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$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 ro the Pleasant Hill station ~he Bay Area Rapid T ran. sit line. The plan _his project was developed by Lennertz lIe & Associates of Portland, Oregon. The code, and the elaborate public involve- ment that led up ro it, created a level of trust that led to approval of the project in Decem- ber 2001. The project is now moving fotward under the direction of architect Dan Parolek, of Optic os 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 city to deal with a backlog of develop- ment proposals. Dover Kohl & Parmers' Central Hercules plan is shaping several new mixed- use neighborhoods on a patchwork of brownfield 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 ed individually in response to the needs ,pecific community or site. Now comes a new generation of standardized form-based codes, which are derived from the SmartCode. a template developed by DPZ and licensed by the Municipal Code Corporation in Talla- hassee. Florida. The SmarrCode template defines a series of ,~meric3n Planning Associarion 21 TOUJnhouse.r in the Plea.rant Hill dt'1ldopmmt d~fine the walLr I{a )ublic room "fiJcwed on Mount Diablo. CitizenJ supported the redevelopment pL:m in przrt because of the fTcnerou.rpuJlIiJion of '" . open space. preconfigured (bur customizable) zones based on the "transect"-a framework for organiz- ing a metropolitan area into a series of zones, ranging from most natura] ro most urban. One of the first communities to take this new approach is Peta]uma, California, which adopted a variation of the smarrCode in July 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 city's needs; it focuses on a 400-acre portion 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 adop- tion, she says. CulifonJia out frollt As more communities begin to incorporate New Urbanist and smart growth principles into their planning strategies, the practice of form-based cc;ding is likely to spread. How much that will happen depends on several factors: the availability of qualified consultants (just a handful of firms practice true form-based codino-); the disseminarion of knowledge about th: technique (little 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 recently included an endorsement ofform- based coding in its general pbn guidelines. 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 specifically enable the practice of form-based develop- ment regulation. The bill's language is brief and to the point: "The text and diagrams in the land use ele- ment [of the general plan] tlut 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 between 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 Llse 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. Perer Karz is a consulranr on New Urbanisr imple- menrarion and developmenr, who is based in Alexan- dria, Virginia. He reaches planning ar Virginia Tech's Alexandria campus and is rhe aurhor of The New U,.banism: Towa,.d an A,.chirecr.u,.e ~f Community. published by McGraw-HiH in 1993. For a lisr of resources concerning form-based cod- ing. go [Q APA's websire: www.planning.org.