Charlottesville, VA Fence Regulations: Retaining Walls (2026)

Charlottesville Development Code Sec. 2 applies retaining-wall standards to every lot in the city. The stated intent is to prevent retaining walls from looming over neighboring properties and the public right-of-way, and to keep large retaining walls from becoming an eyesore. The maximum height for a single retaining wall is 8 feet. A property owner can instead build two or more retaining walls, whether structurally connected or not, provided the horizontal distance between them is at least 3 feet and none of the individual walls exceeds 6 feet in height.

Where a retaining wall sits in a yard, it also cannot exceed the maximum height set for the fence or wall type specified for that zoning district. Any retaining wall of 6 feet or taller must be landscaped so it is completely screened from view, to the standard of a Moderate Impact Frontage Screen under Sec. 3. Height itself is measured from the top of the wall down to the adjacent lowest ground elevation on the outside face of the wall, which keeps the measurement tied to what a neighbor or passerby actually sees rather than the buried side.

These standards work alongside the general fence and wall measurement rules in Div. 8, so a retaining wall combined with a fence on top is measured using the combined-structure rules in Sec. D when the fence sits within 3 feet of the retaining wall's face.