Smart Codes For Smart Places

by Jason Miller

Mention zoning codes to the average person and the reaction is predictable: a stone-faced stare, glazed eyes, a yawn. But communities across the United States are discovering that the very fabric of their neighborhoods and towns is built on those codes—or, more accurately, because of them. And communities are doing something about these codes.

Conventional zoning codes are fundamentally flawed, says Geoffrey Ferrell, a principal with Geoffrey Ferrell Associates in Washington, D.C. “Ever since the industrial years, the conventional separation-of-uses approach has been the wrong approach to control”—to keeping unpleasant uses away from the residential areas. “It has devolved to micromanagement of use and density. The [built environment] that has resulted is very, very poor about 99 percent of the time. No one’s happy with what they’ve been given.”

Ferrell’s co-principal, Mary Madden, agrees. “That micromanagement of uses has resulted in a huge number of unintended consequences, namely, suburban sprawl. Everybody hates sprawl, but the builders aren’t violating rules; they’re building exactly what the codes call for. Those codes are a blueprint for sprawl. Under the existing conventional codes, you can’t help but build it.”

Community frustration with conventional codes and the type of development they spawn has driven new urbanist- and smart growth–minded planners to create new zoning codes. While these new codes go by many names— form-based codes, new urbanist codes, TND (traditional neighborhood development) ordinances, smart zoning, the SmartCode© from Miami-based town planners Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company—they are all designed to create places that emulate the urbanism of older, well-loved places, while preserving rural areas and historic sites threatened by conventional development.

Communities that have replaced their conventional codes with new ordinances have generally reported success in the process leading up to the new codes’ implementation, as well as favorable upturns in their real estate markets.