Neighborhood development revisits the past

To reduce urban sprawl and create a sense of community, city planners in Columbus, Ohio, are taking a giant leap backwards. The Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) article, which was adopted by the city council in May, outlines a plan to create neighborhoods similar to those of the pre-World War II era.

The purpose of the code is to re-introduce mixed-use neighborhood developments that create a “small town” feel. Rather than segregating houses, apartments, offices and stores, TND proposes that those elements be available within easy walking distance of one another.

City planners decided to write the code when residents of the southeast community, a major growth area of Columbus, made it clear that they did not want conventional zoning patterns. “They wanted something else, and that caused us to take a serious look at the whole ‘New Urbanism’ approach for large portions of the southeast [area],” Planning Administrator Stephen McClary says.

The city hired an architectural firm, Miami-based Duany Plater-Zyberk, for help in writing the code. Firm principals Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are the authors of “Suburban Nation” and designers of some of the country’s most famous New Urbanism developments, notably Seaside, Fla., and Kentlands, Md.

The code defines criteria for four types of districts:

• The Neighborhood Edge district is a residential area with pitched roofs, fences, curvilinear streets, narrow sidewalks, and parks and greens.

• The Neighborhood General district is primarily residential, but it has houses with porches sitting on narrow lots, close to the street. The streets are more linear than those in the Neighborhood Edge design.

• The Neighborhood Center district contains single-family homes, apartment buildings, offices and retail shops.

• The Town Center district is an entirely mixed-use area with apartments and attached buildings interspersed with cultural amenities, entertainment options, banks, restaurants and retail shops. It features elements such as flat roofs, street walls, grid streets, wide sidewalks, and plazas and squares.

• According to the code, TND sites must be at least two acres in size. Sites ranging from 50 to 100 acres must include a minimum of two districts, and sites larger than 100 acres must contain at least three districts.

  Because Columbus had developed communities for decades under conventional subdivision requirements, McClary had trouble implementing the TND code. He had to overcome particular skepticism among city staff, including those in refuse collection, fire services and traffic engineering.

  Those groups were accustomed to neighborhoods with wide curvilinear streets, large setbacks and wide driveways. “There can be some resistance to giving up [that convenience and operational efficiency] and having to collect trash or respond to emergencies in neighborhoods where development patterns create difficulties,” McClary says.

  That conflict led to many discussions between city planners and the refuse division about the width and radiuses of alleys. Resulting decisions had to be incorporated into the code.

  Today, the TND code coexists with the Columbus Zoning Code. In the southeast area of Columbus, the city council has specifically called for the use of TND, but the code’s use is optional in other areas. “We recognize that there are some sites where it is appropriate and other sites where it is not. So it has to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis,” McClary says. Currently, there are four TND communities that are in some stage of zoning and review.