Neighborhoods - Tools for Neighborhood Planning

Community Engagement

Planners have many tools at their disposal to help form cities.  None of these tools, however, is more valuable than a community’s citizenry.  A community that gives its citizens opportunities to help form its physical places, has a population that is invested and connected.

Community Engagement can take multiple formats and be undertaken in a range of scales, but it can’t be just a token sentiment.  Wide ranging surveys from the broadest audience can be achieved with Internet-based polling and engagement software.  Sometimes the most effective method of connection is the simplest, like setting up tables and booths outside a local coffee shop or simply taking a walk with key stakeholders. Public workshops can be single-day events, or multi-day sessions at one time or spread out over several weeks or even months. 

Once in a while, a large gathering is needed. Called a “Charrette”, this intensive multi-day effort should be administered by experienced professionals who understand how to frame the effort, keeping public conversations on track, so outcomes will directly address the issues at hand and net the greatest benefit. True charrettes take a minimum of 3-1/2 days.  This allows for gathering information, schematic planning ideas, and multiple iterations of feedback before the plan becomes final. You can learn more at the National Charrette Institute.

The most important aspect of public workshops happens before the day(s) of the event.  With good preparation, data can be gathered, distilled, and graphically presented so participants are informed of both the realities and perceptions of a community. Without insightful preparation, a charrette can turn out to be a charade.

During the workshop, sessions such as Visual Preference Surveys can help a community define a common vision. They can also provide solid legal underpinnings to confront those in the future who may question the validity of such a vision.

Zoning and Form-Based Codes

Form-Based Codes are zoning regulations that help real estate developers and architects design projects which create a pedestrian-friendly public realm (street corridors, public gathering spaces, etc.). 

Contrary to form-based codes, conventional zoning codes focus on the individual uses of buildings – sometimes parsing out uses with far too much detail and regulation and often requiring that uses be separated, even though they are complimentary with each other.  Conventional zoning codes also tend to regulate building size and position with mathematics instead of the physical aspects that really matter. The built result of conventional zoning codes often leads to an isolated environment where everyone has to drive everywhere for everything. This all but ensures the design and construction of soulless places that are not beloved by those who pay for and use them.

Form-based codes – on the other hand – are graphic, easily understood (when well-written), and focus on the outward form of buildings and how they create high-value, safe, pleasant, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. Form-Based codes tell developers and architects the general aspects of what a community wants from its newly-designed buildings. Usually form-based codes avoid getting into architectural design details, understanding that design creativity is in the hands of the designer, not the code book.  A form-based code deals with the broad topics of building massing, placement, frontage, location of parking, and – yes – general building use. Form-based codes encourage architects and developers to create buildings and spaces that form a high quality public realm.

Asset and CHALLENGES Mapping

All too often comprehensive plans show statistics (sometimes with mind-numbing detail) in narrations sprinkled with charts and graphs.  While these statistics are important, they are almost always only relevant when applied to a map.  For example, it’s not enough to see a statistic which shows a city has enough grocery stores.  The community must know where those stores are located – and where they’re NOT located.  Asset and Challenges mapping does this.  Asset and Challenges mapping is a cold hard look at what a community has, what that community needs, and where those needs are.

Pedestrian ShedS

The Pedestrian Shed is a helpful tool that urban designers use to measure the walkability of a community. A Pedestrian Shed is a circle applied to map that shows how far most people will walk in 5 minutes.  Generally, people can walk about 1300 feet (or a quarter of a mile) in 5 minutes.  If a community can arrange land use / zoning, buildings, and parking, in such a way that allows for a lot of functions to be within a 5 minute walk, then they have a better chance of developing a vibrant, sustainable neighborhood.

If a street is too wide, or the traffic on it is traveling too fast and placed too close to the sidewalk, or if it is bordered on both sides with things like large asphalt surface parking lots, blank walls, or other hostile barriers, then the distance most people will willingly walk is much shorter than 1300 feet.

If, however, a street corridor is lined with buildings full of storefronts and building entries, a pleasant streetscape, and well-formed gathering places, then a comfortable walk for most people will be much longer than 5 minutes and 1300 feet.  Careful planning and design can leverage the pedestrian experience into a vital component of economic vitality and livability.

Tactical Urbanism

Tactical Urbanism, or Pop-Up Urbanism, is the intervention of new ideas – often small and temporary – that can present an alternative immediate future.  This can be an important step for communities, especially communities with despair and little new development.  For example, communities can show how on-street parking spaces can be repurposed for some other use, or how a vacant lot can become a place for monthly public parties after it’s cleaned up. Tactical Urbanism can also show how a street can be re-shaped into a narrower, more pedestrian-friendly corridor and still be plenty large enough for cars and trucks.

Tactical Urbanism is not a long-term solution for disfranchised communities however.  It can invigorate a community with a new idea and a fresh look, and it can provide a source of fun and immediate action, but Tactical Urbanism efforts should be part of a long-term redevelopment strategy.