Form-Based Codes in America

so i'm going to give people a minute or two to come in and then we're going to start the webinar [Music] wait are we talking about biophilia today because i feel like i kind of am [Laughter] that's a really cool place you're in susan designed it oh so nice if you have to be without electricity because of the big storm this is the place to do it yeah absolutely their connection seems great so it worked out for something if i drop out please go on without me so we're gonna get started welcome to on the park bench a public square conversation brought to you by the congress for the new urbanism on the park bench presents conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time this webinar series is a platform for cnu members and like-minded people to engage debate and collaborate on the pressing issues related to urban places and people we've got a great webinar today on the subject of form based codes in america with emily talon and hazel boris discussion with interviewer and moderator louisa lata and form-based codes have been a part of the new urbanism right from the beginning the urbanists were faced with a a regulatory system that made it pretty much illegal to build walkable places all across america when they started the project of of trying to build um mixed-use walkable places again and uh this project has been underway for uh the better part of 40 years and it's gone through many different phases uh it's especially gained momentum in the last 20 years where hundreds of cities and towns across america have adopted codes that had form base elements to them and we're going to be hearing more about that in this presentation we're going to be hearing about trends and latest developments in form based codes and research by emily talon on really the social impacts of form based codes we're going to so share your thoughts on hashtag on the park bench www.tinyurlurl.com otpb feedback and i'd like to remind everybody uh to uh to keep in mind cnu 30 in oklahoma city save the dates it's march 23rd through 26 2022 and it's going to be cnu's first in-person congress since 2019. yay everybody's excited about that at this one you can learn how a clear commitment to urbanism careful financing and resident engagement can spark a city's renaissance learn more at cnu.org cnu30 um our first panelist emily talon is a professor of urbanism at the university of chicago where she teaches urban design and directs the urbanism lab she holds a phd in urban geography from the university of california santa barbara and a master's degree in city planning from ohio state she's a fellow of the american institute of certified planners and the recipient of the guggenheim fellowship talon has written extensively in the topics of urban design new urbanism and social equity her books includes include new urbanism and american american planning design for diversity urban design reclaimed city rules and neighborhood she is co-editor of the journal of urbanism our other panelist today is hazel boris president of place makers inc in canada and place makers llc in the u.s both city planning firms are passionate about walkable urban and rural places and believe that diverse character-rich neighborhoods can reduce the velocity of climate change while significantly increasing well-being and resilience she guides governments around the world through policy and land use law reforms and helps developers get things built under the increasingly prevalent form-based development bylaws of the new economy hazel is an engineer with an mba specializing in finance and marketing she's co-author of the pandemic toolkit codestudy.org codescore.org and hazel is a place shakers.com blogger and serves on the boards of the winnipeg foundation and the transect codes council and is a member of the winnipeg art gallery associates our interviewer and moderator today is louisa leita and she was born in sao paulo brazil and raised in miami and has lived in new york city she holds degrees in economics and communications from new york university as well as a master of architecture from the university of miami school of architecture since 2016 she's been working as an urban designer town planner and project director at dover coal and partners where she is currently leading projects that range from equity focused municipal planning in downtown oakland california to a health and wellness village center in esterio florida for the lee health memorial public health system to a new form based code for the city of punta gorda florida in addition to her skills as an illustrator and street designer louisa has a special interest in expertise in the areas of social and economic and environmental resilience today we're going to have a presentation by the panel followed by a discussion uh with the panel and moderator and followed by q a from the audience so please have your questions ready type them into the q a function of zoom as they occur to you because they will probably be probably be answered more or less in the order that they're asked with that i'm going to pass this along to the panelists to share their screen thank you rob i appreciate that i i would like to lead off but louise has been kind enough to share my presentation because we had a big storm last night and i have no electricity here so thanks for thanks for that louisa um i'm not gonna spend much pardon is it sure thing okay thanks don't i'm not going to spend much time here because the reason we're really here today is to hear emily's new research findings on her latest paper which is incredibly thorough and thought-provoking on the subject of the impacts of form-based codes from from 2000 to 2010 to 2020 across the united states so i'm just going to give a little bit of background for that and then pass it off to her next slide please so since uh before i uh start though i just want to to acknowledge that i am joining you today from winnipeg manitoba canada which is located on treaty one the original lands and waters of the anishinaabe inaudible dakota and donate peoples and the homeland of the metis nations uh committing ourselves to reconciliation and moving forward in a spirit of peace next slide so and about 20 2006 2007 we started codestudy.org the the analysis of what codes across the united states canada and globally conform with form based code institute criteria that is co-authored with dr talon and matt lambert next slide please and one of the things that we started noticing were these regional concentrations within different states and provinces in the us and canada where most of the form-based codes are the older form-based codes however certainly originated um you know in seaside and then have been more prevalent in the u.s which is why dr talon's study is as focused in on that next slide please but one of the things also to note is within that time frame from from 2000 to 2010 and now to 2020 that her study contemplates that is when the preponderance of form based codes have been adopted 92 of them have been adopted since 2001 next slide please and uh also on that previous slide don't go back but the the point there uh the the current year is actually um codes that are in process and so the the graph is intentionally skewed but just the point is that it's uh that more of them are underway than have been adopted to date significantly the other thing though about codestudy.org is the fact that it's a completely volunteer effort that's never been funded so we don't always we aren't always able to track adoption rates and if you have a form based code that's adopted that's not reflected please do send it to us from cnu louisville we had a form-based code boot camp there in which we tried to as part of an open space format get folks to start thinking about what their elevator speeches would be on the subject of why cities and towns and rural municipalities and counties and states and provinces want to adopt this sort of land use law that allows a compact settlement pattern that allows a mixture of compatible uses that is transit ready instead of the transit impervious more suburban formats that we have been predominantly building over this last 75 years and so from that cnu louisville conversation code score was born that is co-authored by my partner kade binfield and me and what we do in codespoor.org is we look at our favorite 135 mostly peer-reviewed studies that tie the shape of place back to the return on investment to the environment to economy and to the well-being of society so what we try to do within those 135 studies is look at what the findings are that the predominant drivers of of the studies are and what the indicators of those drivers are and the behaviors so the studies find that walkability and access to nature predominantly increased physical well-being for a vast array of reasons and that nature-rich active environments increase generally increase psychological well-being that walkability short commutes in civic space increase social capital that a variety of housing sizes and types tend to increase affordability that affordable housing and transportation together tend to reduce crime and that all drivers from the people category increase longevity next slide please then with respect to environmental indicators infill compact mixed use and street connectivity tend to decrease vehicle miles traveled along with greenhouse gas emissions which i'm hoping that emily's next study dives more deeply into or perhaps in q a we can talk about that some more and that compact mix use and transit access decrease automobile trips per week and that compact land development patterns increase land and ecosystem conservation and watershed protection and that all drivers from the planet category increase air and water quality next slide please then from an economic perspective the the 135 studies generally find that pent-up demand for walkability shows an indicator of new construction increases compact development patterns tend to increase jobs per acre nature green space and walkability tend to increase property value compact transect transit accessible mixed use tend to decrease housing transportation costs compact development patterns tend to decrease household energy and water costs tend to increase tax revenue per acre back to the local unit of the unit of local government and tend to decrease infrastructure cost for both governments and private developers and tend to decrease service costs over time and then all drivers from the people category tend to decrease healthcare costs and then all drivers from the profit category increase return on investment so codescore.org definitely and then you know when you go there you get excerpts from all of of the different studies along with hyperlinks to go check them out yourselves um but but what code study the codescore.org does is looks generally at at these 135 studies and then ties them back to the sorts of development patterns that form-based codes usually generate but next slide please what em what dr talon's uh work um is going it does so um thoughtfully and thoroughly is is actually looks very carefully at specific form-based codes compared to surrounding areas over time so um while for codestudy.org which is what her study pulls from um i just want to to give you all on on today's zoom uh a special request that if your form-based code codes that you've written or been involved with or know about that comply with form-based code institute criteria if they are not listed on codestudy.org or they aren't shown as adopted there if you wouldn't mind submitting them to us just email them to me hazel placemakers.com you'll have to confirm you're human sorry about that spam filter or tweet them over to me at h boris that would be much appreciated because all of these studies have benefited from contributions from thousands of people over the decades so we really appreciate your help on that and with that i will hand it over to emily emily will you be sharing your screen so it will be okay so i guess i need to be given that option or let's see i think you'll be able to i have that option yay um okay everybody seeing that all right um okay so are you looking at a screen that says landscape and urban planning yes okay perfect um thank you so much hazel and please call me emily we know each other um i uh yeah thanks so much for that overview uh hazel is just doing an amazing job and she has been over the years um tracking for base codes and you know there is no entity out there doing this work i mean this is really a crowd-sourced kind of thing and thank god for hazel um taking the charge the lead on compiling this information so what i wanted to do is and i've been wanting to do this for a long time and i finally found the bandwidth to pull it all together um is look at what are the socioeconomic associations uh of form-based codes and so it's not really looking at the impact of form-based codes because that would imply some kind of causality it's really looking at what kinds of places are adopting form-based codes what what are these communities because and one motivation for looking at this is that you do tend to hear the critique more and more that form-based codes are just uh a white people thing and um associated with affluence and you know oh there's another new urbanist thing that's you know not about communities of color and um and so i i just wanted to let the data speak for itself on that um so it's really about looking at these associations um and so what i did was i i just thought about okay what are we trying to do with form-based codes um what would be an association with a form-based code area or community that um you know that that we would like to see associated and so i think what that boils down to would be some kind of equity and diversity and density um and those are three kinds of associations that we might like to see so so i basically i used census data to pair with form-based code locations to see what these relationships are really looking like oh let's see okay so um the there was a lot of work put into trying to figure out uh okay where are these form-based codes and how do we actually locate them within census tracts and then what do we compare them to um so uh you know using uh hazel's uh data set um that she's been working on over the years um i i started with her form-based codes uh list in the code study and i i whittled it down a little bit in several ways i did not look at codes that were not adopted yet so it had to be adopted i didn't look at codes that were more regional and county level there are some codes that apply to an entire state those were not part of it i also narrowed the list to just be formed just be areas that are within core metropolitan um statistical areas um so that's basically you know large urban um counties and so and the other thing i did is i did not include codes that were for entire cities like miami and denver you know the entire metropolitan area because and the reason is that um it's really hard to then just figure out what's a form based code area and what is not a form based code area so because uh you know if you're looking at an entire large city you're gonna have to include all the surrounding tracks and you know so if you want more details on that whole selection process um i'll point i'll give you the paper um so um so basically this study is about medium and small cities towns and neighborhoods um also i did include farm-based codes that covered parts of large cities uh for example um phoenix has you know there are areas in there that are now um uh guided by farm-based codes so those were included it was just if it was an entire large metropolitan area i didn't include it so the total number of codes that i looked at was 274. um direction um and hazel already showed some of this data but for the codes that i used this was the kind of time span i was looking at i also kind of cut it off at 2015 because i wanted to look at what the trends were up until 2020 so i'm looking at data over three different time periods and i want to make sure i was capturing codes that were might have had some relationship with 2020 data so this is a map showing um all those f uh form based code tracks um uh so of those 274 codes um the next step was to find out what census tracts they're located in it and that was a big project and luckily i do have student workers available um that's really key to the success of any of this kind of research but so i had to i they went through um a good year actually going form-based code by form-based code and trying to figure out well what were what was the spatial delineation of these codes what kind of area are they um are they pertaining to and looking at trying to figure out what the boundaries of these codes are and as you can imagine that's not very straightforward it's about looking through planning documents and looking through zoning ordinances and in the end we were able to flag about a thousand form based code tracks as we call them so the next step is okay so you have these form-based code tracks and you have a bunch of census data for those tracks what can you say about them in a comparative way so if you find that you know they have a certain racial profile or whatever that doesn't really mean much you need to be able to compare them to something so what i compared them to was the surrounding tracks so um they had to be tracks within a as i mentioned a core based statistical area i only retained tracks that had a minimum population threshold so they had to have at least 50 people living in them and um so that final tally of surrounding tracks that's the comparative tracks was about 36 000. so you're you're comparing a thousand form based code tracks to a comparative set of 36 000 the other thing i really thought was important to do is to differentiate between products that are mostly suburban and kind of lower intensity use versus inner city you know downtown kind of form-based code areas um or tracks and so i used um i went through a process of a clustering technique using data from um this source um and uh and basically differentiated tracks that were mostly suburban versus urban so that's just two two different categories that i used and then um so basically um looking at those form-based code tracks i wanted to look at what variables were associated or in statistical parlance you might say predicts or you might say explains um stay away from the impact which is causality but what would predict the presence of a farm based code track and those are my i talked at the beginning about thinking about equity issues and diversity and density the dependent variable here is simply a dummy variable of whether or not the tract is a form-based code tract or not and this is a table that kind of sums up everything that i found so you can see for those three years of 2010 and 2020 looking at the the associations of these different variables with whether it's suburban or urban uh as a tract and plus sign means that there's a significant statistical difference in a for a foreign-based code track so in other words in 2000 um the percentage of hispanic for foreign-based codes tracks was higher in suburban and urban areas the percentage of white was higher in 2010 and 2020. and i'm going to talk a little bit more about that because it seems confusing how can you have higher percentage white and higher percentage of um you know in all these areas but the racial um situation can be a little confusing how to how to pare all that down um so so um you can i guess i don't need to go into any of these in too much detail you can kind of see what's what's shaking out here um i do want to spend a little time on um something like income which i think would be really interesting to folks um so income in my data those form-based code tracks in urban locations um there was a higher median income for farm-based code tracks in the urban areas um but there was actually a lower median income in suburban areas uh in all years so i think that's that's um that's pretty interesting um and something to kind of think more about not allows us not a lot of difference between form based code tracks and and other tracks in terms of housing value i did find um lower median rent um poverty rate was often higher um so you know some of these it's there's a story here that i'm trying to get at and trying to parse out but it's it's not always that easy to figure it out um i do want to um just mention about these chain the the 2010 to 2020 change variables um it it does seem that in those suburban and urban locations the um percentage of white population was lower for foreign-based code tracks um the percentage percentage of black population was higher in suburban and you can see some of these other trends going on the density variable the only thing i found was that high density housing types were higher in suburban locations for form-based code tracks um so this this is actually my last slide um there's there's a lot of detail in the paper i don't know if i'm doing a great job summarizing it all but i think kind of the bottom line is that the picture here is kind of mixed i would say that i i think we are safe to say that form-based codes are not translating to a picture of gentrification and white affluence i don't think that that's really a fair charge um looking at my data anyway and the other kind of takeaway i'll say is that i was surprised at the differences between suburban and urban locations and it seemed that the significance of form-based codes were more prominent in suburban as opposed to urban locations uh so uh with that i think i will just stop and we'll go into a discussion um okay okay i know hazel has some questions and i have some questions as well um and hazel i had some questions on some of what you presented as well just early on things that that jumped out to me that i was hoping we might discuss um briefly and i think what was most notable for me in looking at you know the form based codes that have been adopted um the last 30 years 30 plus years was there seems to be a significant dip starting in 2010 all the way to about what looked to be 2016 um 2017 and then there's this large spike and you already kind of answered it and that a lot of those are um in progress form-based codes that are in progress but it just got me thinking not just about the demographics and socioeconomic context that emily's been studying in her work but also about the kind of external economic forces and i was curious what your thoughts were if you know how much of that dip that began in 2010 for the number of new form-based codes has to do with the great recession and kind of how much development and economic cycles affect planning and zoning decisions in particular in relation to form-based codes and then also kind of why we think there is this large spike now in in new form-based codes that are being created and hopefully eventually adopted so i don't know if either of you have any thoughts on that specifically immunities ah thank you sorry um well i'm happy to take a first crack at that if you like i mean i think once again as emily said causality is pretty hard to determine in in these studies in general and and you know maybe um so i'm not really sure precisely the answer to your question but just from you know the stories that people uh tell us about the form based codes i do think it is heavily associated with the housing crash in 2006 but also plenty of people use form-based codes to try to dig themselves out of economic challenges and uh and remove sort of the barriers that usually stand in the way of development so there are all sorts of reasons for doing them other people do them to you know remove the systemic racism that is inherent in most land use law across the u.s with with lot size minimums and that sort of thing okay [Music] emily i don't know if you have anything to add to that but um i also was interested in just seeing how many more form-based codes there seem to be in florida california and texas um and you know i was curious if you think that's a reflection of the firms that are located there or potentially just the local planning history or preferences at the municipal level or maybe a probably a combination of both but interesting to think about why there's disproportionately so many more in those states and what that might mean for being able to implement more form based codes in states that perhaps have a different history or you know experience with form-based codes well those are three of the most populous states so i think it probably tracks population in some ways but you know florida being being the home of uh so much uh new urbanist activity that would be kind of um kind of uh expected um but uh yeah i don't know i don't know exactly why why does new urbanism happen in some places and not others hazel thoughts i think it's i think it's a competitive thing at least as much as i can tell i mean when as we track these we notice that that that the region starts competing with each other so uh and and when one area gets one and starts to show appreciable differences in you know urban form and and town character and that sort of thing the neighbors tend to take notice and you know we've certainly we've certainly written plenty of form-based codes because a neighbor's form-based code was doing great things and somebody else in the region wanted one so i think there's definitely that tipping point of good work generates competition friendly competition interesting [Music] great um i have another question for you emily and i think it's just you know looking at the work done um on this research paper specifically and the number of new form-based codes that are in progress um you know even just this year you know it seems like a great moment to think about what types of information specifically data that cities and planning professionals should be measuring and tracking as we look to understanding better understanding the impacts of these codes over time with so many in progress right now um you know what advice would you have for cities and planning professionals who are interested in tracking key performance indicators related to form-based codes you know to really help increase the amount of data and information we have for future studies like the one that you undertake that's a great question and actually i've thought about that a lot um nobody's nobody does track this stuff you know even how many how many walkable places are there you know how how what's our ability what progress have we made in creating more walkable urbanism i i think that's um we're we're not doing a good job of tracking all of that and um so the question is whose responsibility is it to do that um and there it i i think that it would be great if cnu did that and i actually um or made that one of its key functions but then how do you monetize that like somebody has to pay for that that is you know hazel is doing all this volunteer work because it's a labor of love um i do this kind of research because that's what faculty are paid to do you know they're supposed to be cranking out research papers so whose municipalities what would be their incentive to track this kind of information if they i i guess they do have that incentive but they seem so stressed just like keeping up with the basics of day-to-day planning work you know who's really going to take on the research arm of it so i would just put in a further plug for cnu to try to take it on it's not a very good answer but i i think it's a great question though because i think you really do need to have the numbers to promote this work and to promote the value of form-based codes you need to keep tracking it it's it's really essential well i know i know that because in a lot of cities we work they're more and more interested in tracking themselves all of these indicators which can also then be used um if they're adopting form-based codes so it's an interesting question really to think about especially who should be responsible and how we can be aggregating all the information and it doesn't have to be complicated i mean uh scott bernstein i know is on today's call always says you know it's hard to track more than like seven things on the dashboard of a car so start with start with simplicity and so start with things like intersection density you know start with so many of the things that are on mle study right now and and all of those that data is predominantly accessible to local governments so it really isn't hard or you know track greenhouse gas emissions per household before at the time of adoption for sure make sure you're benchmarking everything at the time of adoption and then tracking you know um those sorts of valuations over time it's interesting you mentioned uh intersection density because there was a study that came out earlier this year i don't know if you saw it emily where somebody had looked at development on street grids and found that there was a major return to development on street grid since the year 2000 which seemed quite surprising to me um so i i wrote an article on it in public square and i think he attributed a number of different factors just people moving back into cities and towns was one of them but also the changes in codes which was incur which were encouraging these sorts of grid but patterns was that jeff boeing yeah that's a jeff bow yes yeah yeah yeah yeah so i mean that kind of came obviously he's doing work in in that area as well um i just wanted to mention that we might want to begin going to q a at some point um yeah absolutely hazel i don't know if you wanted to ask any of your questions but i'm already looking at some of the q and a questions and i'll give you a chance to ask anything you wanted to um emily's research before let's jump to the q a because my questions are so absurdly nerdy that we'll just save mine to the end if we have time otherwise emily's promised me uh you know one long evening of going through mine in detail thank you though louisa sure so we had a question early on from paul and it's pretty specific he was curious about maryland he noticed that it was not on the list of states that emily was looking at uh with form-based codes um but so it was just kind of a specific question and you may not know if the top of your head if there are actually any form-based modes in maryland i had two in maryland okay so so obviously emily's research didn't look at every single form based code that you see listed on the codestudy.org so um there there's many more than were selected based on specific criteria for emily's studying in in research so yeah um clears that up um a lot of interest uh patricia mentioning you know how useful this kind of research would be for you know getting into a lot of different outcomes beyond just uh demographics socioeconomic demographics um we have a question from marilyn what do you think about the high rental rates you found in four base code places do we have to trade off building equity or homeownership for walkability environment etc so um well i found that the housing value there wasn't a lot of difference and in fact it was just lower in 2000 rent was um was lower in tracks with foreign base codes and and by the way i want to bring up something that rob actually brought up to me from the very beginning of when i told him about this study we're looking at tracks and that you know the form based codes don't align with tracks then this is actually this is a liability of this study you know the the form based code might be for a small much smaller section of an entire track so that's actually a caveat that i wanted to mention uh but i guess uh the question was about the percentage of rental units being higher in form-based co-tracks in all years um that's actually a good thing right um i think that uh the yeah that's that's a good thing don't we need more rental units well i think it really speaks to the fact that form-based codes try to create uh naturally occurring affordable housing plus naturally occurring affordable transportation so i think that your study affirms that it i mean it doesn't speak to the transportation part which is one of my nerdy questions we can talk about later but but you know for the housing part it your study affirms that that that is being achieved to some extent right there was a question also earlier i forgot um it was asking about the actual shape files um for the study control areas so is that is that information emily that's available um or shared anywhere if people are interested in in the clusters you were looking at specifically yeah um i possibly maybe um the i mean it's the sense yeah could that person please just email me and we'll talk about that um about possibly sharing data talon uchicago.edu i'll put it in the chat great uh we had another question from david weeks again looking at the kinds of things that could be studied more closely um was there any analysis of political party affiliation for communities with form-based codes it's one way of knowing you know do are the communities adopting form based codes skewing more liberal or more conservative comparatively it didn't seem like that was one of the items on your on your list of variables but an interesting i love that idea i love that idea i i mean now that i have all the form-based code tracks um you know i i want to partner with people to look at other things like political affiliation i think that would be really interesting i didn't work with that but you but be careful emily because when we get hired to write form-based codes i never ever look at local political affiliation because for me it just doesn't matter i feel like um you know you could you can want to advance walkable compact mixed use high performance urbanism from both sides of the aisle and and making it a political football i think only potentially hurts the cause instead of helps it because i you know i've never gone back and looked at our for the 111 units of municipal government that we've worked for i've i've never gone back and and looked at that because i don't even want to know um so anyway that would just be my uh yes planning is politics in so many ways but i would love form based codes to not become too much that way just because we need everybody at the wheel you know to get the sort of returns that that they are producing but yeah but just one opinion okay no i get that um but we're also not afraid of the empirical truth right um and but what if we found that foreign-based codes tended to be in republican areas we could shame the democrats like oh i think your progressive democrats well sorry you're not doing well so um there might be some i don't know how it would play out i i honestly don't know it'd be really it'd be really interesting i mean looking at the places that have the most form-based codes i think it's pretty interesting just right there as a piece of information that california texas and florida are where you have the most and obviously you'd have to go at a much more granular level to understand exactly what the party of affiliation or political affiliations would be but um you know looking at those three states i'm my best guess is that it would be more varied than you might than you might think yeah i like that idea that might have to be my next paper whoever was writing about that please do get in touch um there's another question here similarly about different ways we can look at this is have you ever thought about comparing this from patricia have you ever thought about comparing organic traditional neighborhood communities versus those planned with form-based codes so like the naturally occurring traditional neighborhood versus a um a new neighborhood with a regulated through a form-based code that'd be interesting i wonder how you could as a practical matter how you would make that differentiation maybe i mean there people have been using things like intersection density and block size and a lot size to try to figure out um where are the walkable you know places with walkable urban form so that might be your kind of base and you could compare that to form based code tracks that'd be interesting however so many of the form-based codes uh apply to the town center or the the central business district or downtown that are already walkable urban form and that have intersection density in place to support the sorts of you know compact mixed use the building addressing the streets sort of formats that we that form-based codes generally try to generate so it's very tricky we've we've thought about that quite a bit and it's harder to do than you might think yeah absolutely um and we we find that you know we create form-based codes in areas that have already kind of traditional um development patterns and they're wanting to preserve that and that's the reason they're actually looking for a form based code so that's a good point another question in regards to your findings from scott princeton is there any discernible relationship between the findings denoted by plus and minus and which firms took the lead on designing these 200 plus codes [Music] i'm sorry i didn't quite get that um is there any discernible relationship between the findings denoted by plus and minus in which firms took the lead on designing these 200 codes oh which firms took need um okay another good uh topic for research we i think that that data is there the the firms that are associated with these form-based codes so that could be plugged in is not something that i looked at um hazel it's all there right it is and it isn't i mean we stopped tracking that just because this is a volunteer effort and over time so many groups of people tend to be involved in updates to you know some other firm's code so you and the the code study does track lead firms and and sub-consultants for the usually for the first form based code and if it's as if it's uh something that's published and knowable for the revision often that's in there too but it we just we're spending so much time having when when it was published um when we used to publish that column uh having people debate it that i just stopped publishing that column because it became just too time consuming but the data is in there but people would debate the veracity of it it's hard enough to uh keep track when it's actually adopted or not oh we lost our amazing moderator uh-oh um hazel are you still you're still actively putting new codes on there on a daily i am i just we're getting we are in the process of um updating our website and so i haven't uh updated the the codestudy.org portal in a while but i am updating the underlying uh information it does need time and effort so before your next big paper emily give me a six month warning and uh i'll try to to stop doing other volunteer work and come back and and volunteer on this one uh for a bit as well okay okay ooh are we to my questions now or rob are you here to make us stop talking i know i like i'm just jumping in to maybe help to answer the q a but lisa looks like she's coming back now um luisa are you with us yes so sorry can you hear me my computer just had a meltdown is there may i jump in here with a question real quick as you're absolutely reorienting sorry emily no i can i just ask um is there a way to do these chat questions um get reserved or retained for because there's people are putting in some really good ideas about research that needs to be done on form based codes and i i feel like it's really cool that they're coming up with all these ideas and i would like to um have that information kept i don't think i think the chat can be i think we can keep the chat but i'll look into that okay thanks so emily my biggest question for you is really about density and uh in your paper on page eight part five under results you say and i quote finally population density was lower for fbc tracks in urban locations in all decades there was no significant difference in suburban locations but yet later on you say and i quote the low and medium density housing was sporadically lower what is interesting is the sustained level of higher levels of high density housing forms for fbc tracks in all time periods and both suburban and urban locations so i guess what my question is is how can population density be lower if low and medium density housing is lower and high density is higher does that just mean that form-based coat areas have a lower total population yeah i mean this is just uh you know the track level density is the whole tract area of the whole track divided by population right so um with the high the the three different housing types are really looking at well how much is single family dwelling how much is in the missing middle and how much is the higher you know high-rise stuff and so it's interesting that it can still be overall there isn't more population density in form-based code tracks in fact it's lower in the urban ones but still you do have more higher density housing being built so that just kind of goes to show don't only look at population density as your measure you know you have to look at what are the different types of housing being built so then a follow-up oh so follow-up question of that is so considering crowding especially you know in the post-covet era hopefully postcode but if if all things go better than they have been um are form based codes do you do you think you're studying uh it indicates that our form based codes are helping with both low and high density places move toward a more gentle density um i don't know what you what do you mean by gentle density so like like the medium density the medium one i mean my data didn't didn't show that my data showed that it was the high density types that were consistently form-based code tracks had more of that um but not and not in the medium level but what was my high density i i forget what i what that cutoff was okay all right susan says five oh yeah uh five uh five plus units per structure okay that's pretty gentle yeah you know maybe it would be good to to um i mean i'm i'm a victim of how the census is differentiating things you know right so um and they only have it's a pretty crude category of five plus units in a structure right yeah so that's that's what you're showing there so you know it could very well be that it is a gentle density so i mean i think one of the biggest things i want to understand from this study is how does it change the story of what we've been talking about for the last 40 years of what is a farm based code and what does it do um and how does it affirm this the story that we've been hoping for so we know you know we were hoping for things like you know wealth and you say interestingly medium income and medium rent were actually lower in form based code tracks in suburban locations across all decades um although from from uh 2010 to 2020 suburban form-based code tracks became wealthier at a faster rate and when you say wealthier do you just mean in terms of increasing median income yeah okay so so then we didn't consider any sort of transportation affordability in this particular study is that right no no all right wish list for the next one yeah that would be a good one to include yeah but i think that the overall story is really positive i mean i was happy with the results and i'm a form-based code advocate you know and um i this is not like i said you know this is not uh alarm bells about oh it's this is all white people and gentrification um i don't think that's fair at all and i think that this data shows that it's a lot more nuanced than that so i think the message is if people start throwing that at a form-based code as a critique of it you know they might there might be some room to push back on such such critique okay we have a couple of questions about how the four base codes and areas were selected also um there was a question about whether the four base codes that were included in the study were those all um municipal form based codes or were there some developer form base codes included so that's that was one question that we got they're 100 municipal uh developer driven form-based codes that are uh that are regulated like covenant code and restriction sort of format for a private development are not included in codestudy.org so therefore they wouldn't be in emily study either and then marshall hines has a question about um you know what the selection was like he says there's obviously been some codes that have been more successfully implemented than others um did that at all play into which ones were selected for the study um or was it just a more kind of quantitative criteria in the ones you were including or not yeah i don't know what what is meant by successful um you mean in terms of the whether or not it's people are abiding by it as new development is happening or something like that or even how much new development has been constructed under the new code under the new legislation yeah no unfortunately that nuance is not in there um you know this is a really large format quantitative the entire country kind of study and it requires there what's needed is digging down for particular locations some and you know hazel and um kade benfield did an amazing job trying to figure out how to look at all the studies that have been done trying to um figure out what is what has been the economic value in particular of these codes so that research is there and i would encourage anyone to go to that website to try to find that answer i'm going to jump in here and just say that we're a little bit past the hour and uh it's scheduled to go for uh one hour however we can continue because we have a lot to talk about if you all want to continue for another half an hour or so and those who have to drop out can watch the video which will be posted on cmu.org in a day or so and we'll try to get to your questions if they're not answered yet i did want to ask one thing i i there's many other questions they're dealing with you know the various kinds of form-based codes and in areas where they're adopted like small towns like um entire cities or revitalization areas and the various impacts i was curious as to whether you know your data um whether we know uh what is the impact on small towns at all from from this um from your research or maybe hazel's research well i mean the most i differentiated was between urban and suburban so and you know taking out all the big cities that are not part of it so it the focus is on small towns and medium-sized cities um so but but you know parsing it more than that i didn't really do um hazel did you have just some general thoughts um i haven't specifically looked at that rob with the exception of of the few the few specific form-based code studies that are reflected on codescore.org and so those are usually self-reported from the cities and towns themselves and usually look at things like um uh you know new development free and post adoption they look at things like um increased property value for the nine months pre and post adoption they look at things like you know development applications for the 9 to 12 months pre and post adoption they look at things like estimated number of cars that would be taken off the road if 100 of new development were to occur under the optional form based code that was just adopted versus uh continuing as business as usual so those sorts of questions are what mostly they answer but i can't definitively tell you if small towns have generally been more or less successful than medium-sized or medium-sized cities or metro large metros i don't know good question there's a question also about transit and how that factors into the work so not in the selection of the clusters and i know you separated primarily by suburban versus urban but if there would be any way to take that data and look more closely at the transit networks in both the suburban and urban areas you looked at and be able to compare that when we think about walkability and dmt and other kind of indicators for greenhouse gas emissions and similar things so was that something that was part of the data side you were collecting uh no but i would think that the urban tracks would be the ones with transit as opposed to the suburban ones um i want i mean you could do that you could certainly have some kind of indicator for the track on whether or not it's got a transit stop within it um but i wonder what that would what the added value explanatory value of that would be but it gets something to look at sure that's great and there's a great question here by robert um and he says it seems that form based codes are only one piece a critical one of a larger set of policies needed to ensure affordable stable housing have you come across any that have been adopted in coordination with policies to help limit displacement and uh produce affordable housing and i know you mentioned this in your paper so i was curious if you wanted to elaborate on that definitely and you too hazel so is so this is a question about a form-based code adoption being paired with affordable housing policies to ensure that foreign-based code doesn't um you know price people out yeah i i don't think that that is very common um i think that that is something that needs to happen although uh again i'm not seeing evidence for my data that we should all be like freaking out about form-based codes you know making things unaffordable right now we don't have data showing that that's what's happening jurisdiction by jurisdiction that might be something to look at but it's um i don't know i and if that is happening absolutely we need to be proactive about making sure that you know what we want is walkable places that managed by a form based code to make them more walkable and we want everyone to be able to live there that's the holy grail and so we try to do what we can we get if we're just focused on the form based code piece and we don't care about the other piece that is not okay um so but you know again i'm not seeing huge red flags even though we you're not seeing huge red flags which is such great news about this study and we're so grateful for all your hard work on that emily um i i get your your point um louisa because or the the the caller's point that um or the zoomers point uh that you know that yes the the form based code does help establish naturally occurring affordable housing by removing minimum lot sizes by reducing or eliminating parking minimums and by allowing uh gentle density or or higher density housing types and then all sorts of affordable lifestyles choices that we know of but still in many places that are uh you know hot housing markets that's still not enough to create that natural affordability that the form based code supports and so other people are trying to pair other places some municipalities are trying to pair form-based code adoptions with things like transfer of development rights which really only works in very expensive marketplaces where there can be a more fluidity in that that market and more liquidity and and that just has very rarely actually worked well uh the thing that we're seeing work more frequently is the establishment of land trusts where and and the municipal government actually in some cases becoming um a developer themselves with with uh you know making covenants for permanently affordable housing or 20-year affordable housing or that sort of thing so those are the other sorts of policy related and you know p3 related sorts of initiatives okay there was another interesting question here looking specifically at median income uh if the medium increase income increase was done on a dollar value or percentage basis and also was that median income increase how does that compare to the cost of living increase that's something you had looked at at seeing you know if there was also a subsequent cost of living increase uh no no but it's um [Music] yeah no it's it's simply the median income statistic by tract that's reported by this um so but i think you're asking is the would the percent change be in um present value and that's a good question i don't remember if i did that or not because you know 2020 income median income is not comparable to 2010. sorry i don't remember if i if i present valued that um but it's yeah i can look into that great um and just a couple more questions so you know other people here are interested also in infrastructure improvements and enhancements one question do you think infrastructure improvements would make cities in the midwest for example look more closely into form based codes from an economic point of view or do you think the introduction of new infrastructure like electric charging stations would have on regions um that have fewer firm race codes so i guess you know some of the attendees are just interested in how you know built infrastructure might correlate with form-based codes um i'm not sure if there are any thoughts specifically on that we mentioned it a little bit with transit i know that wasn't the focus uh necessarily of the study but it'd be interesting to know for example if the adoption of a form-based code potentially facilitated infrastructure improvements for example street improvements things like that that go hand in hand with land use planning they have to especially in places where the form-based code is a mandatory requirement and where there is a rezoning that maps the new form-based zoning districts uh into place if it's just an optional overlay then the local government doesn't necessarily have to do those infrastructure upgrades but like the worst of all possible worlds and one of the few times that we've seen form-based codes repealed is when a city or a town adopts a mandatory form-based code and doesn't do the street improvements to to make that a pedestrian and cyclist friendly street but that they're asking the buildings to pull up to the edge of a wide fast street and that's zero setbacks and fast cars with no street trees or on street parking is just literally a collision waiting to happen so um yeah that it's very important i mean we often say land use first transportation second but the transportation second part does have to come and it has to come in the form of investment as well as planning yeah especially interesting thinking about these indicators of health and walkability um how much of that is a result specifically of some of those open space and street improvements that often come along with performance codes my study was really about the residential part of form-based codes but i think it's a really good point to look at the infrastructure piece of it the question for hazel what how what percentage of foreign-based codes do you think have both the private and public sector with regulated within them uh wow i think most of them especially in the united states definitely regulate both the public and the private realm they have you know they have street standards and sidewalk standards that are part of it so if you're doing infill or adaptive reuse and you're only doing a very small footprint of a lot then you probably you may or may not have to do any public realm upgrades but if you're a developer who's redeveloping multiple lots for either adaptive reuse infill or greenfield then you will be contributing to the public realm in streets sidewalks and civic spaces parks plazas playgrounds community gardens that sort of thing so they tend to be you know unified development codes that deal with both the public and private side of of life louisa may i answer a friend and colleague in my own region who's saying what does gentle density mean that i keep saying it today and you know it means different things in different places and in our region john it is um i think sometimes gentle density here means getting some of the rural municipalities to agree with with four dwelling units per acre you know because people want two acre lot uh sizes and so uh you know i i'd but in other places it means you know um something much more dense than that so so from my perspective it's you know kind of missing middle housing in some ways but but but more than that it's that gentle densification to take us up to um to the next level of kind of evolution of a place so i'm going to thank our panelists now for um and hazel and emily and louisa uh for a wonderful discussion on form based codes it's been really interesting it gets technical at times but the coding is absolutely critical to to what everybody is trying to do here and thank all of the participants and we've had a good number of participants on an august day when a lot of people are on vacation so thank everybody for for being part of this and once again this will be posted on cnu.org and we'll see um everybody at a future on the park bench webinar um we'll be continuing to do this a couple of times a month so everybody uh take care and have a good rest of your august and thank you rob thank you so much for organizing yes thank you so much much appreciated okay take care everybody bye everybody bye