California gives seal of approval to form-based codes

ACalifornia law explicitly stating that form-based codes are legal was signed in July by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger after the measure was approved unanimously by the legislature. Although the law does not require municipalities to adopt new urban codes, Santa Rosa-based urban designer Laura Hall believes it will change the political climate for new urbanists. “It can calm down city officials and the public,” she says. “There will be no reason for anybody to challenge the legality of form-based codes in California ever again.” Hall also notes that the state code is taught in planning schools. “It will wake people up — we haven’t been doing [urbanism] for a long time — now it is in the law.” Assembly Bill 1268 grew out of the experience of Hall and Lois Fisher of Fisher & Hall Urban Design, who tried to implement Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s SmartCode in Cotati, a 6,700-population municipality south of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County. The code received strong support from the community and public officials, but the town’s land use attorney deemed it illegal. “At the same time,” Hall reports, “the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research [OPR] was doing public outreach throughout California to find out how to remove obstacles to smart growth at the local level. I told them if they could just declare form-based zoning legal, it would help a lot.” A series of meetings followed with California new urbanists, Andres Duany, the Local Government Commission, and OPR. A white paper (on the web at www.fisherandhall.com/OPR/WhitePaper.pdf) was written by new urbanists including Hall, Paul Crawford, Robert Alminana, David Sargent, Steve Lawton, and Duany. The paper was boiled down into a law sponsored by Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins of Sonoma and Napa Counties. A consultant hired by the Senate gave the law a positive review. The bill states that “The text and diagrams in the land use element that address the location and extent of land uses, and the zoning ordinances that implement these provisions, may also express community intentions regarding urban form and design. These expressions may differentiate neighborhoods, districts, and corridors, provide for specific measures for regulating relationships between buildings and outdoor public areas, including streets.” The law will go into effect January 1, 2005. Since working in Cotati, Fisher & Hall served as lead consultant on a version of the SmartCode approved in Petaluma, also in Sonoma County. Recently, the small town of Tuscadero, south of San Francisco, also decided to pursue a SmartCode. Other California communities, including Hercules and Azusa, have also worked with form-based codes. u