As you’re no-doubt seeing–and hopefully excited about, Mesa is bucking the national trend of sagging economies and bringing citizens some notable activity that could spell big growth in the city. We’ve already talked about the potential of the Light Rail to Mesa (to be completed in 2015) on business, but now it seems that some nebulous zoning requirements have been replaced with what many see as the more helpful form-based codes. Form-based codes foster predictable building results and a high-quality public realm by using the yardstick of physical form, rather than separation of uses, as the organizing principle for the code. The codes are actually regulations, not mere guidelines, adopted into city law. Mesa’s form-based codes offer a powerful alternative to conventional zoning and could pave the way for a more thoughtful and deliberate plan for the city.

For example, form-based codes address the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks. The regulations in the new codes are presented in words, clearly-drawn diagrams, and other visuals. They are keyed to a regulating plan that designates the appropriate form and scale (and therefore, character) of development, rather than only distinctions in land-use types.

This approach contrasts with conventional zoning’s focus on the micromanagement and segregation of land uses and the control of development intensity through abstract and uncoordinated parameters (e.g., FAR, dwellings per acre, setbacks, parking ratios, traffic LOS), to the neglect of an integrated built form. Form-based codes, on the other hand, are drafted to implement a community plan–a unified vision based on time-tested forms of urbanism. It is our hope–and the hope of business–that Mesa’s adoption of a form-based code with a Central Main Street Area Plan will provide property owners and developers more freedom to develop future-minded property along the existing and future light rail line.