Agenda - Planning Commission - 09/05/2013

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ASK TH E AUTHOR JOIN US ONLINE! Go online during the month ofAugustto participate in our `Ask the Author" forum, an interactive feature of Zoning Practice: Douglas Farr will be available to, answer questions about this article. Go to the APA website atwww.planning.org and follow the links to the Ask. the Author section. From there, just submit your questions about the article using the e-mail link. The author will reply, and Zoning Practice will post the answers cumulatively on the website for the benefit gall subscribers. This feature will be available for selected issues of Zon ing Practice at announced times. After each online discussion is closed, the answers will be saved in an online archive availablethrough the APA Zoning Practice web pages. About the Author Douglas Farr is the founding principal and president of Farr Associates, a Chicago -based firm focused on sustainability in architecture and urban design. He is the author of Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design with Nature (Wiley, November zoo7). An architecture graduate of the University of Michigan and Columbia University, Farr is vice chair of the board of the Congress for the New Urbanism and; also served as chair of the LEED Neighborhood Development Core Committee (LEED-ND). Research Credits: Christina Bader, Courtney Kashima, Mark Swenson Jessica Baas The Inevitability of a Plan -Code Gap Given this loose relationship between plans and ordinances and the institutional, politi- cal, and professional forces at play, the ex- istence of a gap in what plans say and what codes authorize is inevitable without strategic effort. While a continuous planning and coding process is an ideal within the land -use arena, this may not be a priority for a municipal gov- ernment. A code update can often seem like a low priority at a time of layoffs, and spending additional money to develop a better or more complete planning process can also be a hard sell. Some municipalities will wait to learn the results of a plan before budgeting for follow- up work, such as a code update. This can lead to a timing gap between the adoption of a plan and the subsequent code that will imple- ment the plan's policies. A gap between plans and codes is also inevitable given the complexities and politics associated with regional or citywide master plans and ordinances. Changing codes is a political act that vested interests resistant to change can play to their advantage. Part of what makes powerful political interests ef- fective is the ability to pick their battles and venues. Rather than take a public position in opposition to a popular plan, they may choose to exert influence far from the public eye. Every planner who has developed a plan is familiar with the process of wordsmithing that can go on behind the scenes to satisfy different constituencies. As a consequence, there is often intense pressure to refrain from being specific. OPnMAL s ASPIRATIONAL PROPOSED RHETORIC GAP TYPES RHETORICAL GAP PERMISSIVE GAP NO GAP (ALIGNED) WHAT PLANS SAY WHAT CODES PERMIT OR REQUIRE -- PERMITTEDASI OF RIGHT "SHALL HIGH PLAN ASPIRATIONS LOW PLAN ASPIRATIONS LOW CODE ALIGNMENT HIGH CODE LEGALITY PLAN ASPIRATIONS MATCH CODE REQUIREMENTS Nevertheless, the profession has driven innovations in land -use planning, mapping, and modeling precision that have made it possible to demand a level of specificity. For example, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has funded sustainability plans across the country through its Sustain - ability Communities Initiative that require the tracking of sustainability indicators, and the / Douglas Farr OPTIMAL IS REQUIRED California legislature passed AB3z and SB375, two laws that link climate change and land use. These initiatives highlight an increasing demand for strong technical criteria leading to clear outcomes and planning accountabil- ity. Only recently, however, have third -party criteria become specific enough to be able to translate sustainability-related words into performance standards suitable for inclusion ZONINGPRACTICE 8.13 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION I page 3