#form based code

Zoning by design is complex, and frankly does not achieve anything but a healthy and lucrative litigation practice. The complexity of zoning is evident in all adopted zoning language which is best illustrated through the number of pages in their code. You can see how unhealthy the process is by watching or attending any community zoning hearing. Finally, you can see how lucrative a business…

Chattanooga’s form-based code is part of an innovative vision for the city’s economic, environmental and cultural future. Following a recent visit to Chattanooga, Bruce Katz wrote in a Brookings Institute blog, “Something special is happening in Chattanooga.” As Katz points out, too often venture capitalists “pay too little attention to small and mid-sized cities with …     Source: A Small City…

Sharing this for feedback: which metrics are missing? How should the five below be tweaked?

Below a mock-up of Lilac. Underneath the balloons is the regulating plan, a figure-ground plan with tzone designations, built by connecting 'outdoor rooms' as described previously.

The five metrics shown as you build your plan are:

The balance of public to private space. At one extreme, lots of wide squares (parking lots?) and wide streets (stroads), and little private land in between. The dispersed city. At the other, nothing but skinny streets, no parks or squares nor boulevards. Medieval density.

Diversity of form. Simply the distribution of t-zones (at the high level, i.e. T3, T4 etc. - T3.1 T3.2 T3.3 isn't diversity).

Intersection density. Simply the number of intersections in the site, divided by the area of the site in acres. May be redundant, but a neat summary figure anyway IMO.

Block length distribution. A histogram showing how the lengths of blocks varies: are they all the same length, are they all short, or long (unwalkable).

Sight line distribution. Is there a better a name for this? It's about terminating vistas. A grid has many long sight lines. Medieval confusion has many short ones. Poundbury has an 'event' every 70 metres maximum.

I've been running into this term- "form based code"- in a lot of articles related to urban planning lately, and being a mere dilettante, had no clue what that meant.  It's quite simple really, and because I am in no way qualified to explain the specifics, I will direct you to this summary drafted by none other than the Form-Based Codes Institute (FBCI):

"Form-based codes foster predictable built results and a high-quality public realm by using physical form (rather than separation of uses) as the organizing principle for the code. They are regulations, not mere guidelines, adopted into city or county law. Form-based codes offer a powerful alternative to conventional zoning.

Form-based codes address the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks. The regulations and standards in form-based codes are presented in both words and clearly drawn diagrams and other visuals. They are keyed to a regulating plan that designates the appropriate form and scale (and therefore, character) of development, rather than only distinctions in land-use types.

This approach contrasts with conventional zoning's focus on the micromanagement and segregation of land uses, and the control of development intensity through abstract and uncoordinated parameters (e.g., FAR, dwellings per acre, setbacks, parking ratios, traffic LOS), to the neglect of an integrated built form. Not to be confused with design guidelines or general statements of policy, form-based codes are regulatory, not advisory. They are drafted to implement a community plan. They try to achieve a community vision based on time-tested forms of urbanism. Ultimately, a form-based code is a tool; the quality of development outcomes depends on the quality and objectives of the community plan that a code implements."

*THE MORE YOU KNOW.*

I was interested in looking it up because after reading/posting an excerpt from that article about Frank Lloyd Wright and Broadacre city, I was reminded of how much information has coming my way lately about trying to reject similar plans [to Broadacre] in new approaches to city and suburban development, not only because suburban sprawl is wasteful, but also because the spread out environment can promote dull and unhealthy cultural and social environments. 

Land use zoning makes a lot of sense in the context of suburban sprawl because of the underlying and misguided idea of unlimited space that accompanies it.  However it doesn't offer a lot of opportunities for the architecture of a community to create an aesthetically stimulating atmosphere or even to conduct the kind of visual conversation that is possible in denser cities.  If every building is an isolated monolith, the landscape becomes rather tiring after a while.