Is Increasing the Density Allowed in Single-Family Zoning a Good Idea?

By Dom Nozzi

I was asked if I had heard about the re-zoning proposed in the Boston area? The person asking had heard that the City planned to demolish existing single-family homes, and building multi-family housing up to 15 units per acre. He had heard the idea was to provide additional affordable housing. He wondered what homeowners would do if they “don’t want to live smack on [their] neighbor,” whether there were other ways affordable housing could be provided, and whether this plan might be costlier than finding a home in the suburbs?

My response was that I had not heard about the Boston situation, but I do know that many cities and states (thankfully) are working on upzonings and allowing multi-family (MF) housing in single-family (SF) zoning districts.

I have not heard of anything as extreme as you mention (and would be shocked if it was happening). Whether this upzoning and revision to the allowable uses list in the SF zoning districts is desirable/appropriate, for me a lot of it hinges on locational questions (ideally, via a “transect” system — see image).

It is essential that communities provide the full range of lifestyle choices — from fully rural/conservation to low-density suburban to compact walkable urban. An enormous societal problem in the US is that nearly all residential development over the past century in the US has been low-density SF — far more supply of such housing than demand for such housing.

Today, there is a huge demand for compact walkable urban housing – but there is far less supply than demand for such housing. How do we adjust those imbalances so supply is balanced with demand for low-density as well as compact?

One important tool is to remove the massive public subsidies for the low-density lifestyle (mostly from free roads and free parking). Another is to make compact walkable design legal again (local development regulations have mostly made such timeless design illegal throughout the nation). We also need local development regulations to be form-based rather than use-based (the design of buildings and where they are located is FAR more important than what happens inside the building).

An enormous number of Americans rightly despise and fear higher density development near them because unlike Europe and historic neighborhoods in the US, architects are working in a failed profession. Failed because the profession has largely thrown away timeless, lovable design principles, which makes higher density development far more ugly and scary than in the past. We don’t build Old Town Charleston or Old Town Savannah anymore. We build Phoenix Sprawl and Houston Sprawl. This gives compact development a black eye.

Local governments need to adopt regulations to require that timeless historic design be used in locals designated for compact development.

All of this is not to say that everyone must be obligated to live in or near compact development. We must retain that lifestyle choice for those who prefer it (and there is no danger of that choice being lost, since nearly all development in the US is low-density). I do think that based on the transect principle (there is a place for everything and everything has its place), cities that have made the mistake of creating low-density SF near the town center need to allow those places to incrementally (slowly) evolve into more compact, higher-density places (using the timeless design I call for).

Gentrification often provides this.

Those who live in such town center locations in SF homes who do not want such a lifestyle need to consider the option of accepting a windfall from the sale of their home. In this scenario, windfall profits come from a drastic increase in property values that tends to come when compact development, and leads to prices being bid up by the large market of people seeking walkable design.

Redeveloping the Boulder Community Hospital Site in Boulder, Colorado

By Dom Nozzi

January 27, 2017

The most important task of the urbanist is controlling size. – David Mohney

As owners of the Boulder Community Hospital (BCH) site bounded by Broadway, Alpine, 9^th Street, and Balsam, the City of Boulder has a golden opportunity to demonstrate the preferred vision for creating compact, walkable development in appropriate locations within Boulder.

For too long, citizens have rightly attacked many new projects in Boulder. We now have a chance to show how to do it right.

The following is one man’s opinion about how we can do it right at the BCH site.

First Determine the Context

Our very first task in establishing a “How to Do It Right” vision is to determine the “context” of the site. Where is it located in the community? Is it a walkable town center? A drivable suburb? A farmable rural area? Only when we answer that question are we able to know which design tactics are appropriate and which are inappropriate. For example, if we are in a suburban context, it is inappropriate to insert shops and offices within the neighborhood, or use small building setbacks. However, if we are in a town center context, those design tactics are entirely appropriate and desirable.

In the case of the BCH site, it is generally agreed by the City that the context is walkable town center (what is called “Urban Center Zone” in the above figure). It is now important, given that, to ensure that the design of the site is compatible with that vision.

How do we do that?

A Form-Based Code

Perhaps the most effective way to do that is to establish what is called a “form-based code (FBC)” or a “subcommunity overlay plan,” which was successfully used to guide the development of the Holiday neighborhood in North Boulder.

The FBC or plan emphasizes the importance of “form” by specifying the appropriate and desirable building placements, street dimensions, and building materials. This differs from the conventional “use-based” zoning codes, which over-emphasize the importance of uses within a building, and only specify designs and dimensions that are prohibited, rather than specifying what is desired by the community.

As Andres Duany notes[1]…

…A FBC protects us from the tendency of modern designers to disregard timeless design principles in favor of “anything goes.” An “anything goes” ideology too often leads to “kitschy” buildings, unwalkable streets, and other aspects of low-quality urban design.

…A FBC protects us from the whims of boards and committees.

…A FBC is necessary so that the “various professions that affect urbanism will act with unity of purpose.” Without integrated codes, architects, civil engineers and landscape architects can undermine each others’ intentions by suboptimizing.

…A FBC is necessary because without it, buildings and streets are “shaped not by urban designers but by fire marshals, civil engineers, poverty advocates, market experts, accessibility standards, materials suppliers and liability attorneys” – none of whom tend to know or care about urban design.

…A FBC is necessary because “unguided neighborhood design tends, not to vitality, but to socioeconomic monocultures.” The wealthy, the middle-class, and the poor segregate from each other, as do shops and restaurants, offices, and manufacturing. A FBC can ensure a level of diversity without which walkability wilts.

…A FBC is necessary to reign in the tendency of contemporary architects to design “look at me” buildings that disrupt the urban fabric.

…A FBC is necessary to ensure that locally appropriate, traditional design is employed, rather than “Anywhere USA” design.

…A FBC is needed to protect against the tendency to suburbanize places that are intended to provide compact, walkable urbanism.

…A FBC is necessary to protect against the tendency to over-use greenery in inappropriate places such as walkable town centers. In particular, grass areas tend to be inappropriate in walkable centers. Over-using greenery is a common mistake that tends to undermine walkability.

…A FBC is needed because codes “can compensate for deficient professional training. Because schools continue to educate architects towards self-expression rather than towards context, to individual building rather than to the whole.”

We can craft a FBC in hands-on workshops driven by citizens and urban designers. When crafting a FBC, such workshops are called “charrettes,” where professional urban designers provide attendees with a one- or multi-day training course in the time-tested design principles of creating a successful town center, suburb, or rural area. Armed with such knowledge, citizens and designers craft a FBC that is appropriate for the context and community values.

Designing the BCH Site

The following are my own individual suggestions for a FBC that would employ time-tested principles for creating a successful walkable, lovable, charming town center.

The overall layout is compact and walkable. For example, building setbacks are human-scaled and quite modest. Private front and backyards are similarly small in size. Public parks are smaller pocket parks rather than larger, suburban, fields of grass (note that abundant grass and athletic fields are provided adjacent to the west of the BCH site). Some of these parks are relatively small public squares formed by buildings that face the square on all four sides. If surface parking is unavoidable at the site (and I would very strongly urge against such parking), the parking should be designed as a public square that occasionally accommodates parked cars. Block sizes are relatively small, based on a street grid, and include many intersections. Internal streets and alleys are plentiful and narrow enough to obligate slower speed, more attentive driving. Give-way streets, slow streets, woonerfs, and walking streets are all appropriate and desirable.

Internal streets should have a spacing of at least one-to-one (or two-to-one or one-to-two) ratio of flanking building height to street width. (Pearl Street Mall has a ratio that fall within the ranges below).

To promote vibrancy and safety, the City should encourage 24/7 activity by discouraging weekday businesses, such as offices, that close after 5. Businesses that close after 5 create night-time dead zones.

Service vehicles that may use streets, such as buses, delivery vehicles, or fire trucks should be small enough that they do not obligate the establishment of overly large streets or intersections. When such vehicles cannot be relatively small, it is appropriate for such vehicles to be obligated to move more slowly and carefully. Dimensions, in other words, should be human-scaled, not tractor-trailer-scaled.

If feasible, Goose Creek under the BCH site should be daylighted. It would be appropriate to create a bustling, miniature version of the San Antonio Riverwalk, with homes and shops lining the creek. At a minimum, a daylighted creek needs to be relatively permeable with several pedestrian crossings along the way to promote walkability. Since the BCH site is in a compact, walkable zone, wide suburban greenspaces flanking the creek would not be appropriate.

Alignments are more formal and rectilinear. Internal streets, sidewalks and alleys have a straight rather than curvilinear (suburban) trajectory. Street trees along a block face are of the same species (or at least have similar size and shape), have a large enough canopy to shade streets, and should be formally aligned in picturesque straight lines rather than suburban clumps. Building placement is square to streets and squares rather than rotated (to avoid “train wreck” alignment more appropriate for suburbs). Buildings that are rotated rather than parallel to streets and squares are unable to form comfortable spaces.

Streets deploy square curbs and gutters. Stormwater requirements should be relaxed at the site to prevent unwalkable oversizing of facilities. Streets are flanked by sidewalks. Signs used by businesses are kept relatively small in size. For human scale, visual appeal, and protection from weather, shops along the street are encouraged to use canopies, colonnades, arcades, and balconies. When feasible, civic buildings or other structures with strong verticality are used to terminate street vistas.

Turn lanes and slip lanes in streets are not allowed on the site.

Street lights are relatively short in height to create a romantic pedestrian ambiance and signal to motorists that they are in a slow-speed environment. They are full cut-off to avoid light pollution.

Buildings are clad in context-appropriate brick, stone, and wood. Matching the timeless traditional styles of the nearby Mapleton Hill neighborhood is desirable. Building height limit regulations exempt pitched roofs above the top floor of buildings to encourage pitched roof form and discourage the blocky nature of flat roofs. Obelisks and clock towers are also exempt from height limits.

Buildings taller than five stories should be discouraged for a number of reasons. First, they tend to be overwhelming to pedestrian/human scale. Second, they tend to induce excessive amounts of car parking. Finally, if we assume that the demand for floor space is finite at the BCH site, it is much preferable from the standpoint of walkability for there to be, say, 10 buildings that are 5 stories in height rather than 5 buildings that are 10 stories in height.

Floor-area-ratio (FAR) is a measure of how much square footage can be built on a given piece of land. A relatively high FAR is supportive of walking, transit, and bicycling. In commercial areas, FAR should be at least 1.0.[2]  Richard Untermann, a well-known urban designer, calls for FARs of 2.0-3.0 in town centers.[3]

Buildings along the street are often graced with front porches to promote sociability, citizen surveillance, and visual desirability.

Relatively small offices and retail shops are sensitively interspersed within the neighborhood. For additional walkable access to shops and services, Broadway to the west of the BCH site should incorporate designs which make the crossing more safe and permeable. Narrowing crossing distances and various slow-speed treatments can effectively achieve increased permeability.

First floors of buildings along sidewalks provide ample windows. First floors of buildings are not appropriate places for the parking of cars.

Given the affordable housing crisis in Boulder, ample affordable housing must be provided. Residences above shops are desirable, as are accessory dwelling units and co-ops. An important element in providing affordable housing will be the fact that the inclusion of shops, services and offices within the neighborhood, residences will be able to allocate larger proportions of household money to their homes and less to car ownership and maintenance (since the household would be able to shed cars by owning, say, one car instead of two, or two instead of three).

An important way to make housing more affordable is to unbundle the price of parking for residences from the price of housing. Available parking is modest in quantity and hidden away from the street. Parking is space efficient because shared parking is emphasized and tends to be either on-street or within stacked parking garages. No parking is allowed to abut streets, unless the parking is on-street, or in a stacked garage wrapped with retail and services along the street.

The BCH site is exempted from required parking, and is also exempt from landscaping requirements.

Unbundling the price of parking and reducing the land devoted to parking are both important ways to create more affordable housing.

The Washington Village neighborhood project a few blocks to the north on Broadway and Cedar is a good model for appropriately compact and walkable spacing at the BCH site.

Let’s not squander this important opportunity. Let’s insist that we build a neighborhood that fits the pattern of walkable Siena, Italy, not drivable Phoenix Arizona.

 

References

[1] “Why We Code,” Sky Studio. http://www.studiosky.co/blog/why-we-code.html?utm_content=bufferdde8c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[2] SNO-TRAN. Creating Transportation Choices Through Zoning: A Guide for Snohomish County Communities. Washington State (October 1994)

[3] Untermann, Richard. (1984). Accomodating the Pedestrian, pg190.

Urban Creeks: Protecting Water Quality AND Urbanism

 

By Dom Nozzi

November 9, 2001

As an urbanist, I often make the point that “the pedestrian is the design imperative” within the urban core zones of the rural to urban community transect.

A crucial way to deliver a walkable, high-quality urbanism is to use modest, human-scaled dimensions.

Unfortunately for this design objective, environmental scientists (and arborists) often call for relatively large dimensions to achieve environmental conservation objectives (big stream setbacks, large tree planting areas, etc.).

The objectives obviously clash.

I enthusiastically support efforts to design walkable cities, and argue that successfully doing so results in better long-term regional environmental conservation, because designing great cities reduces the desire to flee the city in order to buy a home in remote residential subdivisions in sprawlsville. For this reason, it seems reasonable to me that those strongly seeking environmental conservation should buy into the urban-rural transect concept — the pedestrian/human is the design imperative in the core zone of the transect, and “the trout” (nature) is the design imperative in the rural conservation zone of the transect.

A dilemma here is that water in streams is flowing water — sometimes from the urban zone to the conservation zone. If the water is degraded in the urban zone with its pedestrian imperative, it can degrade the conservation zone when it reaches that zone, thereby harming the trout imperative. Nature often does not respect transect boundaries…

In my humble opinion, we should strive for a middle ground. That is, a stream within the urban zone needs to respect the pedestrian imperative by not creating pedestrian barriers. Yet the stream cannot be significantly degraded to the point of harming outlying conservation zones.

Must urban zone reaches of streams be “piped” or “paved over” to be walkable? Will they inherently suffer from ugly littering and dumping if they are not covered up? I don’t believe so.

Seems to me that a middle ground design would be to leave narrow, vegetated banks along the streams, and include a paved, hard-surface path along side it, as well as fairly closely spaced pedestrian bridges over the creeks (say, every 200 feet, as we often call for such cross-access distances within a block).

By doing so, we achieve at least two things: First, the stream is walkable and does not create meaningful inconveniences to the pedestrian. Second, by establishing a hard-surface path nearby, we encourage a regular flow of pedestrian traffic along the stream. Such pedestrians become “eyes on the stream,” so to speak. They end up providing regular monitoring and voluntary clean-up when littering or dumping occur (or the “pedestrian police” will call city hall and demand that the clean-up be done). Greenways built around the nation have demonstrated the effectiveness of this form of citizen surveillance. A sense of stream/path ownership by path users typically results in clean up of litter problems that has sometimes persisted for decades before the path was installed. The key is that a formerly hidden, neglected stream is now visible to people on a daily basis, which means that we’ve created a chance for knowing about and caring for the stream. “Piping” or “paving over” a stream creates “out of sight, out of mind” problems, not to mention externalities that we would be blissfully unaware of…

Finally, I believe that the urban stream design I recommend above, while not creating a pristine water quality filled with healthy trout, will at least minimize exporting environmentally harmful water to outlying conservation zones.

 

Calibrating Our Community Design for Varying Lifestyles

By Dom Nozzi

November 21, 2002

We must have different rules that vary along a “transect” of lifestyle choices.

A system of variable rules that recognize we need different strokes for different folks.

Streets, intersections, setbacks, schools, shops, street lights, parking lots, delivery trucks, buses, stormwater systems, and fire trucks, for example, MUST (in general) be more modest and human-scaled in our walkable urban core areas.

As we move outward toward more suburban locations, those features should appropriately grow in size.

Too often, we only apply the larger, suburban size to EVERYTHING. An example is that nearly all communities apply the same stormwater regulations citywide. If we are serious about urban infill, we need to relax our stormwater rules in our more compact, urban, walkable locations (similarly, many Florida cities have avoided promoting sprawl by exempting themselves from state road concurrency rules).

Applying the same stormwater requirements area-wide is an engine for sprawl. And it suburbanizes our walkable, in-town locations. Space is WAY too scarce (as it should be if it is to be walkable) in our core areas, and conventional, suburban stormwater rules are VERY space-intensive. By being space-intensive, conventional stormwater space needs almost always create unwalkable site design.

The irony, of course, is that these space-intensive stormwater rules accelerate suburban sprawl — the sort of development that ultimately WORSENS our regional stormwater problems…

What about those of us who seek a more urban lifestyle? Do we not have a choice to live in a place which offers such design?

The Human Habitat is ALSO Important for Environmental Conservation

 

By Dom Nozzi

September 11, 2003

Environmentalism should be considered a subset of new urbanist design principles.

This is because in recent years, New Urbanism has made — as its centerpiece — the “transect” concept. The urban to rural transect stipulates that community design and the land development regulations implemented to achieve that design must vary as one moves from urban to suburban to rural to nature preserve.

Environmentalism, while in theory taking in the entire universe, in practice tends to be a concept that only looks at the protection of natural, non-human ecosystems. Important as that is, it leaves out any guidance or direction for how the human habitat is best designed. Indeed, as some have pointed out, if a person intends to best promote environmental conservation, she or he must broaden their perspective because if they don’t understand and successfully advocate for quality, walkable design for humans, efforts to protect non-human habitats are ultimately doomed, as growing numbers of humans flee the low quality human habitat for the promise of bliss in the undeveloped, unspoiled regions. By contrast, urbanists using the transect methodology have a tool that instructs on what must be done in all habitats — be they urban/human, suburban/sub-human, or ecosystem/non-human. The transect recognizes that one size does not fit all. Environmental scientists often (not always) act as if one size does fit all.

Unfortunately, there tends to be an anti-human attitude of many (not all) environmental advocates. This attitude tends to include the belief that all that is natural is equally valuable, no matter where it is located. It is better to preserve a vacant, weed-choked lot in the middle of a city (to protect, say, squirrel habitat) than to let it become an urban building. Compact, walkable, mixed use development is always evil, no matter where it is located, because it does not include oak forests or grasslands. Ultimately, by taking this position (which only concerns itself with the non-human habitat), we make high-quality human habitat illegal. We are forbidden to build a Charleston. Or a Venice. Or a Sienna. We must save every possible dandelion. Every toxic mud puddle in our city is a precious wetland.  Why are we puzzled when so few want to live in American cities and so many want to live in (cocooned) woodlands surrounding a city?

Why are we not allowed to build pristine human habitats? Are we only allowed to preserve (or restore) pristine panther habitats? Are humans and their activity always to be considered evil or polluting? Is the idealized world one in which there are no humans and no human habitat?

When building compact, walkable, in-town projects in already developed, urbanized areas, the urbanist is simply looking for the same acceptance and societal admiration as the ecologist who preserves a wetland. The urbanist building a walkable, compact town center should not be attacked for not saving every weedy tree or degraded wetland in that location.

And I’ve seen that sort of thing from environmental activists all the time. Seems like an act of desperation to me. “We are losing so much woodland in sprawlsville. We therefore must make a stand to save every blade of grass everywhere.” Which, of course, ultimately speeds up environmental destruction due to how rarely we consequently build walkable places.

Should we attack the ecologist for not building sidewalks through every preserved wetland? If not, why is it okay to attack the urbanist for not preserving “nature” in every walkable place he or she builds? Why is only nature sacred, and never human urbanism?

We need to let the city be a city and let nature be nature.

Yes, I agree that we need to “push the market logic back to redevelopment.” But we live in a society that has poured trillions of dollars into building big roads that lock the market into fighting for remote sprawl. I believe it is naive to think that we can avoid a massive tidal wave of suburban sprawl when we have big roads and lots of free parking. No other tools, short of system-wide road diets and priced parking, can slow greenfield sprawl. Not environmental regulations. Not NIMBYs. Not no-growth commissioners. Not no-growth comprehensive plans. As long as we have lots of big roads and free parking in our community (and an absence of walkable places), we’ll see the vast majority of development proposals being made in greenfield areas. While I much prefer that those outlying greenfields be spared from development, I RELUCTANTLY accept the fact that I cannot stop the sprawl tidal wave that big roads bring. Given that agonizing reality, I much prefer that at least some of that tidal wave be in the form of walkable, compact, stand-alone villages (such as Haile Village Center in Gainesville FL).

And I eagerly await the revolution, when we move back from making cars happy to making people happy. Only then can we realistically expect to have a chance of stopping most greenfield development.

We have seen how extremely difficult it is to stop the tidal wave of drivable suburban development with a strong comprehensive plan — even with a majority of anti-sprawl commissioners. Such commissioners won’t stay in office forever. Not that it would matter, because even if they did, they would still be steamrollered.

To me, it is essential in this (hopefully) interim period of car-happy, big roads madness that we put walkable village standards into our code. In the end, if we don’t do that, we may win a few skirmishes by protecting a oak tree here and a weed-choked lot there, but we’ll still end up with the agony of the downward spiral of car-happy suburbia with no future. Will it be any consolation if there are tiny, degraded, preserved wetlands in the middle of a gigantic Wal-Mart Supercenter parking lots in a car happy community?

Should we just throw up our hands and give up in the only fight that really matters: stopping car-happiness and the road industry?

 

 

“Hometown Democracy” in Florida

 

By Dom Nozzi

September 10, 2004

In 2004, there was a voter referendum proposed in Florida called “Hometown Democracy.” It was an effort to substantially increase the use of direct democracy over representative democracy (due largely to many Florida residents feeling as if their elected officials were not listening).

This is my take on this constitutional amendment to go to direct democracy…

In general, I am quite uncomfortable with the idea. In some ways, the amendment would be an obstacle to the “re-use of vacant/abandoned lands” efforts that have become an important issue, because citizens would have a high likelihood of voting against nearly all proposals to intensify a land use designation on a property — and such “upzoning” is often needed to make it viable to re-use abandoned lands.

It also strikes me that the direct democracy folks are an extreme form of NIMBYism (the Hogtown Greenway Bike/Pedestrian Path Debacle is a good, infamous example of the dangers of direct democracy in Gainesville). While I am sympathetic to the thought that nearly all upzonings in the past have delivered us bad development (auto-oriented national chains and big box retailers and huge asphalt parking lagoons), and that it would therefore be handy to have citizens be able to trump weak-kneed politicians who so often cave in to Supercenters and Drive-Throughs (etc.) by reversing a zoning or land use decision, it seems to me that this is a sledgehammer rule that would lead to a lot of unfortunate, unintended consequences.

Indeed, in so many places (including Gainesville), if we were to lock in the status quo by having NIMBY citizens always voting against upzonings, we’d be locking ourselves into a dispersed, suburban, auto-oriented downward spiral that we are in today. Often, we need to have selected properties upzoned from residential to non-residential so that we can have a more walkable, compact community that is vibrant, sociable, and less dominated by excessive car travel. But it would seem that with direct democracy, about 99 percent of all such upzonings would be voted down.

It strikes me that the crucial change we need is to revamp the land development codes for places like Gainesville so that in-town developments deliver us walkable, pleasant, friendly projects that don’t overwhelm neighborhoods with big roads, big traffic, big noise pollution, and big light pollution. In other words, requiring that development build in a neighborhood-friendly, traditional manner.

The key to a better future does not lie in stopping all growth and development. The key is stopping auto-oriented development, rapid land consumption at the periphery, and BIG roads. We desperately need well-designed, walkable, in-town development.

Gainesville’s land development regulations require project design that delivers suburban, auto-oriented development everywhere. In my opinion, we must move away from that destructive, one-size-fits-all approach that says everyone should live the suburban lifestyle. Some of us should have the option of living a walkable urban lifestyle or even a rural lifestyle. The Gainesville code largely says we have only one choice: suburban.

I say we should revise our codes so that we set up at least 3 lifestyle zones, with accompanying regulations. Urban Zone gets compact, walkable design regulations, Suburban Zone gets big setbacks and other car-oriented dimensions. The Rural Zone gets small village cluster and farm/woodland regulations. That way, citizens will increasingly be accepting of new development projects in their neighborhoods. They will hopefully live in their lifestyle zone of choice, and will eventually find that the 3-tiered development code results in new projects that promote their lifestyle. The nearly universal desire to fear the next proposed development in the neighborhood (no matter what it might be) can transform to that happy time in our decades ago past when we actually looked forward to the new development proposal.

As Padriac Steinschneider once said, the opposite of bad development is good development, not no development.

However, I might be sympathetic to the idea if it were somehow restricted to unincorporated areas remote from cities where we don’t want any development.

 

Using the Urban to Rural Transect to Make Urbanists and Environmentalists Allies

 

By Dom  Nozzi

September 12, 2004

Urbanists and environmentalists are natural allies. Instead of attacking each other, urbanists and environmentalists need to be saving energy to fight real enemies (The Making Cars Happy behemoth).

Speaking as someone schooled in both environmental science and urbanism, I must say that the new urbanist transect concept is one of the most powerful concepts I have ever come across, because its proper application informs us about how the entire spectrum of habitats — be they Charleston or the Everglades — is best designed. Neither the traditional discipline of urbanism or the traditional discipline of ecology incorporates the full spectrum of habitats and their needs. In principle, the transect achieves that.

The transect concept asks this question: What elements are immersive in the habitat we are working in — be it Charleston or the Everglades? For example, the transect instructs that a sidewalk is immersive in Charleston, and a “transect violation” when within the Everglades (at least the inner core wetland area of the Prairie). Conversely, a 200-acre marsh is immersive in the Everglades and a transect violation in Charleston. In other words, something is immersive if it promotes the quality of the habitat being designed. It is a violation if it harms the quality of the habitat being designed.

And frankly, this is where some of the conflict and impatience comes between new urbanists and many environmentalists. A good number of environmental advocates don’t have a conception of a transect or immersiveness. To such advocates, it is always a good idea to incorporate more nature EVERYWHERE — which fails to acknowledge that a 200-acre marsh in the middle of an in-town urban neighborhood harms the quality of a walkable Charleston. Natural features are not always immersive in all locations (it took me a while to realize that, since I came from an environmental academic background).

Let the city be a city and let nature be nature. It goes both ways. Yes, many urbanists are guilty of not taking proper care of sensitive ecosystems in their projects. But it is also true that a many environmental scientists are guilty of not taking proper care of urbanism in THEIR advocacy. Both can harm the other.

Much of our culture fails to realize that nature can, in a sense, pollute urbanism in the same way that human development can pollute nature.

 

Thoughts about the Virginia Department of Transportation Plans for Bicycling and Walking in Richmond VA

By Dom Nozzi

May 19, 2008

I’ve read over the review comments by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) bicycle and pedestrian coordinator pertaining to the bike and pedestrian elements of the draft Downtown Richmond Master Plan. Before I provide my thoughts about his comments, I’d like to point out that I met the coordinator recently at a VDOT complete streets workshop. In my brief chat with him, I found him to be likeable, informed, and smart. He seemed to “get it.” I enjoyed talking with him.

I agree with the coordinator that a shared, narrow outside lane proposed in the plan on the extremely wide, hostile, high-speed Broad Street will not be suitable for bicyclists (even commuter bicyclists). Broad Street would need fairly substantial redesign to induce low-speed motor vehicle travel in order for a shared lane to work on Broad. As far as I know, this sort of needed redesign has not been proposed by the plan. Until that happens, I agree with the coordinator that routes parallel to Broad need to be designated and designed, if necessary, for bicycling.

I agree with the coordinator that the Fan District needs more traffic calming mechanisms than are called for in the plan. The streets are overly wide, and encourage excessive motor vehicle speeds. On a related note, I agree with the coordinator that the frequent (and in my opinion, misguided) use of stop signs in the Fan for traffic calming is counter-productive. I agree with the coordinator that bulb-outs could be a better treatment for a number of intersections.

I strongly disagree with the coordinator that one-way streets are beneficial in the downtown area (he cites the benefits of reducing peak-hour congestion). In my view, he is speaking as a suburban motorist rather than a downtown bicycle commuter when he urges the use of one-ways. In my professional opinion (and as a life-long bicycle commuter and whose master’s thesis subject was bicycle travel), one-ways degrade property values, induce higher-speed car travel (due to reduced “friction”), reduce pedestrian comfort, increase motorist impatience with bicyclists and other motorists, harm retail, increase sidewalk bicycle riding, promote sprawl housing by speeding commuters into and out of downtown jobs, increase inconvenience for bicyclists and motorists (especially for visitors to the city), and increase wrong-way bicycle riding. I am a bicycle commuter in Richmond, and I find myself being obligated to wrong-way ride nearly every day.

In my opinion, the most essential thing that Richmond can implement from the draft Master Plan is the conversion of one-ways to two-way. No other recommendation in the Plan is so important and so potentially beneficial to the city.

I would note, as an aside, that there are no one-way streets in suburbia, in part because they are considered undesirable for suburbanites to live on. “One-way streets are okay, but only in your neighborhood, not mine.”

Another aside: Having been a bicycle commuter since I was a boy, and having lived in a great many communities as a bicycle commuter, my assessment of Richmond is that the city street system is relatively hostile to bicyclists. I have found that, by far, the most important reason that Richmond is not bike-friendly is the one-way street system. I am therefore astonished that the bike/ped coordinator supports them.

I disagree that the draft plan does not adequately address the needs of bicyclists.

By the way, I’d like to note here that the consultants propose using a “transect” system for the regional design of land uses and streets. This is a wonderful idea that the City needs to heartily embrace. Such a system requires that design be context-sensitive, and provides designs for the full range of lifestyle choices. There is a rural/peripheral/conservation zone at the edge of a community, suburban zones, and compact, low-speed, walkable urban zones. Speeds and dimensions increase as one moves from the urban zones to the suburban to the rural zones. Promoting quality lifestyles for each of those zones therefore requires design that is calibrated for each zone. That is, design is context-sensitive. For bicycling, for example, this means that in properly low-speed downtowns, bicyclists tend to be comfortable sharing the lane with cars. Painted bike lanes are unnecessary (and often counter-productive to the low-speed, human-scaled ambience). As speeds and sizes increase in suburban zones, bike lanes become more necessary. In rural zones, the highest speeds here often require fully separated bike paths.

My speculation is that the coordinator is unfamiliar with this transect concept, and his comments seem to suggest that he supports use of designs which I will here call “transect violations.” That is, he seems to inappropriately call for the use of bike lanes in the low-speed Richmond downtown. In a low-speed downtown environment, the lifestyle and design imperative is the pedestrian. Bike lanes can degrade this walkable lifestyle design intent by subverting the potential for future (and needed) street narrowing, and increasing motor vehicle speeds.

I agree with the coordinator that the increased bike parking called for by the plan is not a meaningful way to promote increased bicycling. I would note, however, that despite the fact that bike parking does not significantly increase bicycling, bicycle parking is an important way for the community to send a visible public message that the community recognizes, respects and supports bicycling.

I disagree with the coordinator that the transportation consultant (HPE) “doesn’t ‘get it.'” Indeed, in my many years of looking over bike/ped plans, these are some of the very best I’ve seen, despite what the coordinator indicates. Again, I think the problem here is that while the consultant is designing for a low-speed, walkable environment (downtown), the coordinator is thinking about the design necessary in higher-speed suburban applications.

The coordinator points out that the plan is woefully inadequate in its bicycling recommendations for downtown Richmond. Speaking as an urban designer and bicycle commuter, I find the recommendations to be adequate, appropriate and impressive. As the consultant notes, in a compact, low-speed environment, bicycling does quite well without the need for special treatments such as bike lanes (bicyclists tend to be able to comfortably “fend for themselves,” so to speak, in compact, low-speed environments).

It is therefore appropriate that the plan, in designing for a high-quality, low-speed, pedestrian-oriented downtown, devotes nearly all of its design focus on the pedestrian. Happily, properly designing for a quality low-speed environment for pedestrians also happens to be an effective way, indirectly, to improve conditions for bicycle commuting.

I would note that the coordinator makes almost no substantive comments regarding pedestrian design needs.

 

A Vision for Designing a Community

 

By Dom Nozzi

April 16, 2006

A Work in Progress

Because it is a matter of fairness and political viability, it is essential that we design for at least three community components: Urban, Suburban and Rural/Preservation.

The following are the examples of components, principles and assumptions for each of the three zones.

The overall objective for the community is equity, quality of life and sustainability.

As an aside, I recognize that the Suburban Zone is not sustainable. It is provided for because America is so overwhelmingly suburban that to not provide for it is politically unsustainable.

Urban

Principles: Sociability, equity, sustainability, supremacy of a quality public realm, compactness, mixed-use, walkability, sense of community, civic pride.

Streets. Low design speed, relatively narrow travel lanes. Maximum size is 2 lanes (major streets have turn pockets.) Roundabouts acceptable. Bulb-outs to increase landscape area, reduce car speeds and pedestrian crossing distance. Turning lanes are either not used or extremely rare. Relatively small dimensions for turning radii, sight triangle. Straight, rectilinear trajectory.

Alleys. Common.

Congestion. Not considered a problem, in part because the Urban Zone is rich in features that allow relatively easy evasion of congestion. Indeed, congestion is seen as an ally to reduce regional air pollution, reduce fuel consumption, reduce car speeds, reduce low-value car trips, promote infill and higher-density residential, promote mixed use, promote compactness, promote trip dispersal.

Congestion fees. Electronic system. Used to recover costs (air pollution, noise, danger, public realm degradation, water pollution, etc.) imposed by motorists entering the Urban Zone. Revenues dedicated to Urban Zone public realm improvements. Revenue, by law, cannot be allocated to road capacity increases.

Signal Light Synchronization. Strongly discouraged, but if employed, timing is based on bus and bicyclist speed (15-20 mph).

Street lights. Structure is no taller than 20 feet — preferably less. Full-spectrum lighting is required.

Lot sizes. Relatively small.

Block size. Relatively small. No more than 200 feet long on a side.

Sidewalks. Required on both sides of street, due to high number of utilitarian and sociability walking trips. Rectilinear and parallel to streets, buildings. Curvilinear alignment not allowed.

Street connectivity. Maximized. High level of trip dispersal in the street network.

Parking.  On-street parking emphasized. Parking is market-priced. Off-street parking, when necessary, is relatively modest and on the side or rear of buildings. Off-street parking is never located at the street corner of a lot at an intersection.

Transit. High frequency and convenient access from residences and shops to stops.

Service vehicles. Fire trucks, delivery trucks and buses are relatively small.

Landscaping. Hardscape much more common than greenscape. Rectilinear rather than curvilinear placement of vegetation.

Street trees. Formally aligned large canopy trees forming street enclosing envelope. Trees are of same species along individual streets.

Land Development Regulations. Form-based (emphasis is on building location and design) rather than use-based. Promoting a quality public realm for pedestrians is the imperative.

Building setbacks. Little or none.

Accessory dwelling units (“granny flats”), home occupations, bed & breakfasts. Expressly allowed.

Drive-throughs, retailers over 30,000 sf of first floor area, parking lots as a primary use. Prohibited.

Maximum building height. 5 stories.

Housing types. Mixed.

Garages. Recessed.

Signs. Relatively small, unlit, subdued.

Building entrance. Faces street.

Land uses. Housing mixed with neighborhood-scaled retail, office, light industrial.

Neighborhood incomes. Mixed

Residential density maximum. No maximum. Market-driven.

Travel choice. Maximized. All forms of travel are provided for.

Schools. Exempt from requirements for outdoor ball fields.

Stormwater management. Relatively low concern for inconvenience flooding means that stormwater basins are relatively small in size. Basins are not placed in front or at the street corner of a lot at an intersection.

Interaction with others. Sociability, connection, interaction.

Public Realm. Aggressive efforts to maximize quality. Regular cleaning.

Suburban

Principles: Separation, privacy, equity, supremacy of private realm, landscaping to simulate nature, large open spaces and large parks, ease of free-flowing travel by car.

Streets. Moderate design speed. Maximum size is 4 lanes. Roundabouts acceptable. Turning lanes are common. Relatively large dimensions for turning radii, sight triangle. Tend to have curvilinear trajectory.

Alleys. Rare or non-existent.

Congestion. Considered a serious problem, in part because the Suburban Zone provide very few features that allow evasion of congestion. Congestion fees are therefore important.

Congestion fees. Electronic system. Used to discourage low-value car trips, retain free-flow conditions on at least one lane for emergency access. Revenues dedicated to capacity increases. Signal Light Synchronization. If employed, timing is based on motorist speed (35-45 mph).

Street lights. Structure is 30 feet (or whatever the existing suburban design standard happens to be).

Block size. Variable.

Sidewalks. Optional, due to high percentage of walking trips being recreational. Tend to be curvilinear.

Street connectivity. De-emphasized. Cul-de-sacs common. All neighborhood streets feed into sparse network of major streets.

Parking.  Off-street parking emphasized. Parking is free. Parking can be in front of buildings.

Transit. Low frequency (or no service) and poor access from residences and shops to stops.

Service vehicles. Fire trucks, delivery trucks and buses are relatively large.

Landscaping. Greenscape much more common than hardscape. Curvilinear alignment is most common.

Street trees. Few street trees. Clustered trees of variable sizes and species.

Land Development Regulations. Use-based rather than form-based. Separation of uses and provision for car travel are the imperatives.

Building setbacks. Relatively generous (existing suburban setback requirements).

Accessory dwelling units (“granny flats”), home occupations, bed & breakfasts. Discouraged or prohibited.

Drive-throughs, retailers over 30,000 sf of first floor area, parking lots as a primary use. Allowed.

Maximum building height. 5 stories.

Housing types. Mixed.

Garages. Protruding.

Signs. Relatively large, often lit and animated (due to higher speeds and larger setbacks).

Building entrance. Tend to faces rear parking.

Land uses. Strictly segregated, single-use areas. Areas are either all residential, all commercial, or all industrial.

Neighborhood incomes. Mixed

Residential density maximum. Relatively low maximum (existing suburban setback requirements).

Travel choice. Relatively little. Nearly all forms of travel must be by car.

Schools. Existing conventional standards.

Stormwater management. Relatively high concern for inconvenience flooding means that stormwater basins are relatively large in size. Basins are irregular in shape and incorporate native landscape.

Interaction with others. High levels of privacy, separation.

Public Realm. Relatively unimportant. Emphasis is on generous landscaping, setbacks.

Rural/Preservation

Principles: Extreme levels of separation and privacy, equity, farmlands, environmental preservation, small and compact villages, large open spaces and large parks, ease of free-flowing travel by car.

rural landscape

Streets. ?

Alleys. ?

Congestion. ?

Congestion fees. ?

Signal Light Synchronization. ??

Street lights. ??

Lot sizes. ??

Block size. ??

Sidewalks. Rare. When used, tend to be on only one side of road??

Street connectivity. ??

Parking.  ??

Transit. ??

Service vehicles. ??

Landscaping. ??

Street trees. ??

Land Development Regulations. ??

Building setbacks. ??

Accessory dwelling units (“granny flats”), home occupations, bed & breakfasts. Expressly allowed.

Drive-throughs, retailers over 30,000 sf of first floor area, parking lots as a primary use. Allowed.

Maximum building height. ??

Housing types. Mixed.

Building entrance. ??

Garages. ??

Land uses. Housing mixed with neighborhood-scaled retail, office, light industrial.

Neighborhood incomes. Mixed

Residential density maximum. ??

Travel choice. ??

Schools. ??

Stormwater management. ??

Interaction with others. High levels of privacy, separation.

Public Realm. ??

 

 

Questions and Answers About My Planning Career and Lessons Learned

By Dom Nozzi

September 26, 2013

In September of 2013, a college student asked me about my city planning career and the lessons I learned in my work.

1. What were your primary responsibilities in City of Gainesville, FL?

DN: As a long-range senior comprehensive planner, I prepared staff recommendations for proposed zoning, special exception, special use permit, and land use changes. I authored several environmental, transportation, and urban design land development regulations for Gainesville. I also authored the long-range transportation, land use, urban design, environmental conservation, recreation, and solid waste plans for Gainesville. My specialties and passions were promoting quality of life by properly designing for walkable streets, form-based codes, transportation choice, and employing “plain English” when writing land development codes.

2. Could you share some of the highlights of your career?

DN: In 1989, I heard a speech by Andres Duany, and read essays by Walter Kulash, Jeff Kenworthy, Anthony Downs, and Peter Newman. The remarks by these individuals were an epiphany for me. I realized that the key way to design a community for quality of life was to return to the timeless tradition of making people happy, not cars. Particularly in town centers, I realized that the pedestrian was the design imperative. And that tactics which promoted or convenienced car travel were counterproductively degrading quality of life. The professional achievements I am most proud of were being the lead planner for creating a bicycle and pedestrian greenway path system in Gainesville, and being the lead planner for creating creek setback regulations. I am also proud of writing the long-range transportation, land use, and urban design plans for Gainesville, and authoring the “Traditional City” form-based code for Gainesville’s town center. Most importantly, the Traditional City code eliminated parking minimums for cars, and inverted those minimums so that they became parking maximums. I prepared land development regulations for large-format retailers, customized form-based codes for the University Heights and College Park neighborhoods, substantially revised and updated Gainesville’s noise ordinance, substantially revised the definitions used in Gainesville’s Land Development Code, created an urban design toolbox, prepared a sustainability indicators report for Gainesville, and incorporated a great deal of “Plain English” and drawings in Gainesville’s Land Development Codes to make them more understandable. Late in my career, I published a book called Road to Ruin about suburban sprawl, transportation, and quality of life, and gave speeches throughout the nation describing ideas from that book. More recently, I published The Car is the Enemy of the City, which touched on many of the same topics. After I retired, I became a nationally certified Complete Streets instructor, and served as a co-instructor to help communities throughout the nation design more complete streets.

3. What is the most significant planning issue you have met during your career? What is the solution?

DN: Establishing tactics that promote quality of life, realizing that the most effective way to do that was to reduce the promotion and conveniencing of car travel as well as promoting quality pedestrian design, and recommending such tactics in a society where nearly all citizens are fierce proponents of car travel. One solution was to adopt the new urbanist tactic of creating a “transect” which calibrates land development regulations for a walkable town center, a drivable suburbia, and a rural lifestyle. In other words, creating transportation and lifestyle choices.

4. Which school of ideas had the most influence on you as a planner?

DN: New Urbanism

5. Do you have any advice for someone entering the field?

DN: Academic emphasis should be on design: architecture or urban design. The ideological focus of the school and its professors should be the new urbanism. The future will be to design for happy people, not happy cars. Tragically, most all planning schools (and nearly all communities) put too much emphasis on promoting happy cars. Become a highly skilled writer, a highly skilled public speaker, and a person highly skilled in drawing. Strive to emphasize speaking and writing in “Plain English” and conveying information that is both inspirational and understandable to a non-professional audience. Become passionate in recommending tactics that promote quality of life for people rather than cars. Such passion will be more rewarding and sustainable than a high salary.

6. When you first entered the field, how did you apply what you had learnt in the college to practice?

DN: Primarily, when I first entered the profession of planning, I used planning terminology I had learned in college, and applied a number of planning concepts such as zoning to my work as a planner. I regret that my college studies were overly focused on policy rather than design.

7. From your view, what’s the biggest barrier to create walkable streets?

DN: Allocating too much road space, too much parking space, and too many subsidies to car travel. The most effective way to induce more walking (as well as bicycling and transit use) is NOT to provide sidewalks, bike lanes or new transit facilities. It is to take away road space, parking space, and car subsidies, as well as shortening distances to destinations via compact, mixed use development. By doing those things, an environment conducive to walkability will inevitably evolve. Street widths and distances between buildings will be more human-scaled rather than car-scaled, travel distances to destinations will be considerably shorter, car speeds will be much more modest and attentive, residential and commercial densities will be higher and interspersed, and it will be less financially and physically rational to drive a car.

8. Sustainable transportation has become a hot issue, how can new urbanism play a role in sustainable transportation?

DN: Americans devote an excessive amount of space to motor vehicle travel, which is enormously unsustainable, and greatly reduces the transportation choices needed for a more sustainable future. Because a motor vehicle consumes so much space (on average, a person in a car consumes as much space as 17 people sitting in chairs), cities in America are dying from a disease I call “Gigantism.” New urbanism, by making the timeless traditional focus on pedestrians the design imperative, is effectively restoring the pattern of building neighborhoods that are human-scaled rather than car-scaled. Because this creates a charming, lovable ambience, new urbanist design is highly profitable, which makes such design sustainably self-perpetuating (developers are self-motivated by the profitability of new urbanism to design in such a human-centered way, rather than being unsustainably forced to use such design due to government regulation). New urbanism has introduced the tactically brilliant idea of the urban to rural transect, which calibrates design and regulation differently in each transect zone so that all lifestyle and travel choices are provided for in each zone (forcing everyone to live in a compact, walkable town center setting is, today, politically unsustainable). But in the walkable, town center portion of the new urbanist transect, the compact design is inherently rich in transportation choices. A person is able to easily and safely walk, bicycle, use transit, or drive a car. Transportation choice is the most politically successful way to create sustainable transportation. Over time, as the cost of car travel becomes unsustainably expensive, the compact, walkable, design created by new urbanists – a design, again, rich in transportation choices – will become increasingly desirable to a larger percentage of Americans, which will mean that a larger percentage of Americans will be living in a setting that makes more sustainable transportation more feasible and less costly.

9. What’s the best way for citizens to be involved in the planning process?

DN: Citizens should insist that new planning and development projects in the community use the “charrette” process, where skilled presenters, drawers, and designers begin by making a brief, educational, inspiring presentation about town design and transportation principles to an audience of citizens. When done well, charrettes abundantly employ many drawings of ideas by the charrette professionals as well as ideas from citizens. As a result of such a presentation, citizens become skilled and empowered to make town and transportation design decisions for the new plan or proposed development (or road) project. When citizens are making such decisions in a charrette format, there is much more community buy-in as to the design of the plan or project, and elected officials are thereby more likely to approve of such designs. The end result is commonly a design that makes sense to professionals, even though much of the design has been recommended by citizens and elected officials (ordinarily, design recommendations by non-professional citizens and elected officials is misinformed and prone to not-in-my-backyard opposition to even the best, most sustainable and well-designed plans and projects).

10. Brief introduction of your latest book “The Car is the Enemy of the City”. Do you think people can maintain the same life quality without a car?

DN: Car travel and over-designing cities to accommodate such travel is deadly to cities. Healthy town centers need low speeds, human scale, and proximity. Yet a town center over-designed for free-flowing car travel is a city designed for high speeds, gigantic sizes, and sprawling dispersal of jobs, housing, shopping and culture. This book describes why cars and their “habitat” are toxic to town centers, and the features that create a walkable, lovable quality of life that a well-designed town center should provide. The book therefore illustrates how we can return to the timeless tradition of designing town centers to make people happy, not cars.

I am convinced that a person can maintain not only the same quality of life without a car, but a HIGHER quality of life. Owning a car in America today costs, on average, over $8,000 per year. Instead of spending that money on cars, a person can afford to buy or rent significantly better housing, and can have more money for education, better food, recreation, and so on. Indeed, in my own personal life, despite the fact that I did not earn a large amount of money in my job, I was able to retire at the relatively young age of 47 due to how much lower my expenses were without a car.

By not owning a car, a person tends to be more physically healthy, as more travel by walking, bicycling, or transit means that a person is exercising more and suffering less from growing health problems such as obesity and diabetes.

By reducing travel by car (because a person does not own a car), a person tends to be more sociable with neighbors and other citizens in the community. The car, after all, is an extremely isolating way to travel, because when one is commonly alone inside a car, interaction or serendipity with others is much less likely. Such interaction is also much more likely to be hostile towards others (via such things as “road rage”) rather than being friendly towards others.

When a person travels by walking, bicycling or transit, enjoyment of the trip route is much more likely. Sounds, smells, and enjoyment of other details of life and buildings are much more possible than when inside a car.

Finally, by not owning a car, a person is more motivated to see that her or his community is designed to be more friendly to people rather than cars. And there is no better way to enhance quality of life and sustainability than to do that.