I'd love a land use regime that just allows people to build any residential or commercial capacity they want wherever they can get the land to do it, but there will always be fear of "Manhattanization" that makes the easiest fixes much heavier lifts politically.
This has the benefit of being broadly acceptable in every single neighborhood in the city, even out to the suburbs and neighboring cities if you push it at a statewide level. And it gets people used to natural growth where they live, making the case for heavier changes in neighborhoods that truly need them a lot less alien to people's experience.
Plus, as density creeps upward, the case for good walking and neighborhood biking infrastructure increases, bringing back things like Main Street and the local library as parts of daily neighborhood life. This could really start improving a lot of neighborhoods all at once if it could get through.
I am rereading *When Paris Became Paris* by Joan DeJean (and I will be publishing a review of it on *What Are Streets For*). I have been a reader of Strong Towns for many years already and I think Paris offers some important examples of beneficial big projects with large neighborhood impacts: Pont Neuf, Place Royale, Ile Sainte-Louis, and the demolition of the defensive walls. These were all projects from the seventeenth century. But even if we acknowledge beneficial big projects, which should still make it easier to do small projects.
I love your idea of an Adaptive Code and am very interested in how you would handle industrial uses and non-grid suburban townhomes (like my own home). Unlike traditional rowhomes along a grid pattern, my street curves, bends, and has cul-de-sacs like your typical suburban subdivision and has groupings between 4-8 townhomes together with greenspace gaps in-between. We also have a situation now where our newest subdivisions are all designed to a finished state with an HOA to preserve it. Breaking through this statis seems difficult and I hope to see you flesh out this concept more!
Have you read “METROCOALESCENCE” by Sky Tallman? He has laid out a similar idea. He calls it functional zoning. He also introduces the concept of “Vernacular Resonance,” which addresses architecture through a points system. If you haven't, I would check it out. There are some good ideas in it for sure. Here is a link to a CNU article about it. https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2024/07/17/adaptable-zoning-proposal-walkable-cities
I liked how well you captured this different approach to policy making. I want more examples like this to reference in all areas of policy. How can we design policy that is adaptive by design and not geared towards stasis and central planning?
As I've said before I think you should be allowed to build any building type that already exists in a neighborhood (in most places, at least; an industrial area transitioning to mixed use might be different). But an adaptive code wouldn't have much utility in homogenous neighborhoods though, would it? If anything I could see it supercharging opposition because a re-zoning wouldn't just effect one site, it would potentially affect the development potential of the entire neighborhood.
I'd love a land use regime that just allows people to build any residential or commercial capacity they want wherever they can get the land to do it, but there will always be fear of "Manhattanization" that makes the easiest fixes much heavier lifts politically.
This has the benefit of being broadly acceptable in every single neighborhood in the city, even out to the suburbs and neighboring cities if you push it at a statewide level. And it gets people used to natural growth where they live, making the case for heavier changes in neighborhoods that truly need them a lot less alien to people's experience.
Plus, as density creeps upward, the case for good walking and neighborhood biking infrastructure increases, bringing back things like Main Street and the local library as parts of daily neighborhood life. This could really start improving a lot of neighborhoods all at once if it could get through.
Thanks, Michael. That’s exactly the idea!
Really thought provoking! And I appreciate your effort at addressing the difficult challenge of how change is perceived in established neighborhoods.
I am rereading *When Paris Became Paris* by Joan DeJean (and I will be publishing a review of it on *What Are Streets For*). I have been a reader of Strong Towns for many years already and I think Paris offers some important examples of beneficial big projects with large neighborhood impacts: Pont Neuf, Place Royale, Ile Sainte-Louis, and the demolition of the defensive walls. These were all projects from the seventeenth century. But even if we acknowledge beneficial big projects, which should still make it easier to do small projects.
I love your idea of an Adaptive Code and am very interested in how you would handle industrial uses and non-grid suburban townhomes (like my own home). Unlike traditional rowhomes along a grid pattern, my street curves, bends, and has cul-de-sacs like your typical suburban subdivision and has groupings between 4-8 townhomes together with greenspace gaps in-between. We also have a situation now where our newest subdivisions are all designed to a finished state with an HOA to preserve it. Breaking through this statis seems difficult and I hope to see you flesh out this concept more!
Have you read “METROCOALESCENCE” by Sky Tallman? He has laid out a similar idea. He calls it functional zoning. He also introduces the concept of “Vernacular Resonance,” which addresses architecture through a points system. If you haven't, I would check it out. There are some good ideas in it for sure. Here is a link to a CNU article about it. https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2024/07/17/adaptable-zoning-proposal-walkable-cities
I liked how well you captured this different approach to policy making. I want more examples like this to reference in all areas of policy. How can we design policy that is adaptive by design and not geared towards stasis and central planning?
As I've said before I think you should be allowed to build any building type that already exists in a neighborhood (in most places, at least; an industrial area transitioning to mixed use might be different). But an adaptive code wouldn't have much utility in homogenous neighborhoods though, would it? If anything I could see it supercharging opposition because a re-zoning wouldn't just effect one site, it would potentially affect the development potential of the entire neighborhood.