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Townhouses in the Pleasant Hill dcz,Idopment define the wall.I' (fa 'j> ublic roOln "ficusI'd on Mount Diablo. Citizens supported the redevelopment pLm in pfl7"t because of the generom pmvisiorJ of open 'pace. preconfigured (bur customizable) zones based on the "transect"-a framework for organiz- ing a metropolitan area into a series of zones, ranging from most natural to most urban. One of the first communities to take this new approach is Petaluma, California, which adopted a variation of the SmartCode in] uly 2003. Laura Hall of Fisher & Hall Urban Design in Santa Rosa and Paul Crawford, FAlep, of Crawford Multari & Clark in San Luis Obispo tailored the document to the ciry's needs; it focuses on a 400-acre ponion of the downtown. According to Hall, Petaluma adopted the code in just nine months, after a seven-year effort to complete and adopt a more conven- tional, use-based downtown plan and zoning ordinance. Over $100 million in develop- ment has been approved since the code's adbP- tion, she says. $200 million, mixed-use development in Con- tra Costa County, California. For two de- cades, neighborhood opposition had stalled the proposed public-private venture on a 20- acre site adjacent to the Pleasant Hill station on the Bay Area Rapid Transit line. The plan .thiS project was developed by Lennertz Ie & Associates of Portland, Oregon. The code, and the elaborate public involve- ment that led up to it, created a level of trust that led to approval of the project in Decem- ber 2001. The project is now moving forward under the direction of architect Dan Parolek, ofOpricos Design in Berkeley, California. Stephen Lawton, the community develop- ment director of Hercules, another Contra Costa County community, credits the stream- lined nature of form-based coding with help- ing the ciry to deal with a backlog of develop- ment proposals. Dover Kohl & Partners' Central Hercules plan is shaping several new mixed- use neighborhoods on a patchwork of browntleld sites. Says Lawton: "The clarity of the form- based code made it easy for citizens to under- stand die development proposals and to ac- cept the intensity of growth needed to achieve financial stability. This was something we'd never have been able to achieve with conven- tional zoning." To date, most form-based codes have been .d individually in response to the needs pecitlc community or sire. Now comes a new generation of srandardized form-based codes, which are derived from rhe SmartCode, a template developed by DPZ and licensed by the Municipal Code Corporarion in Talla- hassee, Florida. The SmanCode remplare defines a series of Califor-nia Olll f"Olll As more communities begin to incorporate New Urbanist and smart growth principles into their planning strategies, rhe practice of form-based codii1g is likely to spread. How much that will happen depends on several factors: rhe availabiJiry of qualified consulrants (jusr a handful of firms pracrice rrue form-based coding); rhe disseminarion of knowledge about the technique (lirtle has been written on the subject, and there are few places to learn about it); and a continu- ing legal concern about overly prescriptive design guidelines that are often mistaken for form-based codes. The good news is that the state of Califor- nia recentlv included ap endorsement oHorm- based coding in its general plan guidelines. ,\merican Planning Association 21 The document refers to the code as a "useful implementation measure for achieving cer- tain general plan goals, such as walkable neigh- borhoods and mixed-use and transit-oriented development." And this summer, Gov. Arnold . Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1268, making California the first state to specificaJIy enable the practice of form-based develop- ment regulation. The biJI's language is brief and to the point: "The text and diagrams in the land use ele- ment [of the general plan] that address the location and extent of land uses, and the zoning ordinances that implement these pro- visions, may also express community inten- tions regarding urban form and design. These expressions may differentiate neighborhoods, districts, and corridors, provide for a mixture of land uses and housing types within each, and provide specific measures for regulating relationships berween buildings and outdoor public areas, including streets." As states such as Florida and Arizona follow California's lead in mandating local planning through the use of a general plan, zoning consistent with the plan, and the use of spe- cific plans, one can hope that the practice of form-based coding and the enabling laws that support it will not be far behind. Peter Kat2 is a consultanr on New Urbanist imple- menration and developmenr, who is based in Alexan- dria, Virginia. Hereaches planning at Virginia Tech's Alexandria campus and is the author of The New Urbanism: TOUJI1I.d an Architecture of Community, published by McGraw-Hill in 1993. For a lisr of resources concerninu form-based cod- " ing, go [0 APA's website: www.planning.org.