Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [89]
Rewrite the regulations. If our communities are to recover from sprawl, they need both new regulations and a new regulatory environment. Existing zoning ordinances—typically outdated, overcomplicated, and vulnerable to influence peddling—are often discredited but rarely discarded. The flaws of these ordinances are too many to mention here, but can be gleaned through even cursory reading. Most need radical restructuring just to open the door for traditional development. New regulations, in addition to making traditional neighborhoods possible, must support the character of older places through the compatible filling in of existing neighborhoods. This is the opposite of what happens in most historic communities today, where modern building codes force new construction to take a form drastically distinct from that of its neighbors.dm
These problems led us to write the Traditional Neighborhood Development Ordinance, an alternative zoning code based on the evident advantages of America’s older cities, towns, and villages.** The TND Ordinance can replace existing land-use codes, or be instituted as an optional alternative. Obviously, the first path is the preferable one, but the second is more politically viable. The TND deals succinctly with the criteria essential to making authentic neighborhoods. The code is broken down into two sections: Urban Infill, which addresses existing neighborhoods, and Greenfield Development, which deals with the creation of new neighborhoods from scratch. In both cases, new growth is modeled on the old patterns that people cherish.
The TND is not the only instrument of its kind. Other groundbreaking zoning ordinances include Sacramento County’s Transit Oriented Development Ordinance, Pasadena’s City of Gardens Code, and Loudon County, Virginia’s Rural Village Ordinance. Municipalities that are currently making use of customized TND-style ordinances include Miami-Dade County, Orlando, Columbus, Santa Fe, and Austin. These ordinances demonstrate the TND’s adaptability to a wide range of local conditions.
With any luck, the TND Ordinance and others like it will exert a powerful influence over the shape of America’s towns and cities in the near future. Much of the disappointing form of our communities can be attributed to the widespread dissemination of the prosprawl zoning codes of the 1960s. If the new ordinances are circulated in an equally effective fashion, there may yet be a day when sprawl is suppressed by traditional urbanism.
One warning: Experience suggests that it is a mistake to try to fix old zoning codes. Attempting to change a typical words-and-numbers ordinance into a physical-form-based ordinance through deletions and additions, chewing gum and baling wire, will result in a new ordinance that is even more confusing and difficult to implement than the old one.
In most municipalities, the best way to thoroughly upgrade a development code is to start from scratch, which is not in itself a difficult task. The problem lies not in creating a new ordinance but in throwing out the old one. Since zoning plays such a large role in determining the value of private property, any modification of the status quo may have profound economic consequences. Even a slight change in terminology can generate or obliterate millions of dollars in earnings for large-scale landowners, who typically have strong political connections and can stop change in its tracks. Worse yet, they’ll sue, and win. Recent court judgments have decided in favor of developers demanding compensation for losses caused by changes in land-use regulations. For that reason, it is wisest to keep the old code intact, while offering the new code as a parallel alternative. It would be optional, but made attractive