Form-based coding: Are we there yet?

Sonia Hirt's  is one of the more important books on land-use regulations to be published in years and it includes incisive observations on form-based codes. A main point of the book is how exceptional US land-use regulations are, relative to the rest of the world.

America separates and restricts land uses to a far greater degree than other industrial countries and reserves much more urban land exclusively to large-lot single-family housing. Consequently, US cities are far more dispersed and geared toward automobile-only travel. Hirt explores the consequences of what she calls the "American model" of zoning.

"Paradoxically, (from the viewpoint of zoning's founders), we may now have more pollution and worse public heatlh with our current zoning than we would have if we had modified our land-use laws more substantially in the last hundred years."

Since the mid-20th Century, two inventions have the potential to provide a "wholesale alternative" to conventional US zoning, she says: 1) Performance zoning, which uses standards based on environmental impact; and 2) Form-based codes (FBCs), championed by new urbanists, that replace conventional zones with categories that focus on the size, shape, and configuration of buildings, streets, and public spaces in a walkable neighborhood.

She surveys 25 municipalities nationwide and finds that none have a "performance-based code"—probably because this system requires expensive environmental impact analyses, she says. FBCs are far more popular. Seven of the cities (28 percent) have adopted FBCs. Another four (16 percent) are in process of doing do. That's the good news.

The municipalities surveyed are all relatively large. Mid-sized and small municipalities are less likely to have adopted FBCs, and Hirt's research confirms that. Hirt notes that out of about 40,000 municipalities, only about 300 have FBCs. 

Furthermore, municipalities with form-coding mostly offer it as an option and/or apply the rules in limited areas (her term is "piecemeal"). 

She concludes that the American model of separate-use, low-density zoning remains largely intact. 

On the one hand, FBCs have made great progress. Hirt's research shows that they are the *only* alternative that has gained significant traction. Her finding that FBCs are often optional and applied to specific areas may be less important than she imagines: Municipalities usually offer significant incentives for developers to use the new form-standards. And the areas where it is applied are often key growth spots in a city or town. In my observation, when cities or towns adopt a FBC for one area, they later apply form-standards to other parts of town.

On the other hand, American-style conventional zoning is vast and pervasive. Hirt correctly puts the form-based progress in proportion and concludes that we have a long way to go.

Her final question: "What then does the future hold? Institutional theorists often talk about policy windows: openings that create the possibility of change in a path-dependent policy system. Are we there yet?"

Only time will tell, but the signs indicate the form-coding will continue to make inroads into the American model of legally mandated sprawl.

Robert Steuteville is executive director and editor of Better Cities & Towns.