KANSAS CITY — A common issue facing city leaders and planners is the need to balance residents' interests along with the need for economic development, community growth and neighborhood redevelopment.
This is especially true given today's challenging market conditions. In Kansas City's inner-ring suburbs, especially, cities are increasingly being asked to maintain a certain quality and level of service, even while facing the reality of leaner budgets and smaller staffs.
These areas are experiencing similar challenges as other inner-ring suburbs across the country -- older residential development, fairly limited housing choices, aging infrastructure, and a strong need for reinvestment and revitalization.
Meanwhile, a majority of their residents are growing older, families are becoming smaller, income levels are declining, and the commercial tax base is shrinking.
Such inner-ring suburbs as Gladstone, Prairie Village, Overland Park and Mission are addressing these challenges head-on. This includes such proactive planning efforts as Gladstone's Downtown Village Center, Prairie Village's Village Vision, Overland Park's Vision Metcalf and Mission's East Gateway and West Gateway proposals. Although each municipality is devising different solutions to their specific challenges, Mission has chosen to institute a planning mechanism called form-based code.
Simply put, form-based code is a zoning model that guides future revitalization and redevelopment efforts in a way that complements the existing character of the surrounding community. Although it might sound like an industry buzzword, this concept has already been proved to work well in other cities across the country -- and it has the potential to positively affect the redevelopment happening here in our metropolitan area.
Key to form-based code's success is the way it goes beyond conventional zoning regulations and design guidelines. By integrating the best aspects of each into one cohesive plan, form-based code clearly outlines the community's desired development using descriptive, rather than restrictive, terminology.
Form-based code places more emphasis on the physical form of a proposed project, rather than on its specific use and density calculations. Instead, general recommendations are provided that outline overall building placement, building types, setbacks, parking, access and architecture. The amount of flexibility inherent in form-based code allows for a variety of uses, while encouraging development creativity and diversity.
Creating a form-based code involves actively engaging the community and key stakeholders in an open, transparent design and planning process (also known as a charrette). In this way, planners can ensure residents' issues and concerns are properly identified and adequately addressed, and a set of planning guidelines and design criteria are established that clearly communicate the type of projects the city and its residents would like to see built in their community.
The benefit for cities, residents and developers is that the right projects get quicker and easier approvals. By following the rules of the form-based code, developers move through the review process with speed and certainty. Design exceptions and variances to any of the rules would trigger additional scrutiny, deliberation and delay.
This type of development pattern is beginning to be seen in our suburbs. High-profile mixed-use projects — such as Park Place and Mission Farms in Leawood, Prairiefire in Overland Park and New Longview in Lee's Summit — represent a growing movement to create high-quality places where residents can live, work and play.
This approach, applied to opportunities in our inner-ring suburbs, has the potential to make our metropolitan area more sustainable in the long term. Although the development of brand-new communities along the suburban fringe will no doubt continue, there are real growth opportunities in the inner-ring suburbs and older communities that so many of us continue to call home.
New investment in our inner-ring suburbs makes good business sense — as these areas are already rich in character, charm, convenience and, most important, community. Coupled with close proximity to Downtown and mass transit, these areas already have the basic components needed to stimulate growth. Redeveloping in a way that provides a variety of new, high-quality housing choices that are well connected to the existing community will attract young families, professionals, empty nesters and new businesses.
We've already seen proof of this in the way Kansas City's downtown area has been redeveloped during the past several years. Thanks to strong leadership and strategic investment, the revitalization of Downtown is well under way. Kansas City's collective "sense of self" is slowly being transformed as a result — a transformation that will continue to grow and take shape well into the future.
Effectively planning for these types of growth by using tools such as form-based code — while expanding housing and business opportunities in our inner-ring suburbs — will improve and sustain the quality of life in the Kansas City metropolitan area for generations to come.
By Chris Cline
Chris Cline | Cline is a landscape architect and principal with Brian Clark + Associates.
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