City of Norman planning staff and members of the Business and Community Affairs Committee on Oct. 2 debated eliminating minimum lot-size requirements for several residential zoning districts to encourage smaller, more affordable housing types.

Jane Hudson, the city’s planning director, outlined existing standards and potential changes, saying the city could consider “no minimum lot size period” for R‑1A, R‑1, R‑2, RM‑2 and R‑3 districts for new (greenfield) development. Hudson noted the current rules include front-yard setbacks of 25 feet, side setbacks of 5 feet, a 20-foot rear setback and a “65% maximum coverage.”

Committee members and staff discussed how reducing or removing a minimum lot area would interact with other requirements — street frontage, emergency access, utility easements, and stormwater infrastructure. Several participants argued the market and engineering review would limit extreme outcomes: one committee member summarized widely cited planning advice by saying, “The top 3 things you can do for housing affordability is to abolish parking minimums, legalize ADUs, and abolish, minimum lot sizes.”

Hudson and others raised specific numeric options mentioned during the meeting: examples of alternative minimums (1,400 to 1,800 square feet) used in other cities, keeping a narrower street frontage minimum (35 feet instead of 50 feet, 35 feet on cul‑de‑sacs), and the practice on older downtown plats of 20–25 foot‑wide lots with deeper lot depths. Speakers stressed the need to preserve targeted safeguards, such as extra depth for corner lots and driveway access design, and the meeting record includes concerns that very narrow lots can cause unusable edge or corner parcels without careful engineering.

Rather than adopting a single new minimum, several committee members favored removing the prescriptive lot‑size floor while adding submittal requirements so applicants must demonstrate how stormwater, driveway access and setbacks will function on smaller lots. Hudson described the intent as an incremental step before a full zoning ordinance rewrite: staff would remove the minimum lot size as a near‑term change and then “tease out” related variables during the broader code update.

The committee did not take a formal vote. Members gave direction to staff to prepare the item for a full council study session that would include recommended options (no minimum with a recommended reference lot size, or low minimums combined with engineered submittal requirements). The staff presentation and committee discussion emphasized that proposed changes would apply to new greenfield plats; infill lots and existing platted lots would continue to be handled under current platting rules and subdivision regulations until further ordinance updates.

Hudson and committee members repeatedly framed the change as one step to create more “missing middle” housing types — smaller single‑family homes, duplexes, and garage apartments — and as part of a broader effort to reduce regulatory barriers and allow engineers and developers to demonstrate workable designs rather than relying solely on a single prescriptive lot‑size number.

The committee directed staff to take the discussion to a full study session with draft language and recommended submittal requirements for engineered solutions on smaller lots. No ordinance text was adopted at the meeting.