Agenda - Planning Commission - 04/01/2004

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74 The policy arguments are harder to dis- miss. Prescriptive zoning might be called "presumptuous zoniflg" because it assumes planners know best. Oeve{opers and, arguably, the marketplace, cannot contribute their insights and innovations because the public pfanners have already mandated what the outcome will be. Do public planners know best? Should public pfanners so constrain the private market, with its imperfect ,/et demon- strable amplification of consumer preference and use of private designers and planners? Proscriptive zoning accompanies a !ess confi- dent government viewpoint, with reliance on maximums controtlin~ permissible use, shape, and bulk that give 3rearer latitude to someone else's vision. Prescriptive zoning furthermore runs the dan§er of faitin§ because (he market simply may choose not to cooperal:e. If the prescrip- tion is too onerous or unpleasant, owners may opt out completely, leaving their ~and in its existing state, refusing to upgrade or evolve. Even if only some owners dec[Me to deve{op, the resulting jack-o-lantern pattern carved by a rule-based, non-contextual, par- col-by-parcel prescription may be unsatisfac- tory. $[nce it is unlikely chat prescriptive zon- ing legally could force owners to develop or else, there [s nothing government: could do at that point to achieve its ideal plan, THE "GENERIC" PRESCRIPTION: THE E~14ERGENCE OF FORM-BASED ZONING Trendy and ed~, form-based zonin§ in its purest form abiures the regulation of use and places its full faith and credit in shape and bulk restrictions, Best understood as an areal§am of the intellectually rigorous urban desi§n ideas of architectural theorists Colin Rowe and Atdo Rossi, cou¢ied with a free-wheeling market- based ideology, form-based zoning takes the pos[don that urban morpholo~,/, i,e., the physi- cal form a city takes, is more imporcan[ in decor- mining the quaiity of the built environment than a deterministic attitude toward uses occurring within [nat form. In such a morphological city, function foitows form. in zoning terms, the enveiope itseif, rather Than the contents within ic, is dominant. An exercise of form-based zoning, then, could require that buildin§s be constructed Co the front lot ~ine, with a specified minimum width of building frontage, to a hei§ht of four to six stories, after which there is a prescribed set back, and so forth. Specification of form undoubtedly will influence use because some forms are more conducive to certain uses than to others. However, the zoning would say nothing about what goes into the build- ing, so market forces would determine such uses. Of course, this is not the same as say- ing Chat planners are indifferent to the uses, just that the uses are to be an outgrowth of form, and g'ettin§ that form correct is assumed sufficient to create a better city. Today, the pioneers of form-based zoning in reality employ a less pure, less formal, tess ideolog'icat strain of the technique. What is most persuasive about form-based zoning, however, is its implicit critique that, more Chon any other traditional zoning element, use regu- lation has been least successful, lane Jacobs is hardly alone in decrying the sterility of single- use environments, whether they be singte-fami- (y suburban residential districts or hi§h-density downtown office districts. One antidote woutd be a mixed-use zoning prescription that tells the mad(et what it must do. Another is the generic prescription of form-based zoning that is nominally indifferent when it comes to.use, if the mad<et wants to have half-office, half-resi- dential, then so be it. Form-based zoning inspires thou§hts of sin§utar attention to the other members of zonin§'s trio. For example, what about use- based zon[n§, where uses are prescribed and form is ignored? Might that cast Coo much of a shadow? Or perhaps planners should worry about bulk alone, as the introduction of floor- area ratios partially .did, rather than the deeply sculpted proscriptions of setbacks, yards, coverage, and the like, OUTCO~IES, NOT INPUTS To this day, zoning has avoided qualitative standards that actually come far closer to describing' what planners are really trying to accomplish than the descriptions encom- passed by standard zoning vocabulary. For' example, imagine a zoning district that required development that "contributes to a good neighborhood" or "adds to the diversity of urban living"' or "generates social capital, civic democracy, and community values," without resort to the traditional zoning argot of use, shape, or bulk restrictions. 8ut that wou(d be impossible, say the planners, because it would be too difficult for develop- ers to know, planners to assess, and courts to iudge, just what all that soft stuff means. To be sure, even a fully discretionary zoning ' scheme would- have trouble with such qualita- tive standards alone, because they are as ambiguous in their measurable realization as the,/are ambitious tn their indulgent promise. At the same time, the very idea, if not use, of what may be termed performance zonin§ inspires different ways of thinking about the overall regulatory approach. If the trio of use, shape, and bulk is endlessly ma(Jeable, playing .Si~ravinsky as well as Beethoven, it is also unde- niable that this framework has a certain sterile quality to it, remaining divorced on/ts face from the human aims planning seeks to achieve. Performance zoninE says to the owner that §ov- eminent does not care how she achieves a given standard, as long as it is achieved. Thus, if the owner can do heaw industrial uses while not exceeding a specified decibel count, then go to it. If the owner can build a too-story office towefwithout casting a shadow, then do Even oeo-classical economists would have a naturai afffinitv for performance zonin§, at ieast to the extent that [t allows the private marl(et, and thus the forces of efficiency, to i'~nd ihe ZONING PRACTICE ol.o4 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIAnON I p~_Oe 6