Land Use

Many cities and towns are looking to Form Based Codes (FBC) as a way to combat the woes enabled by traditional single use zoning (e.g. the loss of historic neighborhoods, sprawling development patterns, increasing reliance on the automobile, to name a few). In a nutshell, FBC regulates how a building relates to its surrounding environment and less so on the building’s actual use (I’m oversimplifying here…for a better definition check out the Form Based Code Institute).

Many great communities share a particular DNA—the scale of the buildings, the width of the streets, the mix of uses, etc. Just as slight variations in DNA result in different people, slight variations in land use regulations can lead to different places. These differences can be essential to retaining what makes our cities and towns unique.

Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

One of my favorite reading sources is Headwater News, a daily digest of articles from around the West. When sitting in my office in Vermont, it keeps me aware of the big forces at work in the Rocky Mountain region and reminds me of some of the significant differences between the East and the West—water laws and public land ownership leading the list.

I’ve watched in shock as Arizona passed its draconian immigration legislation and with surprise as Utah adopted legislation enabling the state to condemn federal lands. Given the large public presence through the public lands, I can understand the backdrop behind these legislative moves and other practices (although I still can’t swallow Arizona’s approach).

The recent article in The New York Times about the continued new construction in Las Vegas really caught my attention. Despite record foreclosures and a 60 percent drop in real estate values in parts of Las Vegas, builders are cranking out the subdivisions again. The theory is that area and local industry can build themselves out of the slump. As the article pointedly observes, “Las Vegas is trying to recover by building what it does not need.” Haven’t we learned from the 2008 recession that the old normal of sprawl and unfettered growth is not the new normal? And that it was considered normal for so long is precisely what drove us into the recession in the first place? Las Vegas slumped so badly because of its excessive and ill conceived building. And now, with high vacancies, foreclosures and unemployment, they want to build more houses?

I recently attended the inaugural convening of the “Intermountain West Funders Network,” which brought together a group of granting, operating and community foundations to discuss their interests and efforts in the fields of citizen engagement and land use planning. While there are funding networks in various regions of the country, there is none that spans the north/south Intermountain West region.

Joining the Orton Family Foundation in conceiving and pursuing the formation of this new network were Philanthropies for Civic Engagement (PACE) and The Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. During the two and-a-half day gathering, over 20 foundations shared successes and struggles, and perhaps most importantly at this nascent moment, began forming relationships and affinities.

You’ve likely read the many remembrances of Stewart Udall, conservationist, former secretary of the interior, and the last surviving member of President Kennedy’s cabinet. Udall died March 20^th in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the age of 90.

For many westerners, Stewart Udall earned elevated status as a favorite “son” who did well by and for the West. As Interior Secretary in both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, Udall played a significant role in the preservation of 3.85 million acres of public lands, which included the creation of 50 new national wildlife refuges, eight national seashores and four national parks—Canyonlands in Utah, North Cascades in Washington, Redwood in California and Guadalupe Mountains in Texas—not to mention 20 historic sites, including the now famous cultural hub, Carnegie Hall.

In Millbridge, Maine, a local non-profit won federal funding to build housing for immigrant laborers. But local residents circled a petition and approved a moratorium on multifamily housing in order to keep immigrants out.

In Brooklyn, New York this fall, a local Hasidic community objected to safety issues and immodest clothing among cyclists on its neighborhood bike lanes. The Department of Transportation sandblasted the lanes—which guerrilla bicycle activists promptly painted back on.

And in Katy, Texas, when a local Muslim community purchased a piece of land and planned to build a mosque and school, one citizen responded by running pig races next door on Friday evenings, the holiest day of the week for Muslims (see Jon Stewart’s coverage on The Daily Show, below).

The late urbanist, writer and activist Jane Jacobs lives on through the work she accomplished in life. Most know her “as the ultimate champion of cities” and for opposing neighborhood demolition. In her landmark work The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Jacobs saw urban “improvement” projects for what they really were: urban emasculation projects that left entire districts barren. And now, three years since her death and a year plus into the economic downturn, people are taking another look at her economic ideas.

What if you didn’t have to drive anywhere? What if you could bike to work, and the grocery store, and the doctor’s office? What if your kids could skateboard to school? How does a stroll downtown for dinner and a movie sound? Need to travel a distance? Walk to the train station, which can get you to the nearest city or to the airport.

This is the way of life supported by the planning concept called “20-minute living,” a term coined by the Portland, Oregon-based real estate development firm Gerding Edlen to describe neighborhoods in which everything residents need is within 20 minutes of their homes. Not only are these neighborhoods convenient; they are planned with people in mind. As Allison Arieff put it in a post on BNet, “Less time in transit means more time for family and friends, and less wear and tear on you and the planet. Or, as we like to call it, the good life.”

I was reading some old back issues of National Geographic recently and came across articles about some bizarre yet interesting places—Ski Dubai, an enormous indoor ski area, a beach in Paris that the City constructs along the Seine each year, and Disney’s beloved and reviled playground, Orlando. The stories of these places reminded me of Lyman Orton’s disgust upon hearing of a proposal to build a wildlife park on the side of a mountain in Weston, Vermont, which the local Planning Commission discovered was, in fact, permitted under the zoning bylaws at that time and which the Commission was powerless to prevent.