Mixed use development : opportunities in preventing sprawl and promoting urban placemaking experience

Zoning is planning profession's primary and crucial tool in regulating land use. The concept of zoning originated in 1916 and thereafter the Standard Zoning Enabling Act (1926) empowered the local authorities to regulate land use through zoning enforcement and the rationale behind the implementation was protection of health, safety and well-being of the community. Traditional zoning is based on the concept of `separation of land uses' and the Euclid Vs Ambler Realty Case (1926) assigned this concept a legal status and justification as being valid to any situation as long as it promotes the intent of `public welfare'. In the meantime the American cities underwent huge changes (De-industrialization, rise of automobile era) which rendered this approach static and irrelevant to the dynamics that shape the current built landscape. The Euclid zoning case has unknowingly given rise to the sprawling, auto-dependent, segregated society. Traditional zoning makes it extremely difficult (rather impossible) to mix uses and further enhance `responsible (good) urban design' so as to achieve a compact, vibrant and diverse community which possesses a unique sense of character and place.This paper reiterates and reinforces the need to promote `mixed use' (zones and structures) as an antidote to the challenges posed by sprawl. In the later part, the paper examines form based codes and their role in promotion of mixed uses and `responsible urban design'. The last attempt is to compare the traditional zoning code and the form based codes.Department of Urban PlanningThesis (M.U.R.P.