 Introduction
In June 2003, the Northern California town of Petaluma became one of the first cities in California to adopt an innovative new tool known as a form-based code for 400 acres of underutilized land near its historic downtown. The new SmartCode™ provided residents a clear vision of how the area would be developed and helped overcome a 7-year logjam. Within less than a year of adopting the new code, a new mixed-use theater district is under construction as a result of a zoning code that focuses less on separating uses and more on implementing the community’s vision.
Background
The City of Petaluma, California, incorporated in 1858, is the oldest city between San Francisco and Eureka. Petaluma has been a world leader of the poultry industry since the early 1900’s. The city’s enormous prosperity in its early days initiated a spectacular building boom, creating a substantial stock of quaint Victorian homes and downtown commercial buildings. Untouched by the 1906 earthquake, these buildings still stand, giving Petaluma an extraordinary mix of architecture dating back to the 1870’s. The City has successfully protected its uniqueness and was the first town in America to adopt a limited residential growth management plan, in 1972.
Problem Definition
In 1996, the City of Petaluma created a 24-member citizens advisory committee to develop a vision for a 400-acre section of land adjacent to Petaluma’s historic downtown. The property was once used for warehousing, shipping, manufacturing and other industrial uses but had become vacant and underutilized as a result of industry slowly migrating out of the downtown. With other parts of Petaluma already built out, this area had become very desirable to develop. The community recognized the unique opportunity that this property represented and expressed concern that the plan for this area be done right. The general consensus was that the new development should complement and connect with the historic downtown and that the Petaluma River — which runs through the city — should be the centerpiece.
Through community workshops and committee discussions, a vision was developed that described Central Petaluma as a place where a wide range of residential and commercial uses should coexist in relative proximity to one another within a lively urban environment. The community envisioned pedestrian-oriented public streets, plazas, squares and riverfront walks, lined with mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented buildings.
A major barrier to moving forward with this vision was the draft conventional zoning code prepared for the site. The thick text of legalese, incomprehensible floor area ratios, and long charts of numbers did not assure the community that the new development would mimic the existing historic downtown.
For almost seven years, the committee struggled with this project as political battles raged between residents, developers and environmentalists. In an effort to push the process forward, the city council led by Mayor David Glass invited Fisher & Hall Urban Design of Santa Rosa, California, to assist the committee. Fisher and Hall introduced a simple but powerful idea – change the zoning code to one that would enable Petaluma to build the kind of town they wanted.
Implementation Strategy
Fisher and Hall introduced Petaluma to the SmartCode™ — a form-based code developed by internationally known town planner Andres Duany. In place of conventional zoning’s broad-brush emphasis on regulating uses and intensities, the SmartCode™ relies on clearly describing the form of the buildings through easy-to-understand graphics and historic building precedents that help residents clearly envision what they’re getting. The SmartCode™ is simpler than conventional codes, using straightforward language and simple graphics to codify aspects of the built environment that communities care about most: building heights, location of buildings in relation to the street and to other buildings, location of parking, and design of streets, sidewalks and the public realm.
The citizen advisory committee and city council was so intrigued with the form-based code concept that they immediately moved forward with developing a SmartCode™. Nine months later, the city council adopted the Petaluma SmartCode™ followed by a standing ovation from the capacity crowd.
The City describes its SmartCode™ as “providing a system for ensuring that the design of the public realm and the design of private buildings are rigorously coordinated, and are focused on the pedestrian experience.” The community is committed to building and maintaining high-quality, pedestrian-oriented streets, public parking facilities, squares, plazas, and riverwalks, while the property and business owners are required to build high-quality buildings that face the public realm with façades scaled to the pedestrian, and orienting on-site parking and service functions to the backs of the buildings and the interiors of the blocks.
Different sections of the 400-acre site are coded for different densities, minimum and maximum building heights, parking areas, and percentages of frontage types. The code clearly describes new streets, open spaces, roads, and even buildings facing the river. And most importantly, the new code allows the mixing of stores, homes and workplaces as found in the historic downtown.
Progress and Results
Soon after Petaluma’s SmartCode™ went into effect in June 2003, a series of high quality projects were reviewed and approved, including a four square-block theater district and a 10-acre condo project. Another 10 acres of mixed-use buildings with shops and workplaces on the main floor and condos on top are being proposed. After nearly 20 years of little development in this area, new projects were under construction on six downtown blocks in the first year of the new code.
The Petaluma SmartCode™ has considerably simplified the approval process, so that developers following the SmartCode™ only have to go through design review, significantly reducing the approval process. This streamlined planning process not only pleases developers, but the City also likes it because it is easier to respond to developers and the community gets the type of development it wants.
Advice/Lessons Learned
- Identify as many interests as possible from the very beginning. Meet with everybody in the same room so that they can hear everybody else’s interests.
- Identify issues through a variety of means such as walking tours, visual surveys, written surveys, before and after images, town hall meetings, etc.
- Fine-tune the SmartCode™ by doing some case studies of actual projects during the code development process.
- Set aside time and budget to train staff and the Design Review committee to help the City more easily transition to the new SmartCode™.
Contact Information/Resources
City of Petaluma – Smart Code™
http://cityofpetaluma.net/cdd/cpsp.html
The Central Petaluma code is based on the SmartCode™, created by Architect Andres Duany as a copyrighted legal document. For $125 you can get a copy of the code template to review. It is available through the Municipal Code Corporation at www.municode.com. If a municipality decides to use it, they must then pay a licensing fee.
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