Thoughts from the Studio

Members of the PlaceMakers team offer a midterm report

February 3, 2007 - With the SmartCode charrette now just past its half way point, the PlaceMakers team has had considerable opportunity to experience on the ground conditions, meet with stakeholder groups, talk one on one with the many interested people who've visited the studio, and hear reactions to specific work in progress.

A key finding? The people of Lawrence are concerned with and deeply engaged in the workings of their community, and possess a diverse collection of viewpoints. In response, there have been a variety of efforts to hear and understand the many voices.

Nonetheless, some questions remain as to PlaceMakers' role here, as well as the relationship between the SmartCode and some of the community's more visible issues. Today, members of the team offer a midterm report to help clarify.

Jump to:

• Whose side are we on, anyway?
• The SmartCode: Different, yes, but not complicated.

Whose side are we on, anyway?

By Susan Henderson, Project Leader, PlaceMakers

One thing is clear: Perhaps nothing touches a community on more levels than growth and development. Historic preservation. Protection of neighborhood character. Environmental sensitivity. Retail and commercial viability. Construction and development interests. Finance and commerce. Even the arts and cultural development.

These are all very real and legitimate categories of concern - each playing an important role in the bigger picture - and all come complete with their committed advocates. When it comes to drafting a long-range plan for development, such as our SmartCode assignment in Lawrence, each advocacy group has a legitimate interest in making sure its concerns aren't neglected in the final product.

We expect nothing less.

If you've been at our charrette meetings or watching progress on-line, you may have noticed something curious: Every time we say something that seems to favor one group, a short time later it seems we're making arguments for the opposite perspective.

Why is this? Whose side are we on, anyway?

The answer is that we're on the side of the SmartCode, or more specifically, on the side of the principles behind the SmartCode. We believe in regulating form to preserve neighborhood character. We believe in fostering these forms by incentivizing developers to take a chance on doing the right thing. We believe in working within a city's economic reality. We believe that beauty has not only intrinsic value but quantifiable economic value, as well. And we believe the SmartCode is the regulatory tool by which all community groups - even those with opposing goals - can get what they reasonably want.

Our work requires that a community embrace a common vision. But we're not here merely to facilitate a visioning exercise. We're providing a set of tools for realizing community goals.

Even though we produce drawings to illustrate possibilities for specific locations, the City didn't hire us to tell you what needs to go at any particular address. They hired us to tailor an optional code to legalize forms and enhance community character that many people prefer. Not everyone will agree with every aspect of this new code, of course. That's why the code is intended as an elective, parallel "overlay" with your existing zoning.

It simply presents new, more predictable choices about where development will occur and what it will look like and feel like.

You should expect nothing less.

The SmartCode: Different, yes, but not complicated.

By Howard Blackson, PlaceMakers Principal

One thing key to understanding the SmartCode is understanding its underlying organizational framework, known as the Transect. The idea is simple: Divide the "human habitat" into six levels of intensity, from the most rural (T1) to the most urban (T6), and then set rules - in terms of building heights, densities, setbacks, roads, land uses, and materials - for each zone.

Because it lacks a dense urban core, Lawrence ranges from T1 to T5.

Whereas conventional zoning segregates development based on use - such as commercial in one area and residential in another - the Transect focuses more on scale, character and intensity.

For example, T4 designates the General Urban conditions you'd often find in historic, in-town neighborhoods. While these compact areas typically offer plenty of single-family residential, they're not exclusively so, and also contain small-scale, neighborhood-serving retail and a variety of housing types (homes of different sizes, townhomes, modest multi-family structures, etc.). T5, a typical Main Street environment, is more intense, with buildings fronting the street and a variety of integrated uses. T3, on the other hand, reflects sub-urban character - predominantly residential on larger lots and typically without alleys.

The idea is to provide different rules - detailed collectively as the SmartCode - for each T Zone so that their different characters remain intact. Rural lands feel rural while downtown has its own, more compact and lively, personality. In the process, varying levels of compactness, vitality, and mixing of uses become available and everyone - regardless of the type of home and neighborhood they ideally want - can find an opportunity to live - and remain - in Lawrence.

Some key points about the SmartCode:

• It's not an off-the-shelf, one size fits all, kind of product. It begins with a model template, but implementation involves a public process like we're orchestrating now, where the ordinance is "calibrated" to local taste in scale and density. So, for example, T5 in one town might be characterized by buildings of up to six stories. In another, it might be three stories. Or, it could be more or less, depending on the scale and desires of the particular community.
• Because the SmartCode regulates certain aspects of building form - such as size and placement on the lot - it makes development more predictable. The net result is that residents then know with a comfortable level of specificity what will be built in the future for a given area.
• The SmartCode legalizes mixed use - such as a neighborhood coffee shop or a Main Street condo over ground level stores - but prevents noxious or nuisance uses and ensures commercial development that's compatible with the surrounding T Zone.
• The SmartCode, like current ordinances, still manages parking, but it greatly simplifies the regulations and takes advantage of opportunities for shared parking and improved pedestrian access.
• Civic spaces - from parks and plazas to expansive green spaces - are handled in a variety of different ways, depending on what's appropriate in any particular T Zone.
• Not everything fits neatly into the Transect structure. For certain uses - airports, industrial areas, big box retail stores, universities or hospital campuses, for example - the SmartCode creates Special Districts with their own development rules.