The “smart code” is coming

Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) is negotiating with a major land-use law firm to disseminate new urbanist zoning codes to municipalities. Today, public planners and elected officials who want a new urbanist growth model for their communities often create new zoning codes by picking ideas and language from a variety of progressive codes from other cities and counties. Drawbacks to this option are that significant research is required, and that well thought out new urbanist codes on the books are few. A simpler option is slated to be available soon. DPZ is about to release a completed version of its SmartCode, a distillation of the firm’s 20 years of experience in planning towns and neighborhoods. During this time, DPZ has been steadily refining its system of codes for traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs) and infill sites. The SmartCode, based on the Transect and the Lexicon of the New Urbanism, is the latest, most comprehensive of the firm’s codes. DPZ is currently negotiating with the Municipal Code Corporation (MCC) of Tallahassee, Florida, the nation’s leading seller and publisher of local government codes, to widely disseminate the code. The procedure for a municipality to use the code will have three main steps, according to Demitri Baches of DPZ. 1) For a nominal fee, typically around $100, MCC will send a copy of the code to the municipality for study. 2) If the municipality wants to adopt the code, which is copyrighted, it must acquire a license from DPZ. The fees for this service are still being negotiated. 3) Upon purchasing the code, the municipality can choose to proceed in one of three ways: it can refine and revise the code using its own staff; it can hire DPZ to implement the code; or it can turn to what Baches calls “an A-list of consultants,” i.e., a group of new urbanist practitioners, approved by DPZ, who can tailor the code to local conditions. The collaboration with MCC has the potential to disseminate a new urbanist code more effectively than has hitherto been possible. The firm has already published codes for more than 2,600 cites and counties in 49 states, and has a network of contacts that reaches many more municipalities. Moreover, MCC has the expertise to conduct the legal research that cities need to implement the code as an overlay to existing zoning. Selling a new kind of code, however, represents a significant change for the company, Baches says. A code for messy cities The SmartCode grows out of the recent city and regional plans DPZ has worked on in such places as Onondaga County, New York; Hillsboro County, Florida; Covington, Georgia; and downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The regional scale requires a code that is broader than the project-specific TND codes that DPZ has written in the past. At the recent presentation of the finalized code for Onondaga County, principal Andres Duany noted that a typological TND code, such as the one written for Seaside, precisely codes housing types on the level of specific streets and blocks. “Observing real cities over time, I’ve learned that’s not how they work,” he says. “Cities are messier.” Consequently, the SmartCode is more flexible: it allows everything from highrises to large lots, but allocates them within specific tiers or zones of the Transect, the rural to urban classification system that underpins everything in the SmartCode. A municipality that adopts the code must therefore map every neighborhood into Transect zones: neighborhood edge, general, center, and core, as well as designate areas as rural reserves or preserves. According to Duany, this mapping may be the most difficult aspect of the implementation process. DPZ’s solution is to mobilize a network of practitioners who are thoroughly versed in the Transect concept and can travel around the country to assist municipalities. Within each zone, the SmartCode sets guidelines for parking, signage, drainage, lighting, street widths, and setbacks, among other things — everything that goes into creating what DPZ calls “immersive environments.” In an immersive environment, specific elements of the human habitat are combined in a synergistic manner into a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. As a city grows, the code allows for the zones to change, Baches says. If infill development intensifies, a neighborhood center zone, for example, may be redesignated as a core zone. The Onondaga code has a 20-year, built-in review cycle for all zones, for example. Baches emphasizes that the zones won’t fall neatly into concentric circles with decreasing density from center to edge. Within city neighborhoods, Transect zones will be mapped in more complicated patterns, adjusting to the character of existing development. The SmartCode is designed to promote compact development rather than prohibit conventional development. In Onondaga County, the conventional zoning will remain on the books, but the SmartCode will take precedence whenever there is a conflict between the two. In many cases, the code allows more options than conventional zoning. “Today, traffic planners have a very impoverished choice in street standards,” Duany says. The SmartCode will restore the wider range of standards that existed before WW II, which dealt not just with road capacity (like current standards) but also the character of the thoroughfare. In addition, the code allows applying existing standards where they are still appropriate. Most of the principles in the SmartCode have proved their mettle in individual projects, but as Duany acknowledges, the regional codes are too new to have been thoroughly tested in the public process. If it proves successful, the SmartCode could have more impact than any new urbanist zoning system to date. Many new urbanists consider local zoning the greatest single barrier to human-scale, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use planning and development.