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Hazel Borys

May 16, 2013 | 12:01 am

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 04: Don’t Capture the Character

The other day, I was riding my bike from a deeply walkable, bikeable neighbourhood to a more auto-dominated environment, and I was struck again by the tactile response when you’re walking or biking through this change. In the walkable neighbourhood, fellow cyclists were in the streets or in bike lanes, mixing safely with the traffic-calmed cars and frequent pedestrians. But as I moved into the autocentric roads, otherwise law-abiding cyclists take to the sidewalks out of sheer terror at the fast moving cars that often fail to see them.

And pedestrians? They become scarce to nonexistent.

Category Back of the Envelope, Community Development, Development, Economic Development, Planning and Design, Theory and Practice4 CommentsTags bikeable, biking, complete streets, FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Hazel Borys, smartcode, suburban, synoptic survey, walkable, walking

May 2, 2013 | 12:01 am

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 03: Misapply the Transect (to the region rather than the neighborhood)

When it comes to misapplying — or, more commonly, overly simplifying — the Transect, we’re all guilty on some level. For instance, I often speak generally about its inherent rural-to-urban spectrum and how, as you move through it, the landscape changes its character. The highways and byways whisking you through the wilderness and countryside get increasingly slower as you approach the city center, becoming streets of very specific proportions. Buildings change too, sitting on their lots in much more formal fashion as you move to the core, with trees and sidewalks dutifully matching the rhythms of their formality.

Category Back of the Envelope, Planning and Design, Theory and Practice3 CommentsTags FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Hazel Borys, Jetsons, Ranson West Virginia, rural, smartcode, Transect, urban, urban growth boundary

April 22, 2013 | 12:01 am

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 02: Make it Mandatory Citywide

A while back, we talked about Connections, Community, and the Science of Loneliness, and how our laws have separated not just building uses — residential, commercial, retail, civic — but have also separated people. And that separation has led to a spate of ills — ill health, ill economies, and ill environments. We looked at some of the places that are reversing those use-separated laws of the last 80 years, allowing a mixture of compatible uses where people have a better chance of growing up healthy and aging in place.

Category Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy11 CommentsTags FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Hazel Borys, Ranson West Virginia, smartcode

March 28, 2013 | 12:01 am

Crowdsourcing = Data = Better Places

You know what the payment is for crowdsourcing? By asking other people to step up and think through solutions to some collective problem, I must commit to making a difference myself.

Every time I’ve asked you to share information with me, you have. Then I feel the need to compile it, analyze it, and organize it into a useful tool. I often get behind in answering all of your individual emails – thanks for all you send – but the power of your collective comments comes through loud and clear.

Category Back of the Envelope, Development, Legal, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience1 CommentTags aging, aging in place, Baby Boomers, crowdsource, crowdsourcing, Emily Talen, form-based code, Hazel Borys, placemaking, Resilience, smartcode, TND

March 25, 2013 | 12:01 am

Healthy, or Unhealthy, by Design

A few months ago, we talked about how a great city can be like a great running buddy, calling us to venture outdoors into more active, satisfying lifestyles. The photo-essay accompanying that conversation was on the urbanity of Wilmington, North Carolina. Last week, we were in another North Carolina town, Fuquay-Varina, working to create just those sorts of tightly-gridded, walkable streets connecting convivial, complete neighborhoods. Then perhaps the temptation to walk, bike, and run can overcome the lethargy of our modern lifestyle.

Category Experience, Planning and Design3 CommentsTags bikeable, connectivity, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Fuquay-Varina, Galina Tachieva, Hazel Borys, NC, Placemaking@Work, retrofitting suburbia, runable, sprawl, Sprawl Repair Manual, street network, suburban retrofit, Transect, walkable, Wilmington NC

March 11, 2013 | 12:01 am

Serving the Needs of Seniors: Solutions in practice

Last month we talked about Connections, Community, and the Science of Loneliness, in which I lamented my parents’ generation lack of active communities geared toward people of all ages. Since then, I’ve looked a little more deeply into some of the newer neighborhoods designed around livability, to see which of them are offering especially graceful aging options.

Category Community Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy4 CommentsTags aging in place, assisted living, Baby Boomers, CCRC, continuous care retirement community, Hazel Borys, Kentlands, Kentlands Manor, Middleton Hills, senior living

February 21, 2013 | 12:01 am

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 01: Don’t Articulate a Vision

Last week, we were talking about how the form of a neighborhood either provides gathering places that build social capital and local resilience, or else makes for a lonely, disconnected, nowhere. Some towns and cities are using form-based codes to help reconnect people with each other and the places they call home.

At the end of last week’s discussion, I quickly mentioned ten points that can create problems with form-based codes. My friend, Bruce Donnelly, commented that some of these points bear elaboration. So today, I’m doing a back of the envelope on the biggest challenge to form-based codes: failing to establish a community vision that can then be codified — that is, made into law.

Category Back of the Envelope, Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy6 CommentsTags Bruce Donnelly, El Paso Texas, FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Gianni Longo, Hazel Borys, Kona Hawaii, Miami Florida, Ranson West Virginia, Richard Florida

February 11, 2013 | 12:01 am

Connections, Community, and the Science of Loneliness

On my last trip to see my aging parents, I was struck again by the loneliness that comes from diminished connections. They are both inspiring people, and in their younger years were notably adept at making connections with and for others. And at helping people see the good in each other, in themselves, and in the communities they call home.

However, over time those connections are slowly dissolving. While there’s little to be done at this stage, this experience reaffirms the expediency of staying connected as long as we can to all the networks – internal and external – that make for wellness.

The process of saying “what if” does little good. However, I can’t help myself.

Category Community Development, Experience, Planning and Design17 CommentsTags community, connection, FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Hazel Borys, Huntsville Alabama, Jacqueline Olds, Jonathan Zasloff, loneliness, Steve Mouzon, The Codes Study, The Lonely American, The Waters, walkability

January 7, 2013 | 12:01 am

Rural Preservation: One more reason to care about cities

We talk a lot on PlaceShakers about urbanism, but less about one of our big drivers: rural preservation. Compact development patterns could have dramatically decreased the 41 million acres of rural land that the US lost to development from 1982 to 2007. That’s almost the size of the State of Washington.

Clearly, we can’t keep up this pace and expect to have enough productive cropland, pasture, and range to serve our growing population. From 1982 to 2007, US population grew by 30% while development land increased 57%. Eating up land at almost twice the population growth obviously has an unhappy ending.

Category Agriculture, Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy6 CommentsTags agriculture, form-based code, Hazel Borys, New Mexico, rural preservation, TDR, transfer of development rights, wilderness protection

December 24, 2012 | 1:27 pm

Gathering Places: Providers of comfort and joy

To wish you the happiest of holidays, I’d like to share some recent ruminations about the importance of gathering places both in the public and private realm, particularly as it relates to children, solace, and song. In celebration of the season, those places — when well planned and cultivated — become particularly poignant.

Take private porches, for example. My son’s grades two and three Caroling Club trudged happily through a couple feet of snow this week, in our traditional neighborhood. Their goal? Just to sing and share some joy – no funds were raised, although the last house did produce hot coco and doughnut holes.

Category Community Development, Experience, Planning and Design1 CommentTags children, gathering places, Hazel Borys, Holidays, livability, public space, walkability

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 04: Don’t Capture the Character

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 03: Misapply the Transect (to the region rather than the neighborhood)

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 02: Make it Mandatory Citywide

Crowdsourcing = Data = Better Places

Healthy, or Unhealthy, by Design

Serving the Needs of Seniors: Solutions in practice

Ways to Fail at Form-Based Codes 01: Don’t Articulate a Vision

Connections, Community, and the Science of Loneliness

Rural Preservation: One more reason to care about cities

Gathering Places: Providers of comfort and joy

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