Should a Zoning Code include Design Guidelines?

When Otis Rolley was appointed by then Baltimore Mayor O'Malley to become the youngest Planning Director in the country, Rolley opted ambitiously for completing a new comprehensive plan (an earlier version had been stuck in analysis) and then revise the decades old zoning code. This, too, had been an undertaking that had been started earlier, only to get stuck. The comp plan become a rather quick and thin affair, written innovatively as a business plan. Before the zoning code could be tackled in earnest, Rolley left his position as planning director. The department, though, soldiered on. A long time was spent with a typology of the existing urban form, categorizing the various types of built environment that make up Baltimore with the goal to distill from this analysis some idea for a future zoning code that would be "form based" (rather than strictly two-dimensional) and one that would build on the existing urban form. Efforts were made to indicate areas that would need change versus those that should remain stable. Staff labored through this, a consultant had been hired and released until the initiative gained new steam under current planning director Tom Stosur and was dubbed Transform Baltimore.

The same consultants that had completed the Denver zoning code were hired to rework the outdated Baltimore code that suffered from the fact that it was written for an industrial city, that it was basically "Euklidian" (separation of uses) and that it was circumvented by developers and property owners at every turn, requiring hundreds of "variance" hearings each year. Variances meant to convene the BMZA (Board of Municipal Zoning Appeals) often over trivial issues such as "non conforming" rowhouses which per the zoning code would be any rowhouse under 16' wide. (The majority of Baltimore's rowhouses as it turned out). Prolific were also PUDs (Planned Unit Developments), a method of working pretty much around existing zoning with a set of rules for a project based approach. PUDs were supposed to be applied only in special circumstances where larger tracts of lands had possibly several underlying traditional zones and where densities and massing, setbacks and green spaces could be swapped around more freely among those zones to achieve a better composition and design. Instead, they became the go to tool for anyone who didn't like the existing zoning, setting in motion each time a complicated review and participation machinery with little predictability for the final outcome.

It was the noble goal of the project "transform Baltimore" to get rid of these problems and it gained momentum from the simple compilation of all the problems the old code has. for the first time the new code would recohnize open spaces and would identify transit oriented development areas. Yet the Baltimore approach was fraught with deficiencies from the beginning. Although Baltimore seemed to adopt the Denver approach, for lack of resources Baltimore skipped an important step in which Denver had invested much time and energy: The "Blueprint Denver" effort. In it a three dimensional vision for the future of the city was developed in close cooperation with communities and stakeholders under the guidance of respectable consultants such as Fregonese Calthorpe Associates. This truly form-based approach was meant to be a compendium to Denver's comp plan. But by laying out a physical vision for Denver the "blueprint" also guided the new zoning code. It was this vision that gave the code meaning. Essentially, the  code simply described  this vision and urban form in legal terms and became the "covenant" of the vision.

By skipping the visioning step and a blueprint of a future Baltimore, the re-zoning here fell into the near vacuum of the business plan like comp plan that revealed almost nothing in terms of a physical vision of Baltimore's future.
Soon the new zoning code effort degenerated into  what one could describe as a modern translation of the old code and its zones. Sure, there are still the important new elements such as TOD zones (Transit Oriented Development), and green space in the code; the old urban renewal plans are eliminated, Baltimore's initial flight from the old code into a great number of overlay plans which were a  recognition that one size cannot fit all and neighborhood specific rules are needed to manage development appropriately. Under the old code neighborhood masterplans existed in addition to the urban renewal plans, sometimes combined with design guidelines such as in the case of the gigantic urban renewal undertaking of the EBDI area near Hopkins Hospital, where a biotech park had been linked to a renewal of a whole neighborhood. This patchwork of land use regulations was certainly confusing to developers and communities alike, yet, it represented a clear understanding that conditions vary widely inside a large city.

The new code, in its desire to simplify, now seems to lose some the ability to codify in a more finely grained manner.   To not entirely forgo the idea of "form based" the draft code resorted to including design guidelines inside the code itself. Absent a "blueprint" this effort falls back on what arreas to be CNU (Congress of New Urbanism) cookbook rules of good building proportions and taste. While New Urbanism has certainly helped a lot in reforming new suburban development (Kentlands), it is a very questionable tool for historic urban settings or a large metro areas such as Baltimore. Too narrow is the canon of permissible form, too theoretical the range of the "transect" to truly do justice to the vast diversity of buildings and forms that makes a city really urban, urbane and interesting. Little pictures interspersed into the new (draft) code book make the read possibly more pleasant, but they are helpless attempts of creating "recipes" for good design. They cannot replace a city "blueprint" and by being applicable to whole swaths of the city zoned a certain way, the are dangerously ignorant of local flavor.

The Baltimore AIA Urban Design Committee (UDC) early on sent volunteers into the trenches of this zoning rewrite and they have been battling this enormous task alongside planning staff for years now. The UDC held all along that not only do we need a "blueprint", but that any guidelines should be limited to urban design (such as massing, orientation, placement etc.) and should avoid forays into the field of architecture, style and material. (see March 11 AIA Newsletter, page 13). However, in spite of many public workshops and hearings, the basic course that the city had settled on changed little. In the late summer of 2011 a zoning book containing the second draft code was printed and published for a last round of comments (the comment period has been extended and is still open in January 2012).

In its near final form it was now clear, that the new code opens the door to frightening possible outcomes. Lawyers may complain about ambiguities and unclear language. But architects could be bewildered by the very specific and arbitrary requirements for form, materials and even style. Would this document really foster better design or, rather, would the cookbook approach stifle creativity and innovation? Can it be that after years of hard work the good intentions might be overtaken by unintended consequences?

Read also Wall Street Journal about Zoning In NYC: Zoning Laws Grow up

Read below a few current (abbreviated) discussion points from Urban Design Committee participants regarding the proposed design guidelines.

S:

I found the text and illustrations pretty Orwellian, so I'm hoping the City does not think we are in agreement with the document. The land use language is not bad (even if not realistic), but those design standards! Leftover postmodernism and proscriptive material choices are scary - even ArchPlan's Calvert Street project appears to be impermissible under those standards calling for "real clay masonry" on street facades. Pictures of the ugly rowhouses are extolled for their rhythm, despite their cheap stick-on tin facade detailing. Handing that illustration to the non-Architects who apply for most residential rehab permits is an easy way to get more ugly houses in Baltimore.

I'm sorry if Planning must now review plans for ugly buildings with no standards to use to force a redesign, but the proposed standards don't help improve design quality. Are we (Baltimore AIA) willing to intervene and offer services to mitigate ugliness for a fee or pro-bono? Planning certainly does not have the personnel capacity to review or enforce this level of detail on a house-by-house basis, and I see nothing to indicate they will have that capacity in the near or far future. 

 C:

 I am sure Baltimore Planning is well meaning. Do we really want Architecture in Baltimore  to become a cookbook of rules and regs. in brick and clay ? I am sure Planning is fighting the horribly proportioned cheap vinyl window & aluminum/vinyl siding and dryvit battle hacked in place by market forces but there must be another way to achieve design excellence. One can always create historic districts if they are concerned with new interventions within existing historic fabric and continuity with the past.

Architectural styles do change with time (unless you are a Modernist and have transcended time and place) and the idea of making progress and breaking new ground kind of goes away with design standards of any kind. Most owners just want to get through the process as quickly and cheaply as possible. The magnificent rowhouse typology could use bit of updating and design innovation don't you think ?  We would not want to get stuck in the base, middle & top Pomo 80's would we ? --  or in some slavish historicist Orwellian future_world of brick ? 

This merits a far deeper discussion than an e-mail or two and in reality is a big deal because the profession will have to live with the results of this legislation for decades.

 G:

Unfortunately the past appeal [to architects]to get involved has been responded to weakly, in fact, there has been little response which leaves us with the feeling that there is a general complacency about these matters. But just wait until this document hits the streets for the majority of architects to start yelling about impact on their visions and practices.

I am sure that Planning can justify these things from a number of different standpoints such as protecting character of neighborhoods, setting a quality standard, not allowing bad design to be done by non-architects (and architects), etc....  We have heard it all!

I think our best achievement has been to get an Administrative Exception Section in the code which would help to get a higher quality of design possible and accepted. Still there are flaws to this because of some of the reasons that you all gave, as well as our own client's willingness to pay for the extra effort it will take to achieve a better design and not just minimally meet the requirements of the code.

 Gn:

I am personally concerned with having these design standards written into the zoning code itself; design requirements written into a legal document become difficult to modify if unintended consequences appear (the simplistic example that springs to mind is the plaza bonus in NYC a few years back which caused deserted and tightly controlled open spaces  to proliferate).  I offered the analogy of a beta version of new software; there are always unexpected interactions and other results that require a series of "bug fixes", basically a constantly evolving system.  The zoning mechanism will largely freeze the design requirements in place, cutting off any evolution or adaptations to changes circumstances and specific neighborhoods;  this is a classic "fuzzball" problem in systems engineering parlance, a problem that cannot be solved through top-down  direction because it is too complex and changeable for such methods.  The administrative exceptions provision is important, as Gill points out, but it has been my experience that these are used only where the proposal still meets the “intent” of the code provision, which may be strictly interpreted as this is safer for the reviewer. I believe that we are setting up a system that has the same issues as the current Urban Renewal Ordinances that the City is trying to get rid of; legally binding rigid requirements that are quickly outdated. 

K:

Regardless where we stand, We can be sure that we architects and our clients will have to live with the new zoning code for many years. So we better try to get it right.

The UDC has come down with three (minimum) requests (more can be added):

·         Re-phrase the administrative exception process and language to shift the burden of proof away from the applicant (if non conforming with design guidelines)

·         Move all photos and specific picture illustrations that illustrate the intent of the code to an appendix so they are not part of the code itself

·         Remove onerous language and images from the design guidelines for commercial districts to make these guidelines less prescriptive.

(The Planning Department emphasizes their experiences with lousy single family residential design whereas most architects are probably more concerned with housing and commercial.)