4.0. PCSR 02-08-2005 - Laserfiche WebLink

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1 (1 l'ldlllling NovC'mber- 2()()'1 $'~ ! 9i :rJf ~'" , .f!!/il~,"" 1l> f!, hat's what New Urban- ist architect-planner Andres Duanv exhorts audiences [0 do in his lectures about the decline of America's suburbs. When I first heard Duany express this view in the early 1 L)90s, I was taken aback. as, rl11 sure, most planners were. It seemed o Lltrageous ro suggest that zoning, the body of law that comrols development in 99 percent oLi\merica's co mnlLl ni ties, could be so e:lsdv dismissed. Since then, 11owever, I've come to believe that Duanv's prescription may not be so radi- cal after all. His main point is that conven- tional zoning based on the segregation orland uses was never intended to deal with physical form, and that the "band-aid" measures (in- cluding design guidelines) that planners cobble ontO existing ordinances to address thIS defi- ciency just make matters worse. Something else is needed, and dut something ebe IS wlut New Urbanists call form-based coding. Wh..l;" al: As its name suggests, form-based coding seeks to regulate the of the built environment. In contrast, conventional zoning primarily seeks to control land Llse and density. but is largely silent on nutters of form bevond the most basic height, Hoohuea, and setback Iimi ts for individual buildings. The new approach builds on the idea that physical form is a cOl11mLll1lty's most in trinsic emd enduring charactenstic. Ie seeks ro codiA' that form in a straightforward wav so that planners, citizens, developers, and other sLlke- l10lders can move easily rI-OIl1 a shared physi- cal vision ofa place to its built reality. To understand the concept, th i nk of the wav neigi,bodlllods chemge over time. In moUJ\'