The SmartCode Solution to Sprawl

By Chad Emerson

Environmental Law Institute, 2007, 104 pp., paperback, $22.46.

The SmartCode, even in the form of the SmartCode & Manual that includes step-by-step guidance from the code authors, can be daunting. For starters, the SmartCode represents a radically different Transect-based approach to zoning compared to conventional land-use codes. It deals with regional, greenfield, and infill planning — and the diverse issues implied by those categories. Further, the SmartCode is a unified code, which brings together issues related to zoning, street, public works, landscape, lighting, and signage standards in one document.

That’s a lot to swallow.

Now comes a little book that cuts the SmartCode into bite-size, easily digestible pieces. In concise, uncomplicated language useful to laymen and professionals like attorneys and planners, Emerson offers a brief history of conventional zoning and lays out the arguments for change. He makes a case that the SmartCode is the best tool for change.

According to Emerson, 12 US communities have adopted the SmartCode in some part, while another 30 are working to do so. “The trend is further evidenced by the increasing number of request for proposals (RFPs) issued by municipalities seeking professional help in implementing a SmartCode.”
Many additional municipalities have adopted a form-based code that is custom-made by a new urbanist firm. All told, there may be a hundred municipalities with a form-based code in the US, but that number is still dwarfed by thousands of towns and cities with conventional zoning. This book is targeted toward those communities.

Emerson argues that the SmartCode is the best form-based code available because of its comprehensive nature. New urbanists disagree on that point, and many favor a custom code. For those looking for an off-the-shelf new urban code, however, the SmartCode is unique. No other code is the product of as many years of work on the part of top new urbanists and is designed to respond to as wide a range of urban conditions. No other code has been tested in so many locations and modified as a result of such experience (note: New Urban News Publications publishes the SmartCode & Manual).

Even so, the SmartCode requires substantial customization, and Emerson goes into detail on how to proceed with that process. He highlights where some municipalities have gone wrong in the tailoring the SmartCode. Parts of the code should be customized, while others are best left intact or altered with extreme care. In Fort Myers, Florida, some of the design metrics have been changed so drastically that the SmartCode has “lost its intelligence,” according to one planner quoted in the book.

This is the first book by an attorney on zoning from a new urbanist point of view. The history of modern zoning that it presents is instructive and more detailed from a legal perspective than anything that I have read. While many new urbanists trace sprawl to the era after World War II, Emerson shows how widespread thinking among elites in the 1920s and 1930s — reflected by federal programs and legislation — led to automobile-oriented development patterns in the second half of the 20th Century.

The consensus that automobile-oriented development was a good idea even before it was built led to its glamorization as an inevitable aspect of human progress. It wasn’t until the near universal adoption of conventional zoning that the negative effects of sprawl began to be understood.

The book offers case studies, most of them very recent, that illustrate how the SmartCode is being used in real places and the key issues that those communities faced in changing their zoning. It deals with incentives that can be put in place to encourage implementation of the code.

Anyone who is considering using the SmartCode should read The SmartCode Solution to Sprawl first.