This year’s Congress will include a number of sessions explicitly about coding. Zoning codes have long fascinated new urbanists, especially in their power to set bad planning decisions into stone, but now we’re getting around to actually implementing some really great alternatives to the usual zoning regs. It’s an exciting time for zoning all around the country, and naturally many of the best innovations are covered in a new title from CNU, Codifying New Urbanism (PAS report 526, available soon from the CNU Store).

The usual argument behind deregulating uses and regulating forms hasn’t changed: people in urban environments expect some messiness and diversity of use, and besides, many uses (even light manufacturing) aren’t as repugnant as they might have been prior to deindustrialization. Plus, market forces do a better job of keeping heavy industry out of comparatively higher-value residential or commercial areas than even zoning ordinances do. On the other hand, providing strong directives on the form of building allows new development to take on predictable shapes — something which people genuinely appreciate, from the neighbors whose yards will be shaded to the passerby who know that the buildings will reinforce the scale of the street. The old 1910s and 1920s zoning laws read and look like today’s form-based ordinances, with their emphasis on illustrations showing particular building envelopes and lack of references to required loading docks or efficiency apartments.

One term I’m particularly fond of, but which other new urbanists haven’t seemed to notice, is dezoning — loosely form-based, incentive-driven, largely use-neutral codes written by Mark Hinshaw of LMN Architects in Seattle. The Bainbridge Island and downtown Tacoma codes are sublimely straightforward; the Tacoma ordinance, in particular, offers a sensible menu of easily understood bonuses to encourage quality development: separate FAR buckets for commercial and residential encourage residential construction, submitting to design review tacks on a few extra FAR points, a short menu of sensible pedestrian-friendly amenities gets a few more.

APA this year included a workshop on form-based coding that, by all reports, provided a good overview of the rapidly growing number of form-based codes nationwide.

One very early example in the “Codifying” book that I was dimly aware of before is Christopher Alexander’s City of Gardens apartment house zoning for Pasadena. In Edge City, Alexander (presented by author Garreau as a thoughtful and spot-on, if kooky, character) described how the zoning ordinance sought to place gardens before buildings and therefore make the new apartment houses beautiful enough to insert into single family neighborhoods. The code mandates usable, beautiful open spaces instead of mindlessly requiring front, rear, or side setbacks that too often end up as wasted space — even if the result is watered-down, as Alexander complains to Garreau. I, for one, love living in a courtyard building with negligible front, side, or rear setbacks, since it means that we all get to enjoy a lovely courtyard in the center (and at 60 dua, natch!).

One not very exciting new ordinance, unfortunately (but naturally, given City Hall’s bias towards stasis), is Chicago’s new ordinance. Sure, a few concessions to the ZTEC organizing work were tossed in, but c’mon — can’t you at least re-number the R districts instead of assigning them “X.5” designations?