a result, innovative housing types, mixed-use concepts, and evolving development trends may not be fully anticipated by existing code frameworks.

The LUCA framework helped address that challenge by creating overlapping opportunities for residential development, commercial uses, civic spaces, parks, trails, and open space systems while still maintaining logical transitions and compatibility throughout the community.

This approach preserved a clear long-term vision while giving future phases enough flexibility to respond to market demand, infrastructure timing, and community needs. 

Flexibility requires guardrails 

Flexible zoning does not mean uncertainty, lack of accountability, or an open-ended development program. In many cases, flexible entitlement strategies require more thoughtful planning and more detailed safeguards than conventional zoning approaches. 

To make flexibility workable, we paired it with clear expectations around: 

• Open space connectivity  
• Integrated trail systems  
• Infrastructure planning  
• Design quality  
• Transition standards between neighborhoods  
• Compatibility between land uses  
• Regulatory safeguards  

Without those guardrails, flexibility can create uncertainty. With them, it can create resilience, adaptability, and trust. 

This balance is especially important for municipalities. Cities need confidence that infrastructure, compatibility, phasing, and implementation will be addressed responsibly. Developers need enough flexibility to respond to changing market conditions, housing preferences, and long-term economic realities. 

The strongest entitlement strategies recognize both sides of that equation. 

Community engagement strengthens entitlement strategy

One of the most important lessons from Solstice Foothills was how closely community engagement and entitlement strategy intersect. 

At public hearings, residents rarely respond to zoning terminology. They respond to outcomes: walkability, parks, buffers, traffic, trails, infrastructure, compatibility, perimeter protections, impacts to property values, and quality of life.

Successful conversations focus less on entitlement language and more on how people will actually experience the community and how it will impact surrounding properties. 

Listening first made a significant difference. 

During neighborhood outreach, nearby residents expressed concerns about lot transitions and maintaining the character of adjacent neighborhoods. Instead of applying broad restrictions across the entire project, we created targeted regulatory safeguards specific to those perimeter areas. 

For example, one neighboring community had 80-foot-wide residential lots backing up to the project site. Residents were concerned about smaller lots directly behind them. In response, we incorporated standards requiring either open space or lots of comparable width along that specific portion of the perimeter. 

That level of customization would have been difficult under a more rigid zoning structure. 

Throughout the public process, city leaders also emphasized the importance of preserving the site’s connection to the broader identity of Goodyear. During the City Council hearing, one council member noted that the property and its legacy are “so important to the history of Goodyear,” reinforcing the idea that long-term planning must balance future growth with community character.

We have seen similar dynamics on other projects as well. One recent entitlement project, nearby equestrian residents wanted to preserve horse trail access adjacent to the development. By listening carefully, we incorporated a natural-surface multi-use trail along the perimeter. That solution addressed neighborhood concerns while strengthening the project overall. When it came time to present the project for approval to the City Council, the neighbors showed up in support of the project and complemented the team on listening and addressing their concerns.

Those conversations reinforced an important point: flexible zoning is not about doing whatever the project team wants. It is about creating a framework that can strategically respond to community concerns while still meeting the client’s goals and preserving long-term project adaptability. 

In many ways, flexibility requires more collaboration, transparency, and trust, not less. 

The future of zoning and entitlement strategy 

Overly rigid zoning can create weaker communities over time because it assumes the future will look exactly like today. It can also assume that every project across a diverse city should be subject to identical requirements, regardless of context, location, market conditions, or community character.

That assumption becomes increasingly risky on projects with long implementation timelines.

At Solstice Foothills, the entitlement framework was intentionally designed to preserve flexibility while maintaining a cohesive planning vision and community identity.

As Amy Weidman, Vice President of Development at Harvard Investments, explained, “We wanted a framework that could evolve with the market while still maintaining a cohesive vision for the community.” 

That mindset shaped the project from the beginning. The LUCA framework, integrated open space systems, evolving housing mix, and phased flexibility would have been significantly more difficult under a conventional zoning structure. 

At the same time, municipalities still need certainty around infrastructure, compatibility, and implementation. That tension between certainty and adaptability is where many entitlement conversations now live.  Some municipalities are becoming more open to flexible zoning approaches. Others remain cautious, particularly because highly customized zoning districts can become difficult to administer over time. That concern is understandable. Cities are balancing staffing, consistency, infrastructure planning, implementation, and long-term governance responsibilities. 

Planning communities that can evolve 

At RVi, we have found that the most successful projects integrate community visioning, infrastructure planning, market realities, land planning, and entitlement strategy from the beginning rather than treating them as separate or piecemeal efforts. 

When those conversations happen early, projects are better positioned to adapt responsibly without losing their identity. 

I believe entitlement frameworks will continue moving toward more performance-based and character-based planning approaches that prioritize outcomes, flexibility, and integrated community design over rigid land use separation. 

The communities that endure will not be the ones frozen in time. They will be the ones designed with enough flexibility to evolve while still delivering a strong sense of place, long-term value, and community character. 

That is what we set out to accomplish at Solstice Foothills, and it reflects where the future of entitlement strategy is headed.