Form Based Code planning is the most authoritarian and self-serving method of zoning this side of an imperial palace — everything is ordered for the benefit of those with power and influence.
Cornithaca County’s only city and seat of power is using Form Based Codes to make their “vibrant” community a place of “historic districts,” “parks,” “walkability,” and “single-family homes and row houses” while the same Codes allow building tracts of multi-family housing and a large urban sprawl bedroom-community in rural greenspaces by calling it a “Node.”
They are building a new marina; while we are getting a drug rehab center. Their city is one of the country’s 20 most expensive to live in; so we get the affordable housing mandates.
There are so many buses at their University that it’s difficult to drive a car around; while I would have to walk two-and-a-half miles and stand at the side of a ditch to wait for one of the few that travel the periphery.
Form Based Codes don’t help the needy; they just build walls to keep them out