It's Time to Rethink How We Regulate City-Building
Kansas City’s Power & Light District. Image via Matthew Deltoro on Unsplash.
Cities are complex systems—unpredictable, organic and constantly evolving, due to millions of incremental decisions made every day. Yet we regulate development of cities as if they are predictable and static—with quantifiable and absolute standards. In some cases, these standards work against the traditions and patterns of how we built our most valuable places. Wouldn’t our regulatory approaches be more effective, and even more defensible, if we acknowledged the incremental and complex dimension of cities?
Rethinking regulations requires that we first think about the nature and character of our cities, and then think about how we regulate their development. Although cities are unpredictable, organic and evolving, they are also highly organized around systems, networks and identifiable, measurable patterns. A design-based and dynamic approach to regulations can use patterns and a few scalable, universal rules to address common and recurring circumstances in our cities—but perhaps never the same way twice.
The fact that cities are complex systems presents many challenges for those who are charged with stewarding our collective investment in them. We are tempted to respond with equally complex rules and procedures, designed to answer every potential challenge in every possible situation. This is an impossible goal and an unfair expectation. Our regulations are quickly filled with overwhelming details that can only be correct in the abstract. Too frequently we resort to long and complicated regulations that address a single topic with exacting standards in a comprehensive manner, but remain unrelated to the rest of the code or the context of the community. Conversely, we may give up, and throw our challenges to discretionary processes, and along with it is thrown away any hope for clear expectations for those who engage in the code and development process. All of this adds length and introduces conflicts to our codes, making them particularly difficult to use for those that must administer them, while potentially undermining larger and greater priorities of productive city-building.
Counter-intuitively, complex rules often result in outcomes that are simplistic and systems that are static. Each piece may be efficient or complete isolation, but it will tend to lack meaningful relationships to things around it. Cumulatively the system becomes rigid and incapable of maximizing multiple priorities or adapting over time. Complex rules can also stymie innovation, incremental investment, and adaptations, and they freeze or institutionalize the status quo. This is manifest in the cookie-cutter patterns and projects prevalent in most communities, despite our best efforts to avoid this exact result. We are always seeking to make places “unique,” but unfortunately, our codes are often filled with token gestures towards this goal or superficial requirements to add some contrived “flair” to each project.
Image of downtown Kansas City via Dan Nibbe on Unsplash.
Part of our problem is human nature—the desire to do what is easy—both easy to understand and easy to administer by finding a “simple answer” in our codes. Part of our problem is politics—thinking short term and allowing money, lobbyists and expedience of the “issue of the day” to shape long-term policies and investment. And part of our problem is professional training—legions of specialists educated and trained in the status quo and coached on how to facilitate and address their sole issue within this system.
All of these problems stem from contemplating development—and thus the city itself—as predicable and static. We end up with complex codes that simultaneously put exacting standards on meaningless details, meanwhile completely missing the crucial yet simple patterns that build a resilient and valuable cities and neighborhoods. The path of least resistance leads to unyielding and unimaginative prototypes that, once they get through the gauntlet of complexity, get repeated anywhere and everywhere. Our track record from our current approach—increasingly complex regulations that result in static systems—should give us pause. Are these the results we want? What if our goal was increasingly simple regulations aimed at creating complex systems? Isn’t that what a resilient and sustainable city needs?
The reality is that simple codes and procedures are what allow complex systems to thrive. They establish structures and patterns that meet broad principles and interests, but allow the increments within these structures and patterns to evolve within a few simple rules. To accomplish this we need to document and observe the essence of cities—the systems, patterns and relationships that foster the great, human-scale places. Within this structure, creativity and problem-solving thrives. Patterns and techniques are developed to deal with common and recurring issues, always recognizable, but perhaps never the same. Each time we add another layer of character and unique identity to the places we value. When new problems or unanticipated issues arise—as they always do—a simple code can put us in a better position to respond responsibly.
Kansas City sidewalk dining. Image via Unsplash user Xochi.
If we are careful enough to code only the fewest and most crucial aspects of what makes great, human-scale places work, we can ensure that each increment can contribute to a larger and greater whole. As importantly, we can also more easily identify and neutralize those that do not.
One way to consider this challenge is to borrow from other complex systems that operate under well-understood principles and simple rules, yet still produce endless creativity and a refined order. Music is one example. The basic and comparatively simple rules of music—notes, chords, harmony and rhythm—produce great complexity and infinite possibilities for songs. Even the same song could be arranged and produced a thousand ways following the same rules—each time completely different and unique, but each time recognizable. A single sheet of music can be the source of infinite creativity. So agreeing to some basic rules and principles of how to arrange buildings, sites, streets, blocks, neighborhoods and districts should never be claimed to limit creativity. Instead, it creates order in which creativity can thrive.
Certainly, by now most reading this have at least thought, “But in the real world things are messy, complicated and there is much more to it.” Exactly! And when we are coding something that is (a) complex, (b) dynamic, and (c) unpredictable—something which all great cities are—we need to especially be reminded to code the bare minimum, the crucial things that matter most. We need to not get lost prescribing each note, or specifying the arrangement of every song—because if we are not careful, they will all come out the same.
It is time to rethink regulations.
Cover image of Kansas City skyline via Colton Sturgeon on Unsplash.
About the Author
Chris Brewster is an Associate Vice President with the Gould Evans Studio for City Design. Chris is a planner and attorney, and he consults with local governments on planning and urban design issues, with a specific expertise with development regulations. The Gould Evans Studio for City Design, based in Kansas City, Missouri, consists of professional planners, urban designers, and architects committed to making it easier to build great cities. For more information, please visit Gould Evans at any of the links below:
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