Form-based Codes Research Articles

Design for Healthy Communities: The Potential of Form-Based Codes to Create Walkable Urban Streets

Form-Based codes are promoted, although not proven, as a means to create walkable streets because they regulate built features on the street. In this study an audit survey developed to measure the physical features of streets related to walkability was used to evaluate streets built from Form-Based codes. The survey considered the urban design qualities of imageability, complexity human scale, transparency, and enclosure. The street survey and an analysis of Form-Based codes revealed features regulated by codes created streets similar to historic walkable streets. Results also showed codes have the potential to create walkable streets if they regulate a high number of features, control the frequency of features and regulate features primarily linked to the urban design qualities of imageability, complexity, and human scale.

Zoning For and Against Sprawl: The Case for Form-Based Codes

Despite widespread recognition of the dual problems of sprawl and conventional zoning, the specific nature of the relationship between sprawl and zoning is not well specified. In part this is because aggregate and economic analyses of sprawl and zoning miss the larger point that zoning has a significant detrimental impact on urban pattern and form at the local scale. In addition, little systematic research has been done on the contrast between conventional zoning and coding reform efforts such as form-based codes. This paper uses a localized analysis of the relationship between zoning and sprawl to answer two main questions: how does zoning contribute to sprawl, and how do form-based codes attempt to mitigate it? The paper also includes a descriptive analysis of the current status of form-based code efforts in the US.

Integrating Stormwater Management and Form-Based Codes in Dublin, Ohio Manuscript

Integrating Stormwater Management and Form-Based Codes in Dublin, Ohio Manuscript

Patchwork of land use, tapestry of risk

The links between built form and environmental health are, as yet, inadequately understood. Risk is a formless and ambiguous phenomenon tightly embedded in the myriad pattern of land uses that generate it. Our research, which is founded on a contextualist notion of policy design, demonstrates the potential of innovative land use policy instruments (i.e. form-based codes, conditional use permits) to address risk. We model environmental risks from point and mobile sources in Southeast Los Angeles (SELA), a known air toxics hotspot. We compare risk contours before and after implementation of land use interventions. The use of innovative form-based codes for modifying built environments results in appreciable risk reductions around transportation corridors in SELA. Conditional use permits employing technological standards for commercial and light-industrial land uses also produce some risk reductions. This research suggests an untapped potential for land use planning instruments to address the environmental health impacts of built form.

Smart cities, smart places, smart democracy: Form-based codes, electronic governance and the role of place in making smart cities

Place matters in smart towns and cities. Technology may keep pushing us apart, but we as a culture continue to gather. Opinions differ as to whether the centrifugal forces of ‘splintering’ urbanism are stronger than the centripetal power of physical places. This article argues that if policies and implementation tools of placed-based urban design are embedded and encoded within the e-governance structure of a community, a balance can be achieved where both physical and virtual realms enhance the unique character of particular locations. The pervasive reach of electronic data and media can help bind the disparate elements of a community together as much as it may seek to disperse them. The process of developing plans, codes and sustainable strategies for a community seeking a truly ‘smart’ future in a competitive world is illustrated by a case study of Beaufort, a medium-sized town in South Carolina, USA, and these efforts highlight the challenges for English towns and cities in the context of the British Government's shift towards ‘localism’ in planning.

A Case Study of Form-Based Solutions for Watershed Protection

Despite an array of policies at the federal and state level aimed at regulating stormwater discharges, engineered solutions enforced by local governments often fall short of meeting water quality standards. Although the implications of land use planning and development regulations are important for stormwater management, they are often overlooked as critical initial steps to improving water quality. This study explores the role of 'form-based' regulations as tools for achieving urban planning and water quality objectives. Form-based codes are a new generation of development codes aimed at regulating urban development based on urban form and density, rather than land use. We present an exploratory case study of the feasibility of form-based codes in the Jordan Lake Watershed in North Carolina, a rapidly growing region where fragmented local governments face stringent nutrient reduction standards under new state regulations. Through program analysis and interviews, we explore the viability of form-based codes for reducing development impacts on Jordan Lake's water quality. We consider the legal feasibility of code enforcement, regional and local barriers and opportunities, and implementation given existing regulatory frameworks. Our findings suggest that high quality information and data modeling are foundational to gaining support for a consensus agreement on the sources and degree of water quality impairment. Furthermore, implementing form-based solutions for water quality is greatly aided by (1) experienced regional planning bodies that have regulatory authority, and (2) local governments whose staff are experienced in implementing complex development ordinances, reviewing architectural renderings, and communicating development requirements with the public and developers.

Comparison of Parking Requirements in Zoning and Form-Based Codes

Comparison of Parking Requirements in Zoning and Form-Based Codes

Comparison of Parking Requirements in Zoning and Form-Based Codes

There is growing recognition of the negative effects of rapid suburbanization, also known as urban sprawl, which has dominated the development of urban areas for the past several decades. Both land use and transportation policies have contributed to this form of development, creating communities devoid of nearby services and with a characterless urban form and dependence on automobiles for travel. To address these issues, urban planners, architects, developers, and policy makers are considering form-based codes to guide and regulate urban development that creates complete and compact neighborhoods. Whereas form-based codes address urban form and land use, this study focuses on how parking requirements inhibit or support efforts to reduce urban sprawl and automobile dependency. Form-based codes are growing in popularity, and this paper investigates specifically parking policies in these types of land use regulations. This study finds that parking policies in the Miami 21 form-based code and Duany Plater–Zyberk's SmartCode do not offer a greatly different approach to parking than conventional zoning ordinances. The findings show that these codes have not fully embraced solutions from parking critics to address the issues of urban sprawl and automobile dependency. Both codes include some marginal improvements to existing parking policies but do not maximize the potential form-based codes offer to include more progressive solutions to reduce automobile dependency by limiting excesses in parking requirements. This paper recommends that future form-based codes integrate more progressive parking policy solutions to reduce automobile dependency and urban sprawl.

Design by the Rules: The Historical Underpinnings of Form-Based Codes

Problem: Form-based codes (FBCs) affect the design of cities with rules about building form and location. They are of renewed interest to modern planners, but their history and that of coding reform generally are largely unexplored. Purpose: This research traces the historical lineage of FBCs. Methods: This work is based on archival research on historic codes regulating urban development. I also used secondary sources on coding history, both from the United States and abroad. Results and conclusions: I describe examples from a long history of rules governing building form and placement, considering those intended to produce particular effects on urban form as direct antecedents of modern FBCs. Takeaway for practice: Today's codes are more complex and difficult to implement than their predecessors. Modern FBCs require community participation and visioning to create consensus, whereas in previous historical periods such agreement was taken for granted and many aspects of urban form were dictated by technological and other constraints. Research support: This article is one product of a larger research project on the history of urban codes. The research was funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Further information can be found at http://codesproject.asu.edu/

Back to the Future: Is Form-Based Code an Efficacious Tool for Shaping Modern Civic Life?

This Essay serves as a critique of the New Urbanism in general and of form-based code in particular as a tool of the New Urbanism. It may be true that form-based code offers more flexibility than traditional zoning schemes and thus may offer some respite from acknowledged ills such as social and racial divisions created by exclusionary zoning and other tools, and from the relative inutility of single or limited use districts. However, I will argue that these benefits are eclipsed by some of the problems of form-based code. Form-based code is frequently hailed as a back to the future approach to both urban and suburban living which will cure numerous ills such as the physical decay, racial segregation, and economic downturns that are endemic to many United States cities and towns, but it may not be an effective means of addressing the decline of civic life. This is first because form-based code, in advocating for norms to re-create the city of the past, seeks to implement by design what was essentially a spontaneous and self-generated form of social organization driven largely by economic concerns rather than social or political concerns. Next, Urbanism, which is purportedly at the heart of New Urbanist planning schemes such as form-based code, is itself a contested notion, subject to many alternate visions of the city of the past. As a result, the implementation of form-based code premised on New Urbanism may lead to an ersatz Urbanism. Finally, and perhaps most salient among the critiques I present, form-based code's reliance upon the community to formulate design standards through the charrette process has the potential to further isolate those who are already disadvantaged.