What do you want to see in your community? That’s what a team of city planners recently asked residents around the Chattanooga area.
Now, those planners are developing a new kind of zoning codes, called form-based codes, to allow citizens more of a hand in deciding what goes into their neighborhoods.
The North Shore is among several areas in Chattanooga to begin using form-based codes, the others being the riverfront, city center, the M.L. King neighborhood and the Southside.
Traditional zoning focuses about 80 percent on land use and 20 percent on what a development physically looks like, explained Karen Hundt, director of community design for the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency. Form-based codes flip that model, focusing more on a development’s physical form, scale and character and how it will fit in with its surroundings, whether that’s in a residential area or a strip mall.
Currently, Chattanooga’s zoning ordinance is a 247-page document that dictates locations for residential neighborhoods, commercial buildings or industry. There are dozens of pages of conditions depending on what side of the street or part of town you live in.
Form-based coding zooms in and looks at the city block by block to identify what type of buildings should exist and what kind of access – including walking and biking – the public has to places, said RPA Executive Director John Bridger.
The new approach could gradually change the look and feel of the North Shore, depending on what the community decides the form-based codes will be, Hundt said.
“With form-based codes, there’s a lot of flexibility in how you set them up,” she said. “They can be very detailed or quite general. It’s up to us as a community to decide how detailed we want them to be.”
In the five areas identified for the city’s pilot of form-based codes, zoning restrictions could be reworked or completely removed.
Form-based codes will be applied in North Chattanooga on Cherokee Boulevard to the tunnels, on Frazier Avenue and on North Market Street.
Hundt said form-based codes make it easier to create urban, mixed-use places, and they ensure quality development that is compatible with the surrounding neighborhood. North Chattanooga’s current commercial design guidelines are more subjective, she said, and depend on the North Shore Design Review Committee.
She also said form-based codes are easier for developers to understand since they include lots of drawings as opposed to legal text.
A weeklong charrette will be held March 6-13 to gather public input before the codes are drafted in the spring, said Hundt.
Staff writer Joy Lukachick Smith contributed to this article.