URBP7005 Chap.7 Zoning, Form Based Codes and Smart Growth
Zoning, Form Based Codes and Smart Growth
Each code fixes one thing and releases the other
Conventional zoning segregates land uses into specified geographic districts with dimensional standards limiting development inside each. A form based code aims at a chosen urban shape instead: rather than saying which activity may occupy a site, it fixes the built shape whatever occupies it must take.
The historical case for separating uses was public health, and the case now made against it is also public health, on the ground that single use regulation produced monotonous, sprawling, car dependent landscapes and discouraged compact walkable communities.
Both are health arguments that differ over which exposure dominates.
Six components, and the arguments each way
A form based code is assembled from a regulating plan, building form standards, public space and street standards, architectural standards, landscape standards and parking standards.
Four claims are made for it: a more predictable physical result, greater public participation because citizens can see what will happen where, easier implementation in established communities, and greater usability because it is shorter and organised for visual access.
Three concerns run the other way: higher development costs from increased uncertainty, doubt about whether the existing toolkit could do the same job, and public resistance that lengthens approvals.
The movements the codes serve
New urbanism is a way of designing cities, towns and neighbourhoods whose practitioners set out to cut traffic and stop sprawl.
Its charter asks for a mix of activities and of people in every neighbourhood, design that serves walking and transit alongside driving, public space that is drawn deliberately and open to everyone, and buildings and landscape that answer to local history, climate, ecology and craft, while conceding that design on its own will not repair a social or an economic problem.
It works at three scales: region, neighbourhood and block.
Smart growth is the surrounding policy programme, and many of its ten principles concern process rather than form.
The empirical test
The required reading evaluates whether smart growth instruments produce compact development and traditional neighbourhood design, by operationalising five dimensions and applying them to three regions with different growth management regimes, using residential neighbourhoods rather than whole metropolitan areas as the unit.
The same pattern appears in all three: neighbourhoods better connected internally and denser, still poorly connected externally, relatively homogeneous in land use and isolated from shopping and transit. The instruments altered subdivision design and did not reach mixed use or regional accessibility.
What this chapter covers
- 01
What conventional zoning regulates and what a form based code regulates
- 02
The public health argument used on both sides
- 03
The six components of a form based code
- 04
Four claims for form based codes and three concerns against
- 05
The new urbanist charter and its three scales
- 06
Ten smart growth principles, and how many concern process
- 07
Five measured dimensions of compact and traditional development
- 08
What changed in three regions and what did not
- 09
One growth boundary, its supporters and its critics
Tell a committee whether its reforms worked
- 3Name the five dimensions and place the result on them.
- 3State what the comparative study concluded about instrument reach.
- 3Give the committee a usable answer.
Key terms
- Euclidean Zoning
- Conventional zoning, characterised by segregating land uses into specified geographic districts with dimensional standards limiting development activity within each district type.
- Regulating Plan
- The diagrammatic version of the master plan inside a form based code, marking where the streets and blocks run, where greens, squares, parks and other set pieces sit, and what else is treated as special.
- Building Form Standards
- The part of the code governing how a building is massed and placed and how its basic elements work, so that it sits properly beside its neighbours and addresses the street.
- New Urbanism
- An approach to designing cities, towns and neighbourhoods whose practitioners aim to reduce traffic and eliminate sprawl, working at the scales of region, neighbourhood and block.
- Urban Growth Boundary
- A line beyond which land is reserved for resource use and closed to urban development, credited with holding back sprawl and blamed for dearer housing.
- Traditional Neighbourhood Design
- A development type combining a connected grid-like street network, higher density housing around retail and civic uses, mixed land uses and pedestrian friendly streets.
Zoning, Form Based Codes and Smart Growth FAQ
What is the real difference between conventional zoning and a form based code?
Which uncertainty the city is willing to carry. Conventional zoning fixes the type of use permitted in a district and leaves the built shape relatively open within dimensional limits. A form based code fixes the shape a use may take and leaves the type of use open.
That is why the participation argument is made for form based codes: a citizen can see what will physically happen where, which is said to raise comfort with greater density.
Is a code with height and setback rules a form based code?
Not by itself. A code that sets heights, setbacks, materials and parking while retaining regulation by use has three of the six components and keeps the defining feature of the conventional instrument, and it will usually lack a regulating plan showing streets, blocks and public spaces.
Calling it a conventional code with form controls added is accurate, and it matters because the predictability and participation arguments made for genuine form based codes do not transfer to it.
If land use mix did not change, does that mean mixed use policy fails?
No. The study measured whether the instruments in force changed the outcome and concluded that smart growth plans had not branched out into the non traditional aspects of planning needed to encourage mixed uses and improve regional accessibility. That is a finding about coverage rather than efficacy, because an instrument never applied to a dimension cannot be said to have failed on it.
The supportable sentence is that subdivision level tools do not deliver land use mix.
Assessment move
Find the development control instrument that governs one area of your case city and read it for what it fixes and what it releases. Then take the five measured dimensions and mark which of them that instrument could conceivably move. Most instruments reach two of the five, and knowing which two turns a vague recommendation into a specific one.
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