Growth management and innovative land use tools: AICP Exam Lesson

Learning objectives

Explain how form-based codes, PUDs, and performance zoning differ from conventional zoning.
Describe incentive and inclusionary zoning and what makes an inclusionary program work.
Explain how transfer and purchase of development rights protect land, and what a TDR program needs to function.
Describe growth management tools: urban growth boundaries, concurrency and adequate public facilities, and phased or capped growth.
Summarize Ramapo and Petaluma and why they matter.

Key concepts

Conventional Euclidean zoning separates uses and regulates by lists and numbers. The tools in this lesson emerged to fix its weaknesses: rigidity, car-dependent patterns, sprawl, and exclusion.

Form-based codes

A form-based code regulates primarily physical form and the public realm: how buildings relate to the street, their height and placement, frontage types, and the design of streets and public spaces. Use is secondary, often regulated broadly. Typical components:

a regulating plan (a map showing where different form standards apply);
building form standards (build-to lines, height in stories, frontage requirements, ground-floor transparency);
public space (street) standards (sidewalk widths, street trees, lanes); and
often frontage type and architectural standards.

Many form-based codes are organized by the transect, a gradient of contexts from rural to urban core, with standards calibrated to each zone along it. The widely used SmartCode model defines transect zones from natural and rural (T1, T2) through suburban and general urban to urban center and core (T6), plus special districts.

Form-based codes are especially useful for corridors and downtowns where the goal is a predictable, walkable street frontage over time. Many cities adopt a hybrid code, adding form-based standards to a conventional ordinance for certain districts, rather than replacing the whole code. Many also fold their zoning, subdivision, and other land development regulations into one unified development code (UDC), so an applicant consults a single document and the rules are written to agree with each other.

The same three-lot corridor twice. Euclidean, buildings behind parking: each building sits back on its lot with a parking lot between it and the sidewalk; set back and car-first. Form-based, built to the sidewalk: each building meets a dashed build-to line with shop windows facing the street, street trees along the curb, and parking behind; build-to line, active fronts. — The form-based code writes the street wall into the rules, so the walkable frontage appears lot by lot as the corridor redevelops.

8 more sections follow in the full lesson.

Growth management and innovative land use tools

Learning objectives

Key concepts

Form-based codes

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