Bad Zoning Codes Cause Sprawl

"...[T]he reality is that many of Connecticut's developers and designers would love to create sociable, dense urban communities with open space set aside in perpetuity, a practice generally known as New Urbanism.

Unfortunately, there are many obstacles -- the biggest, baddest and most entrenched of which are the state's antiquated zoning codes, which make sprawl all but inevitable.

Writing zoning codes from scratch would have been a daunting undertaking for town volunteers at that time, so the codes were purchased lock, stock and barrel from supplier companies eager to make money distributing zoning boiler plate.

One of the largest such is the perfectly respectable company MuniCode, which since 1961 has supplied zoning codes to 23 Connecticut towns and cities. Not bad for a company located in Tallahassee, Fla. You might ask what an outfit in Tallahassee knows about the special character of the New England village of Westbrook? Answer: probably not much. So, over time, Westbrook gradually has taken on the suburban look of MuniCode's 1,600 other client communities across the United States.

...Zoning codes have failed to evolve with planning philosophies, because volunteer boards tend to be so impressed by the authoritative look and sheer weight of their codes that they believe them to have come down from the Mount."

Thanks to The Practice of New Urbanism listserv