Schwarzenegger Signs Smart-Zoning Bill
On July 20, 2004, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that places "form-based zoning" into state statutes that regulate how California develops. Assembly Bill 1268 (Wiggins) institutionalizes form-based zoning for the first time in California history.
Although California's Government Code does not currently preclude form-based planning and zoning, the current language of the general plan law certainly does nothing to encourage mixing uses or seriously considering urban form and design along with land use. Section 65302 currently states:
"The general plan shall consist of a statement of development policies and shall include a diagram or diagrams and text setting forth objectives, principles, standards, and plan proposals. The plan shall include the following elements: (a) A land use element that designates the proposed general distribution and general location and extent of the uses of the land for housing, business, industry, open space, including agriculture, natural resources, recreation, and enjoyment of scenic beauty, education, public buildings and grounds, solid and liquid waste disposal facilities, and other categories of public and private uses of land."
For decades, most cities have taken this language literally, laying out areas for housing, for example, that are separate from areas for business and separate from every other land use. Most of us know that this has created the now all-too-familiar lifeless, sprawling, auto-oriented neighborhoods, towns and cities throughout California and the U.S. This conventional practice has created places where no one can walk to the store, to services or to work even if they wanted to, because the uses are so far apart and the streets are so hostile to pedestrians. Because of AB 1268, planning students will now be introduced to new language that formally allows mixed-uses and supports the regulation of relationships between the buildings and the streets. This new language will be in Government Code Section 65302.4 as follows:
"The text and diagrams in the land use element that address the location and extent of land uses, and the zoning ordinances that implement these provisions, may also express community intentions regarding urban form and design. These expressions may differentiate neighborhoods, districts, and corridors, provide for a mixture of land uses and housing types within each, and provide specific measures for regulating relationships between buildings, and between buildings and outdoor public areas, including streets."
It's an exciting time for planners in California. But it all came about because of a less-than-exciting experience in a small California city. Although the community and elected officials fully supported the walkable, community-based concepts of a form-based code, the city attorney questioned whether it was legal. This eventually led to a meeting with the Bay Area New Urbanists and Congress for the New Urbanism co-founder Andres Duany at the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research in Sacramento. At the meeting the Bay Area New Urbanists were invited to write a White Paper on the challenges faced by advocates of New Urbanism and Smart Growth in California's current planning environment.
This led to the paper titled, "White Paper on Smart Growth Policy in California" (PDF, 947 KB). The paper explained the structural obstacles to creating walkable, mixed-use communities in the State. The paper contained the language (page 6) that eventually became the basis for AB 1268.
California New Urbanists are excited about this bill because it removes all doubt that community plans and zoning codes in California can go beyond conventional land use planning and zoning techniques to make it easier to create great places.
Natural Transect
Urban Transect
There is a comprehensive design theory that organizes the full continuum of human environments, from remote wilderness to dense downtowns. This system, known as the Transect, now guides the planning and design of many new villages, towns and cities, and is the framework for development codes now being adopted by counties in several states. The Transect is a concept drawn from ecology. It is a geographical cross section through a sequence of contiguous environments – for example, from wetland to upland, or tundra to foothill. The Transect can be extended from the natural environments into to the human habitat by introducing settlements of gradually increasing density. (Images and text from White Paper on Smart Growth Policy in California, Appendix B, 2004)
Laura Hall is a partner with Fisher & Hall Urban Design of Santa Rosa, California. Her firm crafted the Central Petaluma SmartCode, the first SmartCode in the U.S. Paul Crawford, FAICP, is a principal with Crawford Multari & Clark Associates of San Luis Obispo, California, which contributed to the Central Petaluma SmartCode. They are both members of the Bay Area New Urbanists.
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Petaluma Plan from co-chair of Citizen's Committee
Dear all -
As former Council member and one of the co-chairs of the Central Petaluma Specific Plan Citizens Advisory Committee, which was responsible for planning the redevelopment of the old core of our city, I hope to offer some perspectives on the questions and comments received on Petaluma's development and adoption of our SmartCode.
Petaluma's old brownfield downtown had been languishing for several generations. The last efforts for revitalization in the 1960s fortunately failed, as they would have demolished over 6 blocks of historic buildings and small shops to build a 'modern' shopping mall. Citizens smartly rejected that, but no significant new investment was made downtown. New freeway frontage shopping malls grew up instead, and downtown drifted. Fires destroyed several historic buildings. Earthquake retrofits to URM buildings proceeded minimally.
We did hold very extensive public meetings over 4 years, intially using ROMA Design Group (SF) as our lead consultants to sort out a shared vision for the future from many stakeholders. However, ROMA tried to fit all that into a revised zoning code.
The question we then needed to answer was whether those codes would get that vision built, or whether developer needs, staff willingness to bend and council's inability to enforce the vision over the next generation of construction would prevail.
We found too many loopholes, and the draft plan languished, awaiting a commitment from committee members to get it right, and agreement from City Council to support that effort. We were introduced to Fisher and Hall and SmartCodes. They offered the most realistic path to implementing what we envisioned over time. Thus the SmartCode was reviewed, rewritten and adopted.
Yes, some view sheds were altered, but would've been lost if any construction took place, other than sprawling 1 story buildings. Yes, we fought for, and didn't always get large public spaces along the river, but we did delineate some very important ones. Yes, we did have to fight hard to keep the industrial, river-dependent businesses from being upzoned to Mixed Use (and inevitable extinction). Yes, there is a homogenous forced quality to some of the new architecture accepted by city staff and council. Yes, I still await urban developers who want to do even better work.
The City did have an existing Petaluma River Access and Enhancement Plan, calling for continuous public trails along the river, and that was a critical part of the new plan.
Are we getting what the Committee intended? Mostly yes. New investment from the development community has arrived in spades. New retail, entertainment, housing and employment centers are being built and occupied, rather than seeing it all get focused on the usual freeway frontages and malls in town. There is a new buzz and excitement downtown, and new money continues to be directed there.
Petaluma does face a significant risk of over-retailing, with some 1,000,000 sf of new retail space under construction or proposed elsewhere in the city along the freeway, in addition to that coming to the new retail downtown. The new City Council doesn't seem to understand the dangers and risks of such rapid and widespread retail expansion in a city with a market area population of some 70,000, already in hard competition with other cities and big boxes up and down the freeway corridor.
We need to adopt Community or Fiscal Impact Reports to get a firm grip on the consequences of these kinds of commercial sprawl, before we undercut the new successes downtown, and risk increased unemployment and loss of locally-owned businesses and reinvestment of capital due to competitive business losses. While this is beyond the usual scope of SmartCodes, it must be part of the planning process for this kind of redevelopment.
Committee members are still trying to get a reluctant planning staff to hold a 1 year public followup and feedback session, to see what's working, what isn't, and what needs to be adjusted in the codes or their implementation.
While I share some of the frustrations expressed by several writers, I do believe that we achieved far more than we expected to do, in real terms, with real implementation. As a progressive, environmentally oriented city councilmember, this plan and the adopted SmartCode is far, far better than had been proposed by any of the usual development interests prior to this process.
This is a real world test of the SmartCode, and merits watching closely over the years to learn how to do it better in the next communities.
SmartCode planning in Petaluma
Dear Ms. Painter,
You make some good points. I’m interested in some more information.
You say the SmartCode plan has resulted in a major development that has blocked the views of the surrounding hills. Would the development have been different under the previous code? What is it in the SmartCode that produced the development?
The SmartCode plan “places private development . . . between the river and the city.” Did the previous plan prohibit development there? Would the public vote for the plan have supported no development there?
The intention of form-based codes is usually to prevent suburban building types from coming into the towns. How does this SmartCode promote suburban forms in Petaluma?
You are a certified planner who lives in Petaluma. Have you been involved in previous Petaluma plans?
Thanks,
John Massengale
all this planning...
and see what most of california looks like - mini-malls, suburban enclaves, segregated poor, and traffic jams.
still, good luck if this bill does anything good. I'm still waiting for real zoning reform in Massachusetts, but am not holding my breath.
ed
The new language and comments
Regarding Diane's comments. One specific implementation did this. You cannot say that one case proves that the new language does not work. Diane should also recognize what happened in Petaluma is "what the people wanted or agreed on as a voting majority". The community bears on its shoulders, as a result of inattention, any faults of implementation. This is not the fault of any law.
With the enormous population growth we are experencing here in California, the growth into the two class society, the focus on "efficient consumption", a lot of the idealism in the urban transect will disappear. The harsh economics will drive planning.
We are basically 30 years behind in planing for this explosion. We will see the effects beyond 2010, but will be powerless to do anything about it then.
We in California are powerless to deal with the complexity of battling special and political interests now. Planned communities will essentially be the gutted results of idealism and the results of illogical compromises between special interests. No law can stop this.
Urban Renewal
How does form-based codes promote urban renewal?
How do the Californians separate out noxious uses?
There are open gravel facilities in smoggy Hollywood. Such uses have been restricted to manufacturing zones in New York since the Performance Standards Zoning Code was written in the 1960's.
Is this new Code more stringent than the old? How does the regulation site common waste disposal uses or any manufacturing along a continuum that has a dense city as worst case? What mechanism separates the urban population or rural preserve areas from neighbors performing necessary and environmentally risky tasks?
SmartCode planning in Petaluma
The SmartCode regulations adopted in Petaluma for the Central Petaluma Specific Plan has overlaid that urban landscape with a new set of regulations that are as insensitive to the natural and urban design environment as any set of regulations it could replace. The new code turns its back on 50 years of progress in urban design in recognizing what is 'special' about places, and the public benefit of access to cultural and natural resources.
It has resulted in a major development that blocks views of the surrounding hillsides, places private development (residential development and offices) between the river and the city (decreasing public access) and has resulted in the nearly wholesale demolition of an area identified as a potential historic district. The form-based zoning in effect upzones an existing vibrant mixed use neighborhood, such that the relatively affordable housing and less intensive land uses (light industrial) in the area will surely suffer the same fate as the structures that were demolished and uses displaced for this project.
The project that is being built in the Central Petaluma Plan area demolishes 8 historic structures and places a three story concrete parking garage serving a multi-plex theater around another small historic building. The walls of the parking garage face onto public spaces. The multi-plex is a large featureless tilt-up concrete structure tacked onto an existing historic brick warehouse along the major street. It is adjacent to a small scale urban commercial district that is on the National Register. This project has in effect brought suburban-scale forms and uses into Petaluma's existing walkable, compact, pedestrian-friendly downtown.
As I see it, the problem with the code as implemented is not that the basic premise was wrong, but that it was not adequately 'tested' before being adopted. Parking requirements, street cross sections, viewsheds, historic and other landmarks, and the topography, all need to be taken into account in the urban design process and the implications of the regulatory structure assessed before the regulations are adopted. Another discouraging factor in this particular planning project is that it was rushed through and public input and participation actively discouraged.
This is not the kind of development pattern and process that I would hope New Urbanism is espousing. In the future, more testing of the potential outcomes of a new code, when applied to a specific place, needs to occur or the New Urbanism movement will suffer the same backlash as the Urban Renewal movement.
Diana Painter PhD, AICP
Petaluma, California
"Permission" to Plan
While not going so far as to mandate community wide goals as part of land use it is a step in the right direction that municipalities"may" do so if they wish. Removing State directives in favor of local values is always a good thing but the wording change (removing structural barriers) does nothing to redress the real State impediments to efficient community design; outdated tax structures that peanalize all residential constructuion with the result most impacting affordable and modest housing while at the same time incentivizing sales tax generators leading to big box subsidies, mall wars and auto cetnter wastelands.
"Feel Good" Bill
There really is nothing in this statue here. Where does this statute say "Form Based Code"? Moreover, the legal basis of regulating urban form has long been established -- I mean let's not forget the very first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the country, the New York City code of 1916 that regulated building heights, setbacks, street relationships, etc.
Yes but....
Well I think is all well and good, but as soon as WalMart, Costco, Home Depot or the next big box shows up the electeds will toss the whole thing out the window and go after the easy money.
Where's the teeth?
I applaud that finally we are getting new laws and direction for planning. However, the current general plan law has no teeth to enforce its compliance. I really do not see this new law having any either.
It will take education of planners, and mostly the local elected officials to make real change. The biggest problem today is the politicization of the planning process. As planners, we face growing opposition to good planning due to either special interest lobbying or ballot box planning through the initiative process (i.e., NIMBY's).
Form base code implementation
Congrats to my home state of California...who tends to lead the way with innovation in land use reform...however, from what we have researched here at ICMA re the form-based code discussion/debates there are still many challenges ahead re adoption and implementation. True, many places such as Petaluma have adopted form based regulations for certain districts or projects, but I'm not sure if many cities have actually tossed their traditional zoning codes away and implemented a city-wide form based code... a few have talked about it, but... There are still many implementation challenges that lie ahead to get to that stage...and like any successful reform effort you have to have a long term view and pioneers, such as the state of California and the Paul Crawfords and Peter Parks of the world, out there ready to lead the way...