Form-Based Codes

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Two Major Awards for Kingston Code

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In 2023, city leaders in Kingston, New York unanimously voted to replace their 1960s-era zoning with a new, citywide, form-based-code. Dover, Kohl & Partners led the Kingston Forward initiative, devising the new code in an interactive public process. This month Kingston’s bold undertaking was recognized with two major planning awards.

Charter Award

The Congress for the New Urbanism honored the Kingston code at the CNU 32 Charter Awards ceremony in Cincinnati. The Charter Awards are considered the highest honor in urban design. Project director Amy Groves, a Dover, Kohl & Partners principal who has been with the firm since 2002, said, "Kingston is using code reform to help meet City goals for increasing housing options, building sustainably, and preserving its historic core. It is a great example for cities across the country."

Kingston is an extraordinary, historic place, deserving of the best design and thoughtful development.

CNU wrote: “For the 24th year, CNU's Charter Awards recognized outstanding achievements in architectural, landscape, and urban design and planning worldwide. Regarded as the preeminent award for excellence in urban design, the CNU Charter Awards honor a select number of winners. Winning projects represent major contributions to building more equitable, sustainable, connected, healthy, and prosperous communities.”

Dover, Kohl & Partners was joined in the Kingston Forward effort by Laberge Group, who spearheaded the GEIS; the Pace University Land Use Law Center, who helped integrate the code into Kingston’s legal system; Hall Planning & Engineering, who supervised the multimodal street design standards; and Gridics, who implemented an innovative online code platform.

Kingston’s new code was the result of an extensive, interactive public process.

Form-based codes have been recognized as one of the “25 Great Ideas of the New Urbanism.” Victor Dover and Joseph Kohl were among the founders of the Form-Based Codes Institute (FBCI). Victor, Joe, Amy and others from DK&P have served as FBCI faculty. Robert Steuteville commented, “Kingston Forward takes the art and communication of a form-based code to a new level.”

The new code is tied to a street-based, transect-based plan for the city, enabling new development to fit the historic pattern without needless variances. The code legalized mixed use and “gently denser” development, repealed minimum parking requirements, legalized accessory dwellings citywide, and lowered the barriers to affordability.

Conference of Mayors Achievement Award

In May, Kingston Forward was also selected for the 2024 Local Government Achievement Award given by the New York State Conference of Mayors. “This community-led initiative will really change how and where new development is created in Kingston, and we believe this is much more equitable and sustainable,” said Mayor Steven Noble. “We are already starting to see new projects that create much-needed housing, especially the crucial ʻmissing middle,ʼ and affordable development.”

Charrette sketch showing how to repair the effects of 1960s “urban renewal” projects and restore the form of the town

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Street-Oriented Architecture (TPS Ep. 11)

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Places where people like to be ALWAYS have street-oriented architecture. Have you had enough of the blank walls, garage doors, and parking lots along your si...

Perhaps the key distinguishing feature between vibrant urban places and the drab scenes Jim Kunstler once called “the geography of nowhere” is this:

Places where people like to be always have street-oriented architecture. The buildings are engaged with the street in some legible, designed way; there’s an indispensable building-to-street relationship that feels mutually reinforcing.

Anatomy of a main street storefront building

The street space, that “public room,” extends from building face to building face—so the way individual buildings are designed affects, and even creates, the experience we have in that space. Many traditional building types, lot layouts and architectural grammar evolved as they did for precisely this reason; they dependably create a good experience and present each building to its neighborhood in a respectable manner.

For example, porches within conversational distance of the sidewalk give houses a neighborly sociability, and provide an agreeable intermediate layer of space between the fully public street and the fully private interior. On intimate streets of rowhouses, stoops and dooryards leave no doubt about where the front façade of the building is.

The finished floors of most rowhouses in Old Town Alexandria are elevated above the sidewalk level for privacy.

In most cases, an elevated finished floor level on the first inhabited floor is useful because it gives the interiors of rowhouses and ground floor apartments an extra degree of privacy and dignity, offsetting the fact that they are so close to the public realm. If you’re walking by outside along the sidewalk, and the inhabitants have their curtains and shutters open, you might see their chandelier, but you won’t be staring at them sitting on the couch or seeing what they’re watching on television! You won’t feel like an intruder, and they won’t feel intruded upon. But here’s an important caveat: In our times, we also need to be sensitive when applying this traditional detail, by also making accommodations for accessibility and visibility. The traditional elevated finished floor makes access difficult for those in wheelchairs or with mobility impairments, so shared ramps, lifts, zero-step entrances into spaces below the piano nobile, slightly elevated alleys, and roll-in lobbies can all be employed.

Storefront buildings on King Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Small details of architectural grammar matter.

On commercial and mixed-use streets, well-designed storefronts are the key. Consider the anatomy of a traditional Main Street building. Again, the details of architecture intermediate between the public spaces and the private interiors. Awnings, arcades, colonnades, galleries and other appurtenances help us deal with the sun and rain, but they are also ways the architecture reaches out, engages with, and embraces the street space. On the most successful streets, there’s always a clear front door to each building, facing the street. Having frequent doors along the street reinforces the scene.

On main streets, mixed-use buildings should usually have an expression line just above the ground floor, such as a cornice or eyebrow, forming a base that separates the private upper floors from the public world of the commercial street scene below.

#WhatNotToDo

Now, compare all that to deep setbacks, parking lots in front, or to rows of garage doors and “snout houses,” and to blank walls. This soul-destroying pattern became commonplace in late 20th Century suburbia, yet it’s never been shown to work well at making a people-friendly place or street scene—not even once! By contrast, in traditional urbanism, pleasant streets and street-oriented architecture support each other, time and again. When the streets are hostile, we’ll invariably find buildings retreating from the street, recoiling, turning their backside toward the neighborhood.

#whatnottodo

Chattanooga. Photo: Kenneth Garcia

It’s not a style thing. Every architectural style, including modernism, has fine examples of street-oriented designs.

Street-Oriented Architecture: It’s number 11 on my list of Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know.  Check out Episode 11 of the series, and please share, comment, and subscribe. --Victor

In Production: Video Courses on Form-Based Codes

 

Victor Dover and colleagues were in Los Angeles last week, filming an upcoming series of educational videos for the Form-Based Codes Institute (FBCI) and Planetizen.  

Victor and Joseph Kohl were co-founders of the non-profit FBCI, which started operations in 2004 and has become a leading think tank and an effective educator on reforming land-development regulations. Form-based codes are an alternative to conventional zoning; they help communities build more of the places people want (and less of what they don’t).

For more information regarding FBCI’s upcoming courses and webinars, visithttp://formbasedcodes.org/courses-webinars.