A map of the proposed rezoning of Bentonville.

A mass rezoning of much of Bentonville, along with an entirely new development code, was approved by the City Council on Tuesday, April 14.

The approvals mark the conclusion of Plan Bentonville, a multi-year process to decide how — and where — the city should grow in the coming decades.

The first stage of Plan Bentonville included creating a Future Land Use Map, with parcel-by-parcel detail on how land should be used. That was completed in February of last year. The votes Tuesday translated that vision into a new set of rules for developers to follow.

There are numerous changes in the new code, but the most significant is the overhaul of the zoning districts themselves.

Every property in Bentonville has a zoning district that controls what can be built on it. The new code reduces 24 zoning districts down to 14.

Previously, zoning was largely organized around what kind of building is allowed on a property — residential, commercial or industrial.

For example, R-2 allowed duplexes, while R-4 allowed larger apartment buildings. A property might have been zoned C-1, C-2 or C-3 depending on the scale of commercial activity allowed.

The new code replaces those categories with a smaller set of zoning districts based on how dense and tall development can be, rather than what type of use is allowed.

T2 is the most rural and T6 is the most urban. As the number goes up, more building types are allowed and height limits increase.

The new zoning districts are based on the concept of "transects" — that development should step down in scope in waves or rings, with the tallest and most active areas in designated centers, gradually transitioning to lower-density neighborhoods at the edges.

"I think with the transect it makes zoning a whole lot more intuitive," City Planning Director Tyler Overstreet said. "The higher the number, the more stuff that could be built, and the more intense things could be built."

The new code's stated purpose includes promoting "compact and mixed-use development in the form of centers and neighborhoods" and limiting "the amount and scale of districts focused on single uses."

Higher-intensity transect districts (T5.1, T5.2 and T6) require "active uses" (non-residential uses) like shops, restaurants, or lobbies on the ground floor.

Additionally, developments over 40 acres must include a mix of zoning districts, meaning they can't all be one thing.

With the number of changes that come with a brand new development code, it's hard to make definitive statements about what it means for the city. There's nuance in the answers to almost every single question.

For most of the city, this is more of a rezoning than an upzoning. The city created a guide mapping each old district to a new one.

Many properties landed in similar categories, in terms of what can be built and how tall it can be.

However, some areas will see meaningful changes to what can be built.

Instead of being absorbed into a transect district, R-1 (low-density single-family residential) — the zoning most common in single-family subdivisions under the old code — has been preserved in the new code, with the same height limits and rules.

By contrast, the old R-2, R-3 and R-4 designations were absorbed into new transect districts.

While R-1 doesn't fit neatly into the new system, it's what residents told city planners they wanted, according to Overstreet.

"There's a large portion of Bentonville who loves their R-1, suburban, single family neighborhood, so we left that zoning district in," he said.

When a new development is proposed near an existing neighborhood, residents are often concerned about how tall the buildings will be and whether they'll fit in with surroundings.

In addition to the base zoning rules, the new code includes standards for height limits, setbacks and landscaped buffers between different zoning districts.

Overall, the new code "pays a lot more attention to what happens on the edges of that place to make sure that there are proper transitions," Overstreet said. "Typical zoning codes don't do that."

For example, if R-1 (Low Density Single-Family Residential) is next to T6 (Urban Center):

This article was updated April 15, 2026, to reflect the passage of the changes and include additional details.