FBC Ways to Fail Series

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FBC Ways to Fail Series

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 Practice5 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 Policy15 CommentsTags FBC Ways to Fail Series, form-based code, Hazel Borys, Ranson West Virginia, smartcode

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 Policy7 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.