CO Springs to Bring Downtown Back to Life

"'The proposed Form-Based Code is written very specifically for an urban area, for high density, for a mix of uses, for tall buildings,' [senior city planner Ryan] Tefertiller said. 'It's tailored to get the things that we really want and accomplish the goals that we really need to see downtown.'

'It's the biggest trend in the zoning world in a couple of decades,' said Bill Spikowski, a founding member of the Form-Based Codes Institute, which trains planners nationwide.

Some cities have already seen positive results.

'Places like West Palm Beach here in Florida have had an amazing downtown renaissance directly attributable to the form-based code they adopted in 1994,' Spikowski said."