The Downtown Plan: The Intersection of Policy and Aesthetics

When it comes to urban planning, sexy gets all of the attention. When it comes to effective urban planning, dull deserves all of the credit. And when it comes to Richmond's proposed Downtown Plan, form-based code is the hidden gem in a sexy laundry list of riverfront development, trolleys and retail glam.

Where traditional zoning has its roots in industrial society -- when good government meant keeping the homes of workers away from the fume-spewing factories that clogged their lungs -- and had its hey-day during the Age of the Automobile, form-based code harkens back to basic principles of urban design. Traditional zoning worries about what people do inside of the buildings they own, and seeks to keep like clustered with like. Form-based code worries about architecture and design, about a building's relationship to its neighbors, about creating functional and useful urban space.

Justus Stewart at World Changing asks some of the very questions good form-based code can help urban environments answer. As Richmond's Planning Commission and City Council ponder tinkering the the draft Downtown Plan, residents and developers alike should encourage them to leave intact the form-based code proposal.

Pondering some of Stewart's compelling ideas on the intersection of policy and aesthetics might be another good step for Richmond's policymakers.

We need a meaningful dialogue between the politicians, developers, and engineers – the decision makers – and the urban designers, planners, and urban ecologists – who understand design and its impacts. Such dialogue is needed in general, but I am talking about a specific mechanism to discuss a specific issue, the design and function of a specific city.

My idea for such a mechanism is a funded training center – an institute – for urban design, which offers short, intense courses for developers, city engineers, and other decision makers to learn what makes a city function, from the perspective of human beings and other life.

This idea is inspired in part by the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, the brainchild of Joseph Riley, a whip-smart southern gentleman who has been the mayor of Charleston, SC for 32 years (the other is the pioneering work of Holly Whyte, in NYC). But I am proposing an institute in every city, which convenes local politicians not only when they have a design ‘issue’ (as the Mayor’s Institute does) but to prevent those issues in the first place. The design institute would offer education and examples about urban design fundamentals – what makes a public plaza work, what makes a street pedestrian-friendly, what makes a neighborhood livable – to those who are actually zoning, approving, building, and planning our cities. It would also provide a forum for a discussion on green design – teaching green building to the policy-makers that set building codes, and green infrastructure to the city’s engineering department. Not only would it breed better design, but since these classes would be collaborative, it could help to reduce the ‘silo’ mentality that is still pervasive in local governments.