placeshakers's posterous http://placeshakers.posterous.com Most recent posts at placeshakers's posterous posterous.com Mon, 04 Jun 2012 11:38:00 -0700 The Passion of Place http://placeshakers.posterous.com/the-passion-of-place-99291 http://placeshakers.posterous.com/the-passion-of-place-99291

David Byrne noted in last Sunday’s NY Times that people get hooked on cycling because of pleasure, not health, money, or carbon footprint. “Emotional gratification trumps reason.”

Ben Brown agrees, using Byrne’s “Stop Making Sense” as a blog title on the subject of community engagement and how special interest groups often talk past each other. “Intuition comes first, strategic reasoning second.”

Steve Mouzon’s Original Green says sustainable places are nourishable, accessible, serviceable, securable, lovable, durable, flexible, and frugal. “If a building cannot be loved, it is demolished and carted off to the landfill in a generation or two. All embodied energy of its material is lost.”

It’s the passion of great places that gets any of us going. Involved. Engaged. Contributing.

But it’s also that passion that drives economies, makes connections between people, and gives resilience to jobs and the marketplace. I’ve blogged about it before, in terms of an Urban Happiness Index.

Deadly Passion

What if we get passionate about things that will kill us? As Margo Wootan, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, points out in HBO’s The Weight of the Nation, “Marketing shapes kids’ choices to foods that will kill them.” Kelly Brownell, of the Rudd Center on Obesity and Food Policy, agrees junk food marketing to kids is “powerful, pernicious, and predatory.”

Grist’s review complains that the show doesn’t address other real causes of obesity, including politics and policies that drive consumption. That includes legalizing character-based neighbourhoods, where the streets tempt us out to walk and bike. And where smaller schools, parks, and places of worship get kids on bikes and out of cars.

Out there on those walkable streets, the popsicles aren’t so deadly. Nor are the traffic-calmed cars. And the engaging gathering places encourage us to spend more time, less money. Our time can be invested in leading our community instead of driving to someone else’s, leaking to other marketplaces. Walkable neighbourhoods support community-based economic development.

Rewarding Good Behavior

A plethora of numbers on the street reward healthy urbanism, even if they aren’t what get us going in the first place.

Walkscore’s new Bikescore offers up some strong reasons to cycle: $10 saved for each 10 mile commute. One pound CO2 saved for every mile pedaled. 30 minutes per day of riding cuts odds of stroke and heart disease by 50%. What more do you need to go jump on your bike? Oh yeah, it’s fun. And you can hang out with friends and family.

Then Walkscore’s new Street Smart helps you find places where you’re more likely to engage in active transportation. The tool measures walkability by category, average block length, and number of intersections.

Regular walking increases memory (hippocampus size) and decreases risk of dementia. Walking isn’t just good for you; it’s also an indicator of your socioeconomic status.

Christopher Leinberger’s Walk this Way compares DC neighbourhoods, and finds that walkable places have higher office, residential, and retail rents, retail revenues, and for-sale residential values. The lower transportation costs in these walkable places do not yet offset higher housing costs, suggesting a supply-demand mismatch that urges politicians toward zoning reform to level the playing field.

Forbes’ Pedaling to Prosperity lays out the ways that biking saves U.S. riders billions a year. Average annual operating cost of a bicycle: $308. Average annual operating cost of a car: $8,220. Between 2000 and 2010, the number of bicycle commuters grew 40% in the US. The average American household spends more on transportation (16%) than on food or healthcare. Low-income families may spend up to 55% of income on transportation when they live in auto-centric environments.

Our love affair with the car may be over. Or at least downgraded to a “placid coexistence rooted more in need than pleasure,” according to the Washington Post, which asks, “Is ambivalence the death of romance?” I’d say so.

Kindling a Old Flame

The other day in a Placemaking@Work tweetchat, Charles Marohn of Strong Towns commented, “Actually, the genius here is that the SmartCode is easy and it builds productive places (that are fun too).” That pretty much sums up my point.

It’s true, for the last 31 years, form-based codes have been looking to reverse the auto centric qualities of single-use zoning, and return places to the human scale. Places where it’s easy to bike, walk, and take transit.

Some of my favourite parts of the Winnipeg Transect.

Many form-based codes use the rural-to-urban Transect as a shape sorter, so neighbourhoods can be true to character. The shape of towns and cities change as we move from the wilderness (T-1), to ag lands (T-2), to single-family detached (T-3), to general urban (T-4), to urban center (T-5), and finally to urban core (T-6).

A major roadblock to health – for us and for our economies – are the zoning laws that mandate a separation of uses and wide, expensive roadways that we can no longer afford.

Walkable places connect us with the ideas, events and people we are passionate about. And the places themselves are lovable because they’re immersive environments with their own singular DNA of place.

While running in the T-3 and T-4 parts of my neighbourhood, I see an average of 82 pedestrians and cyclists per hour. Several of these people I know personally. This couldn’t happen in S-4 or R-1 (suburbia).

Sure, it slows down my run a bit, to connect up with other people, or pause to plan a coffee later. But it also pulls me back out there tomorrow morning to go again. And reminds me of what I love so much about my current city of Winnipeg: strong families, connected communities, powerful art, funky retail, old elms, sunshine, and lots and lots of Tyndall Stone.

“We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness … It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together.” That’s how Marina Keegan put it.

The payback of livable places really can’t be calculated in dollars, or pounds of fat or carbon, or even hours. The payback of place is passion.

–Hazel Borys

 

Initially published on PlaceShakers.

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Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:02:00 -0800 Urbanism: When it bends the rules and breaks the law. http://placeshakers.posterous.com/urbanism-when-it-bends-the-rules-and-breaks-t http://placeshakers.posterous.com/urbanism-when-it-bends-the-rules-and-breaks-t

Getting ready for a TEDx talk in a few weeks, I’ve once again been noticing how the places that I love the most usually break the law. The contemporary development codes and bylaws, that is, which are geared to the car, not to the pedestrian and cyclist.

Then last week’s urban retail SmartCode tweetchat with Bob Gibbs sparked a debate about the rules of thumb that govern the success or failure of the most risky development of all: retail. And when those rules might be bent by certain special circumstances.

Ready to geek out with me for a moment?

Newtonian Physics

To contemplate the non-idealities of life, let’s start with the laws of physics. All of classical mechanics – and Newton’s Laws upon which they are founded – have both their ideal statement of law, and then all sorts of corollaries for when non-idealities happen. Rarely, even in our physical world, do ideal states occur.

Newton’s Laws

1. A body in motion (or at rest) stays in motion (or at rest), unless acted on by an outside force.

2. Force = mass x acceleration.

3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

I remember as a young electrical engineering student struggling with the fact that there are significantly more corollaries than there are laws. Back then it made me write an epigram about that irony:

Learning a lie so that we can understand the truth.

Quantum Physics

Electron. Image credit: Tomasz Barszczak

When things are very small or very fast, classical mechanics’ laws – as well as their corollaries – do not hold true. Then you’re into the realm of quantum physics where things get very interesting.

Everything boils down to relationships, probabilities, and the fact that when things get small and fast, they act quite differently. Sound a little bit like our economy?

An electron may sometimes act like a particle, and other times act like a wave. And whether or not it tunnels makes a big difference to all the silicon-based artificial intelligence in your life.

So back to urbanism. When are rules bent and laws broken that shape our everyday community? We’ve talked extensively about when laws are rescinded to get in line with local character, or circumvented by grandfathering.

To get new development in harmony with local character, cities are often using the form-based SmartCode. However, it can’t be emphasized enough that the SmartCode is a model template that must be customized for local character. It’s not exactly a law-corollary relationship, but something close.

How about urban retail rules of thumb, and when don’t hold they true?

Retail Rules

Let’s look for a moment at some of the key rules of retail. And the numbers that influence our buying habits. Concise rules of human behavior govern whether retail will be successful. But these rules have many corollaries.

Bob Gibbs new book was released last week

Bob Gibbs was highlighting these rules in last week’s PlaceMaking@Work webinar. If you’d like to pop the hood on retail, Yarmir Steiner and other leading retail developers recommend Gibbs’ new book, Principles of Urban Retail Planning and Development. You’ll be seeing more reviews soon, but here’s a peek.

Over Supply: The US has 20 SF of retail per person. That’s massive in comparison to other countries; the next closest are Sweden at 3.3 and the UK at 2.5 SF of retail per person. So if you’re going to build more, it’s gotta be good.

Downtown Market Share: Until the mid 60′s, downtowns captured about 80% of the trade area, which was typically the county. Most downtowns declined not for market reasons, but for ill-conceived planning reasons.

Now the average American downtown only captures about 2% of the retail market share of its community. The rest is sold in malls, strip centers, and online. This is defining downtown as the central business district. However, an ideal goal is a 50% capture of retail needs in each neighbourhood, including downtown.

Charleston is a great example of sustainable retail for mid-sized cities, thanks in large part to Major Joe Riley making his first retail goal to sell what his residents need. The various districts reinforce each other, and draw plum tenants. The Apple Store chose to locate on King Street instead of in the four malls in Charleston because of predictable urbanism.

Another corollary: if you're as good as Charleston's King Street, you don't need on-street parking out front in T5 after all. Image credit: Gibbs Planning Group.

8 Second Rule: It takes about 8 seconds to walk past a standard main street storefront. The average person decides in about 1.5 seconds whether to walk in. SmartCode requirements for glazing, private frontage, signage, and public frontage assembly are key.

Retail Transect: Retail character must change significantly along the rural-to-urban Transect in order to be successful. Two SmartCode Retail Modules lay out goals and methods for bringing retail back downtown. Retail: Sustainable Commerce by Seth Harry (4.3mb .zip) and Retail Markets by Bob Gibbs (1.8mb .zip). Very important to both of these, as with the model form-based SmartCode, is that they must be calibrated locally.

Retail: Sustainable Commercrce SmartCode Module by Seth Harry & Associates, Inc.

Corner Stores generally need 1,000 housetops to be successful. While this rule of thumb has many corollaries including housetop reductions for selling gas, or for when construction workers are present or for resort communities, this was one of those argued points on the tweetchat.

Yesterday Steve Mouzon published a followup retail blogoff. I don’t argue with most of Steve’s points, but he’s clearly overlooking the fact that resorts were part of the corollaries that were exempted from this rule of thumb. The SmartCode Retail Module would be calibrated for resort in that case, drastically reducing the 1,000 to a few hundred. Also many of his examples are part of T5 main street, and not the T4 corner store that Bob was addressing, surrounded primarily by residential.

When we dug down into some examples on the tweetchat, the conclusion was that many new corner stores in walkable places are subsidized. Because retail was viewed as an amenity, the developers are often willing for this investment. However, now there’s a new need to get resilient. Strategically placed retail is more essential than ever in soft markets, and will continue to be so as long as signs of the recession remain. In some places where subsidies are no longer available, retail may need to go indie and get tactical.

Live-Works. The sweet spot for a retailer is 1200 SF for the retail portion of live-work units. The average live-work usually marginalizes the retail by making it too small. An example of getting it right is Eton Station in Birmingham, MI.

Eton Street Station in Birmingham, Michigan. Image credit: Gibbs Planning Group.

Hours: 70% of all sales are after 5 pm. A downtown that closes at 5 is immediately giving up the market share. People are spending more money in less time – today’s woman will spend more money in 20 minutes than her mom did in 2 hours.

Parking is one of the most important determinants in sustainable retail. Convenient centers need convenient parking; Main Streets must offer on-street parking.

Nationally, required parking quantities have been cut in half to 4-5 cars per 1000 SF of building by most retailers. More parking is required for stand-alone stores than mixed-use centers. Recent research has found that mixed use centers and even large regional suburban malls only require 2.3-2.6 cars per 1000 of gross building square feet, even during peak demand periods.

New Economy: Post recession shopping centers are becoming one level, in a main street walkable format. They are surface parked with various land uses mixed horizontally rather than vertically.

Pier Park Town Center in Panama City sports 1-story buildings, strip center priced construction, and tenants in a main street, walkable format. We’re often told full sized department stores don’t belong in walkable urbanism, but history shows they are appropriate and necessary.

Retail Performance: In 2010, average sales were $80/SF for independent retailers, $275/SF for malls, and $575/SF for the highest performing centers. Typically rents are 8-10% of gross sales. Downtowns that get the retail rules right can outperform the best malls: tenant mix, anchor, hours, parking policy, private frontage, and costs. Urban centers, to be sustainable, need to be more than employment and residential centers.

Lilac Street near Corydon in Winnipeg, some of my favourite retail.

Controlling Costs. Lifestyle centers cost $350-400/SF to build, while simple landscaping and architectural details can make a good main street cost about as much, and outperform the lifestyle center. Central to our urban retail goals is to make walkable urbanism more profitable than auto-centric sprawling patterns.

While much of the national retailer perspective will stay the same, there are all sorts of corollaries to many of these retail rules. And every now and then, they almost go quantum.

- Hazel Borys

Story from PlaceShakers. If you'd like to comment, please do so on the PlaceShakers site. Thanks for reading!

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Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:03:00 -0800 Getting Beyond ‘Mad as Hell’: Here’s hoping for a civic afterlife http://placeshakers.posterous.com/getting-beyond-mad-as-hell-heres-hoping-for-a http://placeshakers.posterous.com/getting-beyond-mad-as-hell-heres-hoping-for-a

On December 14, Time magazine announced its 2011 “Person of the Year.” And as it’s occasionally done in the past (Remember the choice of “You” in 2006?), the mag opted for a broad zeitgeist capture as opposed to settling on just one person. This time around it’s The Protester.

“Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they’d had enough,” Rick Stengel wrote in Time’s intro to the 2011 “Person of the Year” section.

 

There’s something about that phrase that sounds a tad familiar. Maybe a little Howard Beale-ish? You know: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” from the 1976 Network movie that’s among the most quoted and mischaracterized films of all time.

In the role that won him a posthumous Oscar, Peter Finch was Beale, a news anchor at a fourth-place TV network who was slipping in the ratings and losing his grasp on reality after the death of his wife. When he learned he was going to be fired, the slide from mere depression into psychopathology accelerated, and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, who also won an Academy Award, had a field day trashing everything from phony Marxist revolutionaries to old fart/young babe affairs to Saudi Arabian-financed corporations. By the end of the movie, when Beale is assassinated on camera by the Marxist phonies desperate to protect their leverage in their own TV program negotiations, the landscape is littered with the remains of Chayefsky’s broadsides. Nothing and no one is left standing.

Yet our memories of the movie tend to re-imagine Chayefsky’s neutron bomb as a rifle shot targeting corporate greed in general and television in particular. We invoke Beale’s challenge to throw open our windows and shout, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it any more!” as a kind of declaration of independence, as speaking truth to power. Out from under the thumbs of the oligarchs and into freedom’s wide open spaces. Finally.

Chayefky, who practiced a brand of satire so dark that it would be pure nihilism were it not for its hilarity, must have loved that. No characters in Network were treated with more contempt than Beale’s audience. They’re depicted as the fickle, easily manipulated consumers of the drek Chayefsky satirized, obedient multitudes provoked by a psychopath on TV to declare how mad they were at, well, TV and all the stuff that TV provoked in them.

To be fair, Time  was conscious enough of the pitfalls to steer clear of undiluted (and un-ironic) protest romance. “Because,” as Kurt Anderson puts it in the main “Person of the Year” piece, deciding what you don’t want is a lot easier than deciding and implementing what you do want, and once everybody has a say, everybody has a say.”

Read the rest of the post on PlaceShakers, where Ben Brown talks about how all the protest romance effects urban design and city planning.

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Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:34:41 -0700 Got a green idea? Share a green idea. Need a green idea? Take a green idea. http://placeshakers.posterous.com/got-a-green-idea-share-a-green-idea-need-a-gr http://placeshakers.posterous.com/got-a-green-idea-share-a-green-idea-need-a-gr
Join us at 2pm today on Twitter or Facebook to talk about your ideas for advancing sustainable urbanism.

If you want to hear our ideas on the subject, watch this free 80 minute lecture on the Original Green, a series of principles first put forward by Steve Mouzon, and now being expanded by a number of people in a number of directions.

For years we've worked to make the buildings smarter. The first goal of this conversation is to make the people smarter by sharing ideas with each other.

C'mon!

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Fri, 29 Jul 2011 07:24:00 -0700 NIMBY Nation: Mad as hell and I don’t blame ‘em. For now. http://placeshakers.posterous.com/nimby-nation-mad-as-hell-and-i-dont-blame-em http://placeshakers.posterous.com/nimby-nation-mad-as-hell-and-i-dont-blame-em

   You know, I gotta give NIMBYs their due. In many instances, their tireless efforts have kept the world from becoming a worse place, and that’s no small feat. But, sadly, it’s not their only accomplishment.

They’ve also kept the world from becoming a better place.

Welcome to the problem with NIMBYs. Their reactionary nature can’t tell the difference between bad change and good. And that’s a problem if you’ve any hope for building better communities.

NIMBY action as a force for communal good.

Early on, NIMBY action centered around large, substantive initiatives with no shortage of arguable downsides. Nuclear plants. Landfills. Toxic industry. Projects universally loathed no matter where you went.

These were proposals whose negative impacts would be felt community-wide, leaving little reason to view NIMBY efforts as self-serving. Quite to the contrary, they were the work of community stalwarts, fine-tuning the art of grass roots political organizing for the betterment of the common man. Democracy at its most basic level.

Together, NIMBYs saved their homes and communities from being trampled by powerful corporate interests in cozy cahoots with nearsighted government opportunists and, in the process, earned a seemingly well-founded reputation as a sort of David in the shadow of Goliath. Progressive and passionate, they were mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore.

Or so it seemed. But then a funny thing happened.

Somewhere along the way, NIMBYs began applying these new organizational tools and techniques not just to projects presenting some level of threat but to any project offering the prospect of change. Which is to say, any project at all.

This is the point at which it would be very easy to start demonizing the NIMBY movement, painting them as the problem rather than solution and holding them responsible for the agonizingly slow process of improvement in our communities.

Sadly, though, that would be too easy. Because it’s just not that simple.

If you’re really about community improvement and not just about snark (and I admittedly teeter between the two), you have to examine not just the what but the why. Why have NIMBYs increasingly developed an opposition to everything?

The answer has little to do with development. It has to do with trust.

Trust in positive change is a limited commodity.

You don’t have to be a dyed in the wool treehugger, preservationist ideologue or evangelical New Urbanist to acknowledge that, more often than not, the past fifty years of growth and development has resulted in a downward trade. That is, what we’ve built has been inferior to whatever was lost. The meadow, teeming with wildlife, that became a soulless subdivision. The historic block of downtown buildings lined with shops, leveled for a parking lot. The supersized, unwalkable regional high school dumping runoff into your basement.

There’s no shortage of reasons why people are wary when a slick developer starts talking their talk. Collectively speaking, the development community simply hasn’t offered much in the way of track record for quite some time.

Add to that the context in which development takes place. More often than not, it’s permitted -- even courted -- by municipal governments seemingly detached from the will of their constituents. These people are supposed to be representing your interests and instead are caving to the very forces undermining your quality of life.

Given that, how could any rational person ever believe that change could, in fact, be positive? People have no reason to trust anyone in the process, and the saddest part of all is that it’s a distrust that’s been wholly earned. Yesterday’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, reporting on a revised town center design working its way through public process in Alpharetta, Georgia, included this quote from a resident: “I oppose the original plan for many reasons and compliment the planners for developing a much better plan -- which I still oppose.”

Such antipathy would leave us in a hopeless stalemate of lose-lose scenarios if it weren’t for one thing. There are communities out there with enlightened and accountable leadership. There are developers out there doing exceptional work, delivering value not just to buyers but to communities overall. They do exist.

Hell, I’ve met a bunch of ‘em. But you’ve no reason to trust me either.

A good developer whose good work is benefiting not just homebuyers but the community overall.

So, instead, I offer this challenge to the NIMBY Nation: Go forth, and continue to be vigilant. By all means, be a thorn in the side of development that threatens the viability -- and livability -- of your town. But be equally observant of context. If your local leadership starts engaging resident ideas and direction in meaningful ways and then makes decisions in line with what you’ve asked for -- in essence, if they start earning your trust -- admit that you no longer have the right to use them as justification for your discontent. The burden now falls on you to stop telling them what you don’t want. And start telling them what you do want.

Once you have, if a developer then enters the picture willing to put up their money to help implement your vision, you need to cowboy up and accept that that person is now your ally. Not your enemy.

That’s the point at which you can stop fighting the war. Because you’ve already won.

--Scott Doyon

Originally published on PlaceShakers.

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Fri, 20 May 2011 13:14:06 -0700 Get Real or Get Rich: Lessons for an era of limited trust http://placeshakers.posterous.com/get-real-or-get-rich-lessons-for-an-era-of-li http://placeshakers.posterous.com/get-real-or-get-rich-lessons-for-an-era-of-li

Trust has become a major part of the conversation in international development and finance. Ironically, strategies to provide opportunity in local communities are embedded in the most ambitious programs of the very federal agencies most under attack. There's no better example of such programs than the Sustainable Communities Initiative, combining goals of HUD, the EPA and DOT.

Read the full story on PlaceShakers:

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Wed, 18 May 2011 09:19:00 -0700 Form-Based Codes? A picture’s worth a thousand words. http://placeshakers.posterous.com/form-based-codes-a-pictures-worth-a-thousand http://placeshakers.posterous.com/form-based-codes-a-pictures-worth-a-thousand

If the attendees list of Placemaking@Work, my monthly webinar series, is any indicator, we’re increasingly united in our desire to improve the places we call home, wherever those places might be. Last month, I had participants from Hawaii to Russia, from British Columbia to Saudi Arabia, and many points in between.

The common thread among these seekers is their search for tools and tactics that have proven effective. And increasingly dominating these conversations are form-based codes.

It's not just people talking about form-based codes. It's an increasing number gettin' 'em done.

In preparation for a recent session on the form-based SmartCode, I started a #SmartCode tweetchat to get in the mood, and to engage the question I seem to receive at every dinner or party or event I attend: “Why form-based codes?”

It’s a valid question. People often tell me, “Things aren't so bad around my town. We're comfortable enough. Why would we want to consider the idea of a form-based code? Why are you guys so high on all this stuff?”

The simple answer is that our passion is helping communities become more economically competitive, socially connected and environmentally sensitive and, time and time again, it’s existing single-use zoning that stands in their way. In response, form-based codes have emerged as a useful remedy, effectively legalizing community visions and serving as a bridge between their current conditions and the goals they're trying to reach.

So, that’s the why, but there’s still the question of what. What are form-based codes? And how do they work?

To easily illustrate these ideas – the work of a lot of people over time, including the Transect Codes Council and the Form-Based Codes Institute – I talked to my brother and fellow urbanist, Steve Mouzon, about using some of his photos. Here they are. And, assuming a picture truly is worth a thousand words, they’re sparing you a 10,000 word post. You’re welcome.

Above: A form-based code (FBC) is a blueprint for places where true community, in all its complexity, can prosper.

Above: To cities, planners, developers, and citizens, FBCs offer choice, quality of life, economic opportunity, environmental stewardship, and adaptability.

FBCs support community vision, local character, open lands conservation (as shown above), transit options, and walkable mixed-use neighborhoods.

Above: FBCs prevent wasteful sprawl development, automobile-dominated streets, empty downtowns, and a hostile public realm.

Above: The SmartCode is a form-based, unified land development ordinance for planning and urban design.

Above: As a form-based code, it strongly addresses the physical form of building and development. Conversely, conventional codes focus mostly on use & density.

Above: The SmartCode is transect-based, fostering communities with a continuous cross-section of habitats, from rural wilderness to urban city core.

The transect is divided into Transect Zones, each of complex character. This makes for diverse building types (as demonstrated above), thoroughfare types, and civic spaces.

Above: The six primary Transect Zones are T-1 Natural, T-2 Rural, T-3 Sub-Urban, T-4 General Urban, T-5 Urban Center, and T-6 Urban Core.

The SmartCode addresses development patterns at three scales of planning: Regional; Community; and, as shown above, Block and Building.

Urbanist and Author, Steve Mouzon.

I talked further with Steve about his photos, which are as smart as they are telling. Each one is its own database. According to Steve,

“The great thing about every photo I post on Zenfolio is they’re fully tagged with keywords. This is possible because IPTC metadata can now be embedded in every photo. Here's the structure of my keywords. Here's a partial list of over 10,000 keywords I use.

“What this means is that if you're looking for terminated vistas, for example, you can easily find them. Want T4 images, both from the air and the ground? No problem. Or people walking. Or people walking a dog. Want a building part like a porch? A building type like a hotel? Images of sprawl? A River? No problem. I'm even starting to catalog Light Imprint. Have some fun... give it a test run!”

Fun, indeed! So, back to the original question of why form-based codes. Places, just like people, are dynamic, changing, growing, shrinking, refining, evolving. But the character of most places is unique, and challenged – rather than protected – by its current laws.

Just like a good friend helps you become more of who you really are, good development laws code for character. And that helps places grow in authentic patterns, building walkable community – instead of placeless strips and pods for fast cars, the James Howard Kunstler Home from Nowhere sort of place.

A great form-based code extracts the DNA of a place and allows it. By right. And I don’t need a thousand words to say that making it easier for developers to build the things you want is smarter than making sprawl their path of least resistance.

Unless, of course, sprawl is what your community really wants.

--Hazel Borys

News of innovation and implementation comes often. If you like the idea of form-based codes in general, and the SmartCode in specific, and would like to stay on top of what's happening, consider liking it in the more modern, technologically connected Facebook way.

Story originally published on PlaceShakers.

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Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:45:24 -0700 Oberlin, Ohio, and the Promise of Place: A Love Letter http://placeshakers.posterous.com/oberlin-ohio-and-the-promise-of-place-a-love http://placeshakers.posterous.com/oberlin-ohio-and-the-promise-of-place-a-love

What is it about a place that engages one so fully that years after moving away, a return trip feels as if you’ve never left? As if you never want to leave? It’s the elusive immersive environment we urban design types are always aiming to achieve.

Beware. A personal reverie is heading your way, to help answer that question.

Oberlin, Ohio: Main Street in bloom.

This week, I went back to Oberlin, a town I moved away from five years ago this month, and was again revived and delighted. The reasons are countless. Great friends, family, real places, good streets, big ideas, inclusive people, beautiful buildings, expansive parks.

But the reasons are also layered and nuanced. Oberlin’s sense of freedom and inclusion run deep. The town was the last stop on the underground railway, and Oberlin College was the first to grant bachelors degrees to women in a co-ed setting, and to admit people of color.

The subsequent level of creativity is extraordinary. Oberlin College Conservatory is world renown and puts on 500 concerts per year. Most of them are free and walkable or bikable to the majority of local housing stock. The Allen Memorial Art Museum is one of the top five college art museums in the US. The liberal arts college itself needs no introductions.

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Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:40:30 -0800 Solid, Hype-Free Social Media Advice http://placeshakers.posterous.com/solid-hype-free-social-media-advice http://placeshakers.posterous.com/solid-hype-free-social-media-advice

Just as buying everything Home Depot has to offer doesn't make you a better craftsman, signing onto every social media channel doesn't make you a better planner. Ben Brown, a founding member of the USA TODAY editorial staff, co-founder of Coastal Living magazine, contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Southern Living, etc., etc., now spends his time communicating about placemaking. In this article, he talks about the challenges and opportunities of building and sustaining community in the social media environment.

Brown says:

"Social media choices are rapidly overflowing the shelves of the communications equivalent of Home Depot. Choose the right tools for the right time and place, and you can accelerate productivity and add value to what you can offer customers and citizens. Choose unwisely and you increase costs without growing revenue and potentially undermine your brand.

"There is an important impact difference between social media tools and the Home Depot variety. And this can’t be overstated. Social media are multipliers. Everything gets better or worse much faster thanks to viral networking. Good-bye, wiggle room."

Read the full story on PlaceShakers.

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Fri, 04 Mar 2011 11:50:37 -0800 Settle Down Now: Is community the new frontier for Generation X? http://placeshakers.posterous.com/settle-down-now-is-community-the-new-frontier http://placeshakers.posterous.com/settle-down-now-is-community-the-new-frontier In 1992, Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha offered a dire warning to a restless but aimless Generation X: “If we don’t take action now,” he sang, “we’ll settle for nothing later.” An anthemic rallying cry and yet, just ten years thereafter, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard was introducing those same listeners to “the sound of settling.”

While the idea of settling carries with it some pretty unsettling connotations, its execution is proving far different. In short, the settling down of Generation X, whose youngest members are now turning 30, may very well prove to be a pivotal baby step towards the construction of a more resilient future.

http://placeshakers.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/composite.jpg?w=500&h=273

From denial and anger to depression and acceptance: Zack De La Rocha and Ben Gibbard.

Those born in the closing years of the Baby Boom — the founding punk rock generation — may have set out to fight the power and dismantle the system but this head-butting sentiment inevitably gave way to what’s proven a far more definitive characteristic of Generation X: The desire to sidestep authority in pursuit of a more appealing alternate system to take its place.

Full story on PlaceShakers.

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Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:21:29 -0800 Untitled http://placeshakers.posterous.com/44456547 http://placeshakers.posterous.com/44456547

“You’re terminated, hippie.” — Where does that leave local sustainability?

Federal government to sustainability efforts: You’re terminated.

In a blockbuster-style showdown, the House Appropriations Committee started a furor this month as they proposed the elimination of HUD, USDOT and EPA sustainability programs in 2011-12, as well as suggesting the rescinding of dollars already awarded by the Sustainability and TIGER grant programs. As municipalities, counties and regional COGs scramble to find ways to focus the weak development market forces into more sustainable patterns of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, the possible removal of the federal support is discouraging.

Looks like we’re gonna have to go indie.

No fate but what we make? Sorry, hippie, you're terminated.

In this new age of municipal austerity, forward-thinking local and regional governments are looking for ways to spend our remaining cheap oil in human-centric ways, instead of our auto-centric habits of the last 80 years. For obvious reasons.

We’ve talked last week about being stripped of the comfortable delusion that somebody else will pick up the tab, and how new partnerships are generating Smarter Growth. We’ve been making the case for how great placemaking can save money and grow the economy. We’ve looked at urban retail downtown and sprawl repair in the ‘burbs, and their wealth-building potential at both ends of the spectrum.

Such conversation is good but, lest you get lulled into thinking that’s enough, I turn now to three of my colleagues-in-arms, currently slugging it out in the trenches of community building, for some wider insight.

Full story on PlaceShakers, including interviews of Dan Reuter, Scott Polikov, and Joe Minicozzi.

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Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:21:00 -0800 Good News: The End Is Near. Really. http://placeshakers.posterous.com/good-news-the-end-is-near-really http://placeshakers.posterous.com/good-news-the-end-is-near-really

We're about to be freed to innovate, stripped of the comfortable delusion that someone else will pick up the tab.

What shrinking governmental budgets may mean for placemaking, the environment, the economy, infrastructure. It's the Death of Denial.

PlaceMaker Ben Brown writes:

"Here’s how Governing magazine summed up discussions at its early February Outlook in the States and Localities conference this way: 'Even as the national economy begins to turn around, (Fiscal Year) 2012 will be the worst budget year for states and cities so far.'"

"An analysis of federal spending received per dollar of taxes paid by states in 2005 by the non-profit Tax Foundation found that 32 of the 50 states got more back then they paid into federal coffers. Not news widely shared by those who get elected to government by denying its effectiveness."

"Waking from a dream state forces us to take responsibility for living in a more complex environment. We have to stop pretending we can do – and pay – for everything. Just as the Tea Party tantrum will subside, so must all the other tantrums we throw, whether we’re pounding the desk for single-minded environmentalism, single-minded economic development strategy, or single-minded infrastructure initiatives."

"Instead of fighting to optimize one component of complex systems at the expense of all the other components, we have to think comprehensively and imagine integrated, cost-effective solutions."

"The tough road out of the current frustration and confusion may be more clear (soon). But be forewarned, the way forward won’t be like the way we’ve come."

http://placeshakers.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/end1.jpg?w=456&h=360

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Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:39:25 -0800 Monkey See, Monkey Don’t: Economic Development as a Whole New Animal http://placeshakers.posterous.com/monkey-see-monkey-dont-economic-development-a http://placeshakers.posterous.com/monkey-see-monkey-dont-economic-development-a

In the economic development world, we’re always trying to grow our economic base. And by that we mean goods and services that we export, not just what we use in our local markets. That might include university services, tourism, and any products that we pack and ship, or regional retail that we steal from our neighbors.

We see economic development in conventional terms, and we seek only to perpetuate the model, adding more of the same to the end of the chain. Another monkey from the barrel, so to speak.

All I really need to know, I learned in Kindergarten.
At least as it relates to old-skool economic development.

From the MBA perspective, OPM, or Other People’s Money, usually refers to debt. But it’s really also the traditional view of business development, the Ponzi scheme that Strong Towns articulates so well. It’s how America has run for the last century, and it isn’t working. We can’t spend our way out of this financial situation by boosting consumer confidence so that we “spend” the most recent stock market up-tick, which we, of course, haven’t sold our stocks to really capture and may just turn into credit card debt in the end. It’s the same sort of way we’ve justified the next sprawling infrastructure spending in the hope of future revenue.

Last month we talked about how sprawl is an economic loser for city governments, and how placemaking is a development catalyst and infrastructure saver. Kaid Benfield’s great article on the NRDC Switchboard this week highlights the Growing Wealthier study, which quantifies those arguments.

The neighborhood is the unit of sustainable urbanism. But what if we went back to the notion that the region is the unit of sustainable economic development? Not cutting off the spice trade or China, but in terms of how we think of balancing our city budgets. Attracting and channeling investment rather than jobs? Targeted selectively, across the spectrum of residency, building, employment, the works.

Of course, the region is, at its cellular level, a collection of places — places acting in their own self-interests, competing with each other for diminishing slices of pie — and the monkey-see, monkey-do manner in which so many of them go about their economic development efforts ultimately fails to produce sustainable results at either end of the spectrum.

Thus, the taming of this new animal is paramount. The sooner the better. How are today’s great — or poised to be great — cities and towns getting it done, despite their dire city budget situations? And what does community have to do with it?

Quality of Life
Even in the toughest assessments of what attracts industries to locations and keeps them there, quality of life rates high. We know that people who live and work in places with diverse options for housing, shopping, mobility, and entertainment are generally happier. Happy people tend to be happier employees. Happier employees make more productive employees. And productive employees are highly valued by employers. LA’s Strategic Plan for Econ Development does a good job of laying it out.

Attachment
Soul of the Community, thanks to Knight Foundation and Gallup, concludes that the places where people have the most emotional connection to their community generate the highest rates of GDP growth over time. The usual drivers of safety, leadership, and services were overshadowed by social offerings, openness, and aesthetics – gathering places and a public realm that is alive with pedestrian activity, not auto-oriented throughput.

A Predictable Decision-Making Environment
Communities that have consensus-backed rules and straightforward processes to channel growth and redevelopment can control one of the variables that make firms nervous about capital investments. Predictable environments are at the top of business wish lists.

New Economy Entrepreneurs
Since the overwhelming majority of businesses in the U.S. are those with 10 employees or less, the future of economic development will be in providing a supportive environment for small, entrepreneurial outfits. The most sought-after are the knowledge economy/creative class types. And those folks are urbanists with a vengeance. The latest Kaufman Foundation report does a good job of laying out government strategies for encouraging innovation and entrepreneurial firms.

Don’t just take my word for it. It ain’t just me. I gave a call to urban retail guru, Bob Gibbs, and Sprawl Repair maven, Galina Tachieva. Those interviews and the rest of the story on PlaceShakers.

Robertgibbs

Retail Guru Bob Gibbs

Sprawl Repair Maven Galina Tachieva

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Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:19:16 -0800 Season’s Greetings from Alabama: Where Stars Aligned http://placeshakers.posterous.com/seasons-greetings-from-alabama-where-stars-al http://placeshakers.posterous.com/seasons-greetings-from-alabama-where-stars-al

Here’s a story of hope for the holidays. And like most good stories, it begins with bad news. Ben Brown talks about the Coastal Recovery Commission of Alabama, how politicians, community leaders and professionals working together on a plan for resiliency in the aftermath the BP Oil spill.


Unlike many recent natural disasters such as the Haiti earthquake or Hurricane Katrina, the magnitude of the repercussions are much less obvious. A thousand people came together to make a plan for how their fragile coastal homeland might become more resilient in the face of what natural disasters almost certainly await their high-risk region.


"The report itself (7.9mb .pdf), produced in 90 days, is less significant than the response it was able to conjure. To produce it required an alignment of the stars through a process that attracted more than a thousand leaders and citizens. And though the report’s recommendations aren’t likely to surprise professionals familiar with the fundamental goals of regional planning, the process and its ceremonial climax in Montgomery on December 15 revived at least a little hope that it’s possible for folks to come together in agreement on something important for generations to come. Even if what’s agreed upon is a commitment to keep the conversation going."


"It wasn’t a gift. It was the result of some heavy lifting on the part of regional leaders and an inspired governor. And it’s a fragile coalition that will require continuing attention as the Commission’s proposals move towards implementation. But it’s a hopeful moment, nonetheless. Which is good enough in these uncertain times."


Read the full story here.


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Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:52:27 -0700 Today's "Eco-Warriors": Giving Them Something Worth Fighting For http://placeshakers.posterous.com/todays-eco-warriors-giving-them-something-wor http://placeshakers.posterous.com/todays-eco-warriors-giving-them-something-wor Howard Blackson talks about the progression of settlements: what matters and why for connectivity.

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Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:23:41 -0700 Retail Redemption http://placeshakers.posterous.com/retail-redemption http://placeshakers.posterous.com/retail-redemption

Retail Redemption: Skivvies Uncovered, then Promptly Covered

My fellow PlaceMaker, Howard Blackson, finally locates those elusive skivvies, then talks about what is and isn't working in new urban retail

A couple months ago I rambled on here about my inability to purchase a particularly critical item of men’s apparel during an extended tour of new urban projects throughout the southeast. Modesty was not my problem. Rather, despite healthy commercial activity most everywhere I went, I could find no walkable stores catering to such day-to-day basics.

Food and drink? Sure. Tchotchkes and novelties? You betcha. Skivvies? Not a chance. Read on.

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Fri, 08 Oct 2010 10:14:00 -0700 Zoning as Spiritual Practice: From me to we to Thee. http://placeshakers.posterous.com/zoning-as-spiritual-practice-from-me-to-we-to http://placeshakers.posterous.com/zoning-as-spiritual-practice-from-me-to-we-to Ben Brown talks connectivity, at its highest level. http://bit.ly/9seCkb

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Not everyone gives separated-use zoning a positive review.

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Loathe thy neighbor: Safe at home in America.

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Fri, 17 Sep 2010 07:03:43 -0700 Confessions of a Former Sprawl Addict: Speed Humps on the Road to Recovery http://placeshakers.posterous.com/confessions-of-a-former-sprawl-addict-speed-h http://placeshakers.posterous.com/confessions-of-a-former-sprawl-addict-speed-h Yes, I'm moving to T3. Here's my take on why downtown living and parenting don't always mix easily.

Mcdermot

Bannatyne

Kingsway

Crescentwood_street

Crescentwood_civic

Lilac

Corydon

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Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:49:43 -0700 PlaceShakers September edition http://placeshakers.posterous.com/placeshakers-september-edition http://placeshakers.posterous.com/placeshakers-september-edition People, news and views shaping everyday community. PlaceShakers September edition is here.

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Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:33:18 -0700 Brave New Codes Reach Tipping Point: When, Where, Why? http://placeshakers.posterous.com/brave-new-codes-reach-tipping-point-when-wher http://placeshakers.posterous.com/brave-new-codes-reach-tipping-point-when-wher A year ago, Apple’s sales of its iPhone and iPod Touch eclipsed 40 million units, confirming their potential to fundamentally retool our future opportunities and patterns of daily life. Today, a year later, form-based codes hit a similar milestone, with similar implications, as over 330 cities and towns around the world — representing over 40 million people — have embraced the idea of form-based coding as an alternative to the sprawl-inducing zoning models of the past century. We’ve hit the tipping point. Welcome to the other side.

Fbcbar_aug2010

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