APA awards single out compact, mixed-use plans

The American Planning Association (APA) does not officially endorse the New Urbanism, but its recent awards have lauded new urbanist plans. Two examples this year are the Growing Smart award, which went to Palm Beach County, Florida, and the Outstanding Plan award, given to the City of Liberty, Missouri. Palm Beach County Palm Beach County was rated by the Sierra Club as the most sprawl-threatened medium-sized metropolitan area in the US. The county has grown by 23 percent in the last decade, and about 90 percent of this growth was in urban and suburban areas, which make up about a quarter of the county. The rest of the county is mostly rural, and is starting to experience growth pressure. The population currently stands at just over one million. In order to combat the relentless sprawl, the county developed and adopted the Managed Growth Tier System, based on new urbanist and smart growth principles. The plan divides the county into five “tiers,” each with common characteristics. Urban/suburban tier This is the area where most of the development and growth is, and where the county is trying hardest to promote good urban design. The tier is divided into unincorporated and incorporated areas. Fifty-eight percent of all growth in the county is occurring in unincorporated areas. The county is in the process of creating new urbanist codes that will address issues such as streetscapes, setbacks, mixing uses, and on-street parking (which is currently illegal). The new codes will apply directly to unincorporated areas, where the county has land use authority. Incorporated municipalities — the older cities and suburbs in the county — will have the option of enacting these codes. In addition, the county is trying to encourage more infill development by funneling a disproportionate share of capital expenditures to the urban/suburban tier. The Tier System will serve as a guideline and framework for county commissioners in making decisions about where to fund infrastructure projects. This targeted spending will save the county $22 million during the next 20 years by reducing demand for roads and water and sewer hookups, according to an independent analysis by Rutgers University, the county reports. The same analysis estimates that 8,000 acres of developable land and 5,600 acres of environmentally sensitive land will be preserved. To further focus growth pressure, a transfer of development rights (TDR) program will enable landowners throughout the county to sell their building rights to developers in the urban/suburban tier. Rural tiers Four tiers govern areas of the county that are semirural or totally rural. They are named exurban, rural, agricultural reserve, and glades, and each has different physical and planning characteristics. For example, the exurban tier includes considerable land that is already developed or subdivided in the form of 1.25-acre lots. The rural tier includes citrus groves and small rural estates. The glades tier mostly has sugarcane plantations. The basic strategy for these rural and semirural areas is to ease development pressure through the TDR program and targeted infrastructure spending. Large lot residential development will continue, but the county will also encourage new commercial development in the form of main streets. To a certain degree, the clustering of new residential development into hamlets and villages will be encouraged in all four of the “rural” zones. The county is in the process of choosing a planning firm to develop codes to implement the tier system. Liberty An image preference survey and a charrette created a foundation for traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Liberty, Missouri. A rapidly growing suburb of Kansas City, Liberty currently has a population of 25,500. Its historic core has been surrounded by a ring of conventional suburban growth. The planning effort, led by Land Planning Services of St. Charles, Illinois, involved substantial citizen input. Surveys and workshops revealed that citizens strongly favored the city’s historical core over recent development. The land plan approved in the summer of 1999 called for new development in the form of interconnected, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. While the planned new neighborhoods emulate the city’s pre-World War II core, the new neighborhoods will incorporate a greater respect for natural features (planners are proposing a modified grid that avoids disturbing sensitive environmental areas). The principles of traditional neighborhood design employed by Liberty are attributed to the Congress for the New Urbanism. Recognizing that developers may need help adjusting to the new plan, the city has set aside money to hire a consultant to assist and conduct a charrette with any developer who wants to build TND, says city planner Bonnie Johnson.