Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [72]
The good news about these codes is that once they are evolved and enacted, processing can be simplified dramatically. Because these codes are prescriptive rather than prescriptive, buildings that correspond to their specific physical criteria can be permitted automatically and allowed to move forward immediately. To assist in this process, city planning and building departments must be encouraged to see themselves as an enabling staff rather than a regulatory staff.cr Instead of fighting bad development, they can concentrate on supporting good development, which is a much more rewarding job. The implementation of such a process would be an important step in leveling the playing field between suburban and urban development, so that suburban developers could be enticed back into the inner city.
THE PERMITTING PROCESS
There is a general perception that it is difficult to get projects permitted in the suburbs. This is often true, but only as it refers to projects: not to buildings, but to entire office parks and subdivisions, which are often the size of towns. In the suburbs, there are two types of developer: the master developer, who must secure the initial site permits, and the building developer, who then constructs individual buildings within the project. While an office park developer may have to endure a painful permitting process, the builder who subsequently wishes to place an office building within that park faces no hassles whatsoever. He is given a site, a building footprint, and perhaps some rules regarding construction quality, and he’s ready to go. Only a routine building permit stands between him and construction.
The problem with developing individual buildings in the inner city is that there are no master developers running interference for the building developers. Instead, the would-be builder must weed through a complicated and confusing zoning code and then prepare for a series of confrontations with permitting authorities, local organizations, and resistant neighbors. If the city is to compete against the suburb, someone must play the role of the master developer, and in most cases this someone can only be the city government itself. As discussed above, the city can best achieve true predictability by replacing its zoning ordinances with a physical plan, one with as much precision as that of a new office park, in which every projected building is given shape. This plan must be created through a public process in which citizens participate with the understanding that the outcome will become the law. Once completed and enacted, this plan will control future growth, such that potential developers know exactly what they can build and when they can start construction. Under such a system—currently active in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Providence, Rhode Island—the city can begin to offer building developers a permitting environment that does not make them flee to the suburbs in frustration.
There are many benefits to creating a physically prescriptive master plan for a city, not the least of which is that it allows government to return to the business of governing. Currently, city commission agendas are overwhelmed by a disproportionate number of contests over individual real estate projects, as if real estate were more important than schooling, public safety, economic development, or quality of life. These battles are fought precisely because there is no master plan in place to guide development. Completing and enacting a new city master plan can often seem like a war, but isn’t it better to wage one big war and get it over with, rather than fighting new battles every week?