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The SMartCode The SmartCode is an integrated land development ordinance. It folds zoning, subdivision regulations, urban design, public works standards and basic architectural controls into one compact document. It is also a unified ordinance, spanning scales from the region to the community to the building. The SmartCode is open source, available for use without charges or licensing fees. The SmartCode enables the implementation of a community’s vision by coding the specific outcomes desired in particular places. It allows for distinctly different approaches in different areas within the community, unlike a one-size-fits-all conventional code. To this end, it is meant to be locally customized by professional planners, architects, and attorneys. This gives the SmartCode unusual political power, as it permits buy-in from stakeholders. The SmartCode supports these outcomes: walkable and mixed-use neighborhoods, transportation options, conservation of open lands, local character, housing diversity, and vibrant downtowns. The SmartCode discourages these outcomes: sprawl development, automobile dependency, loss of open lands, monotonous subdivisions, deserted downtowns, and unsafe streets and parks. The SmartCode is one of the family of “form-based codes” addressing primarily the physical form of building and community. It is thus unlike conventional zoning codes based on use and density, which have caused systemic problems over the past sixty years by making mixed use and walkable neighborhoods inadvertently illegal. The SmartCode is also a “transect-based code.” A transect is usually encountered as a continuous cross-section of natural habitats for plants and animals, ranging from shorelines to wetlands to uplands. The transect of the SmartCode is extended to the human habitat, ranging from the most rural to the most urban environments. This allows environmental and urban concerns to be administered in an integrated way. The SmartCode’s rural-to-urban Transect is divided into a range of “T-zones” each with its own complex character. The Transect ensures that a community offers a full diversity of building types, thoroughfare types, and civic space types, and that they have characteristics appropriate to their locations in the environment. The metrics for these T-zones should be locally calibrated.
The Transect is a powerful tool that can coordinate standards across other disciplines including ITE (transportation) and LEED (environmental performance) standards. The platform of the Transect allows the integration of the design protocols of traffic engineering, public works, town planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and ecology. The SmartCode addresses development patterns at three scales of planning:
Thus it may replace a number of other documents, despite being only 50 pages. Additional Modules and PlugIns are available that are compatible with the SmartCode. If stronger architectural guidelines are desired, a community may adopt one of the Pattern Books correlated to the Transect. To purchase a bound copy of SmartCode Version 9 and Manual, contact New Urban News Publications at 607-275-3087, mail@newurbannews.com, or www.newurbannews.com. Download this page as a two-page handout. All diagrams ©DPZ & Co.
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