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Table of Contents
Introduction
Introduction
Zoning codes and ordinances are important for preventing unscupulous people from building landfills next to schools, factory farms next to rivers, or loud factories or petrochemical plants next to neighborhoods. These aren't always perfect, and many are out of date, but we can work with scientists, communities, and politicians to create zoning and ordinances that protect us from polluters.
"There are countless barriers to planning, designing, building, and enforcing compact, walkable communities. In many cases, many of these barriers stem from outdated zoning codes and ordinances, which make it illegal to create the type of thriving communities that residents and local leaders are seeking." - CNU: Project Code Reform
Areas of Code Reform
Areas of Code Reform
Affordable Housing
Affordable Housing
"In communities across the country, too many people are enduring a housing crisis, where a dearth of affordable housing in high demand areas and a lack of diversity of housing within the marketplace have coupled to price many people out of housing that meets their needs and ensures their quality of life. In many cases, zoning reform can ease or even remove regulatory limitations that have contributed to this crisis by limiting where, what, and how much housing is able to be built." - Congress for the New Urbanism: PCR Areas of Reform
Lighting Ordinances
Lighting Ordinances
Updated lighting ordinances can be paired with Dark Sky Initiatives, which help to reduce light pollution that negatively impacts human safety as well as wildlife. Reducing light pollution can reduce crime, save people money, and drastically reduce a community's emissions.
Ban Blinding Headlights
Ban Blinding Headlights
Downtown Redevelopment
Downtown Redevelopment
"Most current zoning codes make it illegal to replicate a beloved street or neighborhood, hampering the ability for communities to develop more of the walkable, vibrant streets and neighborhoods that are the historic hearts of many cities and towns. Where communities seek to attract investment in their downtowns and adjacent neighborhoods, incremental reforms to their zoning codes can offer fundamental changes that will provide a significant impact on what can be built." - Congress for the New Urbanism: PCR Areas of Reform
Suburbs
Suburbs
"As baby boomers age and more of the millennial generation enters adulthood, an increasing number of Americans would like to live in more centrally-located, walkable environments, yet post-war auto-dependent development pattern exists in nearly every city and town in the US. These suburban landscapes epitomize what many communities have a desire to transform through incremental code reform, from places built for and accessible only by car, to walkable, vibrant, and distinct streets and neighborhoods." - Congress for the New Urbanism: PCR Areas of Reform
Street Design
Street Design
"While most streets today are engineered to prioritize vehicles, cities and towns must respond to the demand for more inclusive modalities and rapidly advancing transportation technologies. Central to successful urbanism is the relationship between street design and the land use that surrounds the street, and so reforming zoning codes is a fundamental step in achieving context-specific street design and establishing more walkable, bikeable, accessible, and transit-ready communities." - Congress for the New Urbanism: PCR Areas of Reform
Historic Preservation
Historic Preservation
Most cities and towns want to protect their beloved local collections of historic buildings, civic landmarks, and street patterns. Incremental code reform can be a critical tool, when the pressure of economic opportunity, the complexity of existing regulations, and the demands of state and federal requirements threaten the ability to effectively protect what makes a town or neighborhood unique while still encouraging and supporting the best interests of the entire community." - Congress for the New Urbanism: PCR Areas of Reform
Stormwater Management
Stormwater Management
"Best practices for managing stormwater start with where and how a city or town grows and develops. This is particularly important, whether seeking to reduce development costs to achieve more affordable housing and greater housing diversity or seeking to retrofit a sprawling suburban landscape into a more human-scaled and auto-independent urban environment, and code reform measures to preserve open space and encourage growth in already-developed areas can make an major impact." - Congress for the New Urbanism: PCR Areas of Reform
Roofing Codes
Roofing Codes
Blue and green roofs can help reduce the impact of storm water on our environment, our drinking water, and flooding. Technology for both types of roofing are available world wide, but not everywhere has updated regulations for their design or legality.
Water-Wise Gardens & Landscapes
Water-Wise Gardens & Landscapes
Many places have very outdated rules about landscaping appearance, tree placement, and species. By updating non-science-based rules we can protect our environment, use less resources, and enjoy prettier, more natural landscapes. Some of these rules should also look towards reintroducing native species, while abolishing the transport and sale of invasive species, which prose many threats including the ability to clog waterways and increase flood risks.
Rain gardens can look a little scraggly at times, but they are very helpful to biodiversity, pollution reduction, flood reduction, and clean air.
Xeriscapes are generally rocky landscapes with native grasses, wildflowers, and other types of plant. Even cold climates have their own xeriscape-friendly plants, which are drought resistant and hardy, reducing water demand throughout the year. This type of garden may be particular useful where droughts are more frequent.
In some locations rain harvesting is illegal, however the future of our water security and flood prevention may rely on equitable changes being made to these policies.
Building Codes
Building Codes
"Building codes usually come up in the context of safety – a properly constructed building can help prevent injury or death from fires, earthquakes, and extreme weather. But they’re also essential for reducing energy costs and cutting dangerous pollution, and major opportunities to update codes and leverage their climate solution potential are just around the corner.
Building codes governing energy-related components, such as insulation requirements and wall thickness, generate significant savings for residents and businesses. Today’s codes provide 30% more energy savings than codes from a decade ago, and residential and commercial building energy codes are projected to save $126 billion in cumulative energy costs between 2010 and 2040, while avoiding the emissions equivalent of 245 large coal-fired power plants.
State and local governments have the power to maximize this potential by determining which codes are adopted and enforced, thus deciding if new buildings will support an electrified and decarbonized future. ..." - Forbes: Building Codes: A Powerful Yet Underused Climate Policy That Could Save Billions
Roofing Codes
Roofing Codes
Roofing types and features can have a massive impact on local and nearby flooding, water pollution levels, heat island effect, and internal building temperatures. In some countries eco-friendly roofing never went out of style, while others (often those that went through colonization) lost their traditions and now rely heavily on roofing that causes more problems than good. Reviewing and updating roofing codes to include the following would be a useful step in combating a variety of pressing issues.
Blue roofs have the same kind of impact on water quality and flooding, but may not help with the other issues unless combined with green roof components.
Green roofs can help prevent water pollution and reduce flooding, while reducing a community's heat island effect, air pollution, even reversing biodiversity loss.
Solar roofs can provide energy for buildings and vehicles. The space between the panels and the roof can crease shade and airflow, reducing the indoor cooling costs, even without making actual power.
Solar water heaters can provide important energy-saving and money-saving benefits, but they haven't caught on in all countries equally.
Solar panels and green roof design can be combined to help cool roofs so that the panels work more efficiently.
White roofs or pale roofs help reflect sunlight back into space, instead of absorbing massive amounts of heat energy the way dark and black roofs do. This can reduce heat island effect while cutting cooling costs for people inside.
Pollution
Pollution
Pesticides
Pesticides
Xerces Model Policy to Protect Pollinators from Harmful Pesticide Exposures "There’s a lot that can be accomplished to spur common-sense policies that address pollinator habitat and pesticide use at the local level. Across the country, cities such as Boulder, Colorado have introduced policies to protect pollinators at the city or municipal level.
You can work with your city council or local government to introduce a similar policy to make your community more pollinator-friendly. Xerces is often asked what a local policy should include, in response we created a model policy to protect pollinators by improving habitat and preventing harmful pesticide exposures."
Additional Topics for Reform
Additional Topics for Reform
Production Caps
Production Caps
As we seek to reduce the impact each of our communities, companies, sectors, and countries contribute to issues including pollution and climate change, it makes sense to consider cures for the primary driver of these issues: overproduction.
Plastic
Plastic
For pollutants such as plastic "Every year without production caps makes the necessary cut to plastic production in future steeper—and our need to use other measures to address the problem greater." - The Only Way to End Plastic Pollution is by Limiting How Much Plastic We Produce
Resources
Resources
Congress for the New Urbanism: PCR Additional Resources "For additional resources on the Project for Code Reform, see the links below."
En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator "is a fast, powerful climate solutions scenario tool for understanding how we can achieve our climate goals through changes in energy, land use, consumption, agriculture, and other policies. The simulator focuses on how changes in global GDP, energy efficiency, technological innovation, and carbon price influence carbon emissions, global temperature, and other factors. It is designed to provide a synthesis of the best available science on climate solutions and put it at the fingertips of groups in policy workshops and roleplaying games. These experiences enable people to explore the long-term climate impacts of global policy and investment decisions.
En-ROADS is being developed by Climate Interactive, Ventana Systems, UML Climate Change Initiative, and MIT Sloan.
This guide provides background on the dynamics of En-ROADS, tips for using the simulator, general descriptions, real-world examples, slider settings, and model structure notes for the different sliders in En-ROADS."Form-Based Codes Institute "Learn how form-based codes are essentially different from conventional land use regulation and how they have evolved to solve many of the problems created by conventional zoning."
Organizations
Organizations
International
International
The Forest Governance & Policy "team works to support the design and implementation of effective forest policies related to illegal logging and associated trade and deforestation-free supply chains.
The initiative provides tools and resources to improve transparency and accountability in forest-related supply chains, and informs policy and purchasing decisions through data and analysis."Plastic Smart Cities "is a WWF initiative that supports a no plastic in nature agenda. Since 2018, the initiative has supported cities and coastal centers in taking bold action to stop plastic pollution, with a goal to reduce plastic leakage into nature by 30% in the near term, and achieving no plastics in nature by 2030."
North America
North America
USA
USA
The Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS) "promotes understanding of the built environment as part of the natural environment, through the planning methodology of the rural-to-urban transect. CATS supports interdisciplinary research, publication, tools, and training for the design, coding, building and documentation of resilient transect-based communities.
CATS is committed to transect-based environmental and land development principles that encourage the following outcomes:
walkable, transit-connected communities
comprehensive zoning reform
context-based thoroughfare design and engineering
affordable housing and income diversity
regional, local, and individual food production
passive climatic response in building and urban design
reduction of environmental impacts and costs of infrastructure
development and use of renewable energy technologies
repair of unsustainable sprawl patterns"
Congress for the New Urbanism: The Project for Code Reform "The program seeks to streamline much-needed code reform processes that will enable better built outcomes, providing communities with place-specific regulatory reforms that address the most problematic barriers first, build political will, and ultimately create more walkable, prosperous and equitable places. The resulting potential for sweeping reform directly responds to the pressing challenges cities face."
Smart Growth America "empowers communities through technical assistance, advocacy and thought leadership to create livable places, healthy people, and shared prosperity. We work with elected officials at all levels, real estate developers, chambers of commerce, transportation and urban planning professionals, and residents to improve everyday life for people across the country through better development."
YIMBYAction "55 Chapters across the US fighting for abundant housing that’s ✊ inclusive, 🌎 sustainable, 💰 affordable."
Maps
Maps
North America
North America
USA
USA
PIRG: Interactive Map of Lawn Mower and Leaf Blower Policies "This interactive map shows which cities, states and companies have taken action to cut pollution and noise from gas-powered lawn equipment."
Grants & Funding
Grants & Funding
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