Form-Based Zoning

Recently, I brought up the form-based zoning included in the Virginia Beach Comprehensive Plan and it occurred to me that, while it has been around for a little while, most people have never heard of it and know relatively little about it. Before we talk about form-based zoning though, lets talk about conventional zoning.

Most people have heard about conventional zoning. In conventional zoning, each area of the city is defined as either Residential, Commercial, Industrial, Institutional, or Government. These categories or broken down further based usually on building size and use. For example, a simplified definition of each zoning district in Norfolk is shown below:

Residence Districts.   (du=Dwelling Unit)

• R-1 One-Family District: 25,000 sq. ft./du* (1.74 du/acre)
• R-2 One-Family District: 20,000 sq. ft./du (2.18 du/acre)
• R-3 One-Family District: 15,000 sq. ft./du (2.90 du/acre)
• R-4 One-Family District: 12,000 sq. ft./du (3.63 du/acre)
• R-5 One-Family District: 10,000 sq. ft./du (4.36 du/acre)
• R-6 One-Family District: 7,500 sq. ft./du (5.81 du/acre)
• R-7 One-Family District: 6,000 sq. ft./du (7.26 du/acre)
• R-8 One-Family District: 5,000 sq. ft./du (8.71 du/acre)
• R-9 One-Family District: 4,000 sq. ft./du (10.89 du/acre)
• R-10 Townhouse District: 2,000 sq. ft./du (21.78 du/acre)
• R-11 Moderate Density Multiple-Family District: 2,900 sq. ft./du (15.02 du/acre)
• R-12 Medium Density Multiple-Family District: 2,200 sq. ft./du (19.80 du/acre)
• R-13 Moderately High Density Multiple-Family District: 1,800 sq. ft./du (24.20 du/acre)
• R-14 High Density Multiple-Family District: 1,333 sq. ft./du (32.67 du/acre)
• R-15 High Density Multiple-Family District: 1,000 sq. ft./du (43.56 du/acre)

Office and Business/Commerce Districts.

• O-1 Office District
• BC-1 Business and Commerce Park District
• BC-2 Business and Commerce Park District

Commercial Districts.

• C-1 Limited Commercial District
• C-2 Corridor Commercial District
• C-3 Retail Center District
• C-4 Large Scale Commercial District

Industrial Districts.

• I-1 Limited Industrial District
• I-2 Light Industrial District
• I-3 General Industrial District
• I-4 Waterfront Industrial District
• I-5 Deep Waterfront Industrial District

Downtown Districts.

• D-1 Downtown Waterfront District
• D-2 Downtown Regional Center District
• D-3 Freemason/Granby Conservation and Mixed Use District
• D-4 Downtown Cultural and Convention Center District

Historic and Cultural Conservation Districts.

• Ghent Historic and Cultural Conservation Districts (HC-G1 and HC-G2)
• West Freemason Historic and Cultural Conservation Districts (HC-WF1 and HC-WF2)
• Hodges House Historic and Cultural Conservation District (HC-HH)
• East Freemason Historic and Cultural Conservation District (HC-EF)

Special purpose districts.

• Institutional Districts (IN)
• Manufactured Home Park District (MHP)
• General Airport District (GA)
• Open Space Preservation District (OSP)
• Military Installation District (MI)
• University Village District (UV)

Overlay Districts.

• Airport Safety Overlay District (ASO)
• Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Overlay District (CBPAO)
• Flood Plain/Coastal Hazard District (FPCHO)
• Historic Overlay District (HO)
• Downtown Historic Overlay District (HO-D)
• Pedestrian Commercial Overlay District (PCO)
• Residential Compatibility Overlay District (RCO)
• Institutional Residential Impact Overlay District (IRIO)
• Bay Front Residential Parking Overlay District (BFRPO)
• Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District (LASO)
• Norfolk International Airport Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District (NIA-LASO)
• Alternative Siting Residential Overlay District (ASRO)
• Janaf Shopping Center Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District (JANAF-LASO)
• Bayfront Residential Siting Overlay District
• Pedestrian Commercial Overlay District–Colley Avenue (PCO-COLLEY)
• Pedestrian Commercial Overlay District–21st Street (PCO-21st ST)
• Palace Shops Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District
• Military Circle Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District
• Pedestrian Commercial Overlay District–Riverview (PCO-Riverview)
• Military Crossing Localized Sign Overlay District
• Nauticus Localized Sign Overlay District
• Park Place Residential Overlay District
• MacArthur Center Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District
• Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District for the Waterside
• Roosevelt Gardens Localized Sign Overlay District
• Pedestrian Commercial Overlay District–35th Street (PCO-35th)
• Medical Center Sign Overlay District
• Pedestrian Commercial Overlay District–Five Points (PCO 5 PTS)
• Super K-Mart Localized Alternative Sign Overlay District (Super K-mart LASO)
• Kimnach Ford Localized Sign Overlay District (Ford-LASO)
• West Church Street Overlay District
• Picadilly Mews Siting Overlay District
• Ocean View Residential Siting Overlay District
• Best Square Sign Overlay District
• Lafayette Boulevard Pedestrian Commercial and Residential Overlay District (PCRO-Lafayette Boulevard)
• Green Gifford Localized Sign Overlay District (Green Gifford-LASO)

Look overly complicated and confusing? Try building something and following the rules of each district. Better yet, try building something that spans lots of different zones, which would require council approval for rezoning. I live in a house zoned R-8. According to this zone, my lot should be a certain size and their are requirements to keep me from building to the edge of the lot. It also prohibits me from opening, say, a convenience store on the lot next door to me. This, by its very nature, is designed to keep uses separate. How can you walk to your destinations when they are required to be separate? These zoning codes a designed to increase the ability of the city to predict and manage automobile traffic patterns. Think about that. These codes are designed to prevent effective non-motorized travel. These codes are intended to benefit automobile drivers and promote a suburban, car-centric lifestyle.

Think about what you would call a ‘vibrant’ city or area. Downtown Norfolk? Town Center? The Oceanfront? New York City? San Francisco? Chances are, that no matter what area you picked, there is a lot of foot traffic. That said, it would also be fair to say that foot traffic equals vibrancy. It can also be said that most people agree that vibrancy is a good common goal. Nobody, not even the staunchest suburbanite, likes to be in an area with zero human interaction. Now think about the area that you picked. Why is there heavy foot traffic? Even if you picked MacArthur Center or Lynnhaven Mall, the reason there are people walking around is because everything is close together and because there are other people. Now, think about this. If Lynnhaven Mall required each store to be a minimum of 100 feet apart, would you still go? Or would it no longer be comfortable and convenient? That is what conventional zoning does. It forces you apart.

Form-Based Zoning on the other hand, is designed to keep you together. It is thoughtfully structured to allow only structures that are slightly denser than what is currently there, thereby creating an environment of steadily increasing density. It also allows for mixed use. The higher density a mixed use development is, the more likely that it will succeed of its own accord. Form-Based Zoning actually encourages mixed use. If you could walk everywhere you need to shop at and all you neighbors did the same, wouldn’t you?

Now, keeping in mind the conventional zoning, such as Norfolk’s, here is the basics for the Form-Based Zoning code that was recently adopted for Miami, Florida:

Notice how much simpler it is. The actual written code would include things such as height requirements/restrictions and building placement but it would be much more flexible. We should encourage Norfolk and even Chesapeake to adopt a form-based code. In addition to fostering higher density, mixed use developments, the form-based code make mass transit possible and gets people to walk/bike instead of drive, therefore lessening the amount of traffic on the roads without building more of them. Looking at it from a business point of view, localities that stick to form based codes tend not waste developers’ money. The developer can plan a building and already know what the city wants without having to go through lengthy meetings with a planning department. Finally, from a municipal standpoint, the city spends less time and money regulating and more time enjoying what it really wanted the whole time: strong developments that don’t take a toll on city resources. Please encourage your councilmen/women to look at and approve a form-based code.

If you would like to learn more about form-based codes, please visit http://www.formbasedcodes.org/

If you would like to see the specifics of a community that has already started the switch to a Form-Based Code, visit http://www.miami21.org, which is the main page for Miami’s Comprehensive Plan update process.

Green Metropolis – A Book Review

Green Metropolis - By: David Owen

Last Thursday, I purchased the book Green Metropolis, written by David Owen. This book was an incredibly well thought out, well researched book. Contrary to the popular held opinion that ‘being green’ involves CFLs and recycling, Owen argues that the greenest city in America is not in Maine or Oregon, but rather New York. In fact, he argues that New York City is the greenest city in America. I was confused too, at first, because the image that I (and most people) have of NYC is a dirty, concrete jungle full of traffic jams and smog. According to Owen’s research, despite the dirty nature of NYC, the city uses less energy per person than any other city in the USA. He uses gasoline as an example and compares NYC to Vermont. Most would agree that wehn you think ‘green,’ you are thinking about something that looks like Vermont: trees, clean air, clean water, etc. According to Owen’s statistics, Vermont residents, on average use 545 gallons of gasoline per person per year, whereas Manhattan residents use only 90 gallons of gasoline per person per year.

It is an interesting theory that the more compact a city is, the more energy efficient it is. There are many examples in this book that I think are important lessons for area, especially since the light rail will be opening next year and we want to expand it and we want it to succeed. Owen talks about light rail. He references it in multiple places. First, in order to be successful, he reinforces the fact that the area served by light rail (or any transit system) needs to be dense.  He references a specific density of seven people per acre. This gives us something to think about if we want to have a regional mass transit system. Hampton Road’s overall density is .625 people per acre. Of course that includes rural counties such as Surry and Isle of Wight. Norfolk’s density is 6.82; much closer to the 7/acre number referenced by Owen as essential for successful transit.  When you consider that there are many places in Norfolk that are not ever going to be ‘dense’ (such as the 1300 acre Norfolk International Airport), we really do have a good start. Virginia Beach has a little bit to go. Their density is only 2.67 people per acre. Granted, half of the city is rural, we will give them the benefit of the doubt and give them 5.4 people per acre. That takes into consideration that most of their people live above the self-imposed ‘green-line.’ In the past few years, they have made great strides increasing density. Town Center is a good example. The recently proposed redevelopment of the Newtown Road ‘Strategic Growth Area’ is another good start (also an attempt to capitalize off of light rail without officially supporting it). We must continue to make the corridors around the light rail lines and proposed light rail lines more dense. I specifically emphasize proposed because if we can make these corridors dense now, it will be easier to get funding and ridership once they are built.

Another thing that Owen’s emphasizes in his book is that, in order to make density and transit more effective, we have to stop catering to cars. If we keep building new roads and highways, we are only reinforcing the automobile’s ease of use. If it is cheaper and easier to drive to work than use transit, why would you bother? Instead, we should use a combination of tolls, gas taxes, congestion pricing, etc. to make driving more costly and less inviting. The proceeds from these revenue streams could be used to expand the transit system. We have to remember, though, that while we want to make driving more uninviting, we do not want to make transporting goods more costly, which would only raise prices of everything and hurt the economy. Truck traffic could face free tolls, lower diesel taxes, or designated lanes (these lanes would be removed from regular lanes, increasing congestion and making car travel even more uninviting). I am not saying to do this overnight, but it is certainly worth it. With a denser area that focused on efficient transit rather than wasteful suburbanism, Hampton Roads would be more likely to compete with other areas.

These are just some of the ideas that would be useful in creating a more efficient, more environmentally friendly metropolitan area. I strongly suggest that everyone reads this book. Especially those who identify themselves as environmentalists. Current ‘environmentalism’ is destroying the planet. Hybrid cars are terrible ideas and only firm up and strengthen our dependence on oil. Read this book. No matter who you are, you will gain something. No matter who you are, your opinions on environmentalism will change.

…in the long run, a car’s fuel gauge is far less significant, environmentally speaking, than its odometer. In the same way that life in Manhattan is inherently energy-efficient, whether or not residents consciously try to conserve, life in the suburbs and beyond is inherently wasteful, no matter what kind of cars the residents park in their garage, or how assidously they swap incandescent lightbulbs for compact fluorescents. It’s miles traveled, not miles per gallon, that make the difference. A sprawling suburb is a fuel-burning, carbon-belching, waste-producing, water-guzzling, pollution-spewing, toxic-leaking machine, and, unlike a Hummer, it can’t be easily abandoned for something smaller and less destructive. We’ve spent a century erecting our way of life. Now we must reconfigure it.

-Excerpt: Green Metropolis – By: David Owen

Just Say NO to Federal Courthouse Plan

Once again, the Federal Courthouse is trying to expand into the ex-Granby Tower site. And, once again, we need to fight any plan that takes land off of the tax roles. The General Services Administration (GSA – they are in charge of federal construction projects) already has a plan that is acceptable. The plan that I am referring to would construct a 7-story addition in the middle of the current building:

Norfolk Federal Courthouse - Tower Alternative

In fact, not only does this option conserve land and fit in better with an urban environment, this alternative is actually less expensive than building on the Granby Tower site. Let’s back up for a second. If you had not heard of this project before or have forgotten, there were five alternatives considered. They are called the Southern, Western, Northern, Eastern, and Tower Alternatives, with the name referring to the location of the annex in relation to the current building. Here are diagrams of the first four, showing where they would be located what method would be used to connect them:

Off-Site Alternatives for the Norfolk Federal Courthouse Annex

As you can see (or if you can’t, click the picture for a larger version), the Southern and Eastern Alternatives each close a road. In fact, the Eastern Alternative called for closing an entire block of Monticello Avenue. That left two other off-site options. The Northern Alternative would demolish the Greyhound Station and have to find a way to cross Brambleton Blvd. The easiest of these four is obviously the Western Alternative, which is to put the annex on the Granby Tower site. While this seems like a good idea, lets look at the final option that was researched by the GSA: an on-site addition. This on-site addition would be in the form of a tower on top of the current building. This final alternative is actually more cost effective than the next most plausible (Western Alt.). Here is the cost breakdown:

Source: Draft Environmental Assessment for the Walter E. Hoffman United States Courthouse Proposed Courthouse Annex Norfolk, Virginia - GSA 2006

The GSA must work together in order to build consistently with local goals. This is not my opinion, this is fact. According to the GSA’s Urban Development/Good Neighbor Program,

“The core mission of the Urban Development/Good Neighbor Program is to provide GSA regional offices and their stakeholders with the technical, training, and outreach resources they need to implement good neighbor principles in the business practices of the Public Buildings Service. Those principles are:

• Locate new owned and leased federal facilities in places that support local plans;
• Design new facilities to create outstanding federal workplaces and support neighborhood urban design goals;
• Renovate existing federal properties to improve their public spaces, create positive First Impressions, and encourage stakeholders to improve neighborhood conditions;
• Manage federal properties to encourage public use and openness; and
• Participate in neighborhood physical and management improvement efforts around federal properties.”

Take note on two of those in particular. “Design new facilities to create outstanding federal workplaces and support neighborhood urban design goals” and “Renovate existing federal properties to improve their public spaces, create positive First Impressions, and encourage stakeholders to improve neighborhood conditions.” Building a mediocre 5-story building across from the current building does not support our urban design goals and taking property off of the tax roles absolutely does not improve neighborhood conditions. Despite the failure of Granby Tower, the site still holds the potential for success. Currently, it is still being taxed. The GSA is the reason why Granby Tower failed. The GT would have been under construction but instead the GSA said that they might want the site. If they had gone with the tower in the first place, we would have both. Please contact the GSA (Region 3) at (215) 446-5100 and let them know that you deserve a quality project. Tell them that the City deserves the Tower Alternative for the Walter E. Hoffman United States Courthouse Proposed Annex.