Is there a way we can revamp America's thousands of miles of cluttered commercial roadways? We all know them — auto alleys lined with strip malls, gas stations, franchised food stands, muffler shops and discount motels by the dozens. Curb cuts proliferate. Traffic roars along beside narrow sidewalks (if any sidewalks at all).
For motorists, these roadways are often nightmares; for pedestrians, they can be mortal threats — even though residences, particularly for lower-income people, often line these arteries, or are very close to them.
Traditional zoning and parking requirements have permitted, even fostered these environments. Is there an alternative?
"Yes" say a group of intrepid urban planners. To remake a 3.5-mile stretch of Columbia Pike in Arlington, Va., they're ditching standard zoning in favor of a new system of "form-based codes." Their approach actually invites local residents and business people to take a lead in redesigning their own environment.
Few question Columbia Pike's need of a radical remake. It is a traffic-choked melange of stores, drive-throughs and apartment complexes surrounded by acres of parking lots. Cars roar by at up to 50 miles an hour. There has been no major construction in 40 years. Urban planner Geoffrey Ferrell calls the pike a "linear grayfield of asphalt."
But the Columbia Pike neighborhood is not an economic disaster. Thousands of immigrants — Ethiopians, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and many others — have poured in over recent years. More than 40 languages are spoken in the homes of students in one local school. Some quality ethnic restaurants have filtered in — though often hidden behind fast-food emporia.
The breakthrough came when New Urbanist author Peter Katz, a lead expert on form-based codes, persuaded Arlington County Commission Chair Christopher Zimmerman and Tim Lynch, head of the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization, to give the new code system a try.
Start, Katz counseled, with a "charrette" — a weeklong set of meetings of residents with designers, gauging public wishes and checking out alternatives with them.
So the Arlington planners commissioned Ferrell's firm to write the new codes and the Miami-based firm of Dover, Kohl & Partners, wizards of citizen-participation technique and New Urbanist concepts, to run the charrettes.
The residents and business people ended up endorsing a fairly dense version of the classic American Main Street. But not cold high-rise complexes, they insisted — they were open to structures as tall as six stories, but nothing like the collections of soaring structures, with dead street fronts and many blank walls, they'd seen in some of Northern Virginia's edge cities.
We want, they said, varieties of architecture. We'd like to accommodate a variety of local stores, including the ethnic restaurants. We like the idea of focusing commercial development at major intersections. And please give us broad sidewalks — indeed much friendlier, more walkable streets.
With those instructions, Ferrell started writing form-based codes. Future buildings directly on the pike would have to be at least three, but not more than six, stories tall with few blank walls. Parking would have to be moved behind new structures — not directly facing the pike. The roadway would be redesigned with broad sidewalks, ample tree plantings, and space for rapid bus or even rail transit.
Under the new codes, the zoning system's artificial divisions would be scrapped. The market would be left to decide what goes where. A prime example: Residences over stores would be welcomed, not prohibited as zoning typically does. And requirements for onsite parking would be dramatically reduced.
The Arlington Council approved the codes, 6-0. Technically they're just a voluntary substitute for existing zoning. But they carry a powerful incentive — assurance of faster permit approval.
And the incentive is working. A 16-unit development of live-and-work townhouses got a rapid OK, with a number of business leaseholders becoming eager buyers. Another townhouse development, conforming to the new codes, got approved in a virtually unheard-of 30-day period. Neighbors on its block endorsed it unanimously.
"We think these form-based codes uncork the bottle to let the small developer in" for all manner of infill development, Ferrell asserts. "Before you had to be a big player, acquire a lot of land and then provide a lot of parking space. We're making it much easier."
Big outfits are interested, too: a couple of major grocery stores are now looking to upgrade their Columbia Pike facilities, using the new code freedom to put at least two stories of housing units on top of their stores.
Arlington's form-based codes suggest a promising new approach — upfront citizen consultation, less regulation, quicker approvals, flexible building forms and a way to revive old roadways and develop the new worker housing that's desperately needed in many communities. We've long needed a better formula for our older commercial roads. Maybe this is it.
By Neal Peirce
nrp@citistates.com
From www.commondreams.org. Originally published on Monday, June 23, 2003 by the Seattle Times.
