Tag: form-based code

This week my family enthusiastically celebrates both Canada Day and Independence Day, wishing Canada a happy 145th birthday, and the US a happy 236th. We honor the effective portions of the collective community vision that made these two nations great! The oldest continuously occupied settlements in each country are St. Continue Reading

Over the weekend, I had a Twitter exchange with Mitchell Silver and Steve Mouzon about a PlaceMakers concept that I’m feeling the need to explain in more detail. Return on No Investment – my new friend, RONI – is the whole idea of leveraging assets and connections that are already in place, while investing... Continue Reading

A number of recent conversations with Stefanos Polyzoides, Howard Blackson, and Matt Lambert regarding density and residential types has me thinking about building typology as one solution to visualizing and embracing density. (more…) Continue Reading

The corporate culture of our government has been a carte blanche to keep doing what we’ve been doing. This culture implies that what we’ve been doing works. In business, last year’s income statement is a major driver in this year’s action plan. If a product or service was profitable, then it’s nurtured and... Continue Reading

Getting ready for a TEDx talk in a few weeks, I’ve once again been noticing how the places that I love the most usually break the law. The contemporary development codes and bylaws, that is, which are geared to the car, not to the pedestrian and cyclist. Then last week’s urban retail SmartCode tweetchat with Bob... Continue Reading

Recently there’ve been rumblings of a very interesting trend among cities that have adopted form-based codes to guide the character of their neighbourhoods. That is, once a city begins to think urbanistically, they start to solve some really hard problems. And those problems lately have been to do with industrial uses,... Continue Reading

Given the means, most of us who work with communities to design and implement form-based codes would opt for a full-blown process, one that involves lots of community outreach, education and hands-on idea-testing in a charrette. But every situation is unique and sometimes you need something a bit more immediate. Sometimes... Continue Reading

Talk about geek love! When I wrote recently about having cooked up an iPhone app for collecting the physical metrics behind form-based codes, my intentions were pretty modest. First, I was just kind of giddy over how it was coming together and wanted to talk about it. But second, and more importantly, I wanted to get... Continue Reading

My career as an urban designer has been spent, not surprisingly, doing what urban designers do: crafting plans and regulations for municipalities to build great places. A side effect of this, much to my wonderful wife’s chagrin, is that whenever we travel I remain 'on the job,’ annoyingly interrupting her shopping... Continue Reading

Okay, so I have a little problem. Since 1985 I’ve been a committed, out of the closet, Macoholic. I wrote my architectural thesis on an Apple IIe. Don’t do the math -- I’ll be fifty this year. A couple of months ago one of my business partners, Howard Blackson, suggested we find a way to use our iPhones and iPads... Continue Reading