The First Municipality to Break the Rule of Urban Sprawl
In 1961, urban scholar Lewis Mumford wrote:
Under the present dispensation, we have sold our urban birthright for a sorry mess of motor cars…If we are concerned with human values, we can no longer afford either sprawling Suburbia or the congested Metropolis: still less can we afford a congested suburbia, whose visual openness depends upon the cellular isolation and regimentation of its component families…
Lewis Mumford, The City in History
By the time I began working as a municipal planner in Baltimore County four decades later, suburbia’s pathologies had attracted the attention of private and non-profit organizations, state and federal policymakers, and the public at large. I falsely believed the time was right to play a role in changing development patterns, and that a widespread embrace of the human scale was possible.
Within the Baltimore County Department of Planning, my criticism of regulatory reform to produce “better development outcomes” struck a nerve. Previously, the planning director had tasked me and another planner with writing new regulations I knew would be ineffective at best.
In July 2003, the department’s deputy director asked me to submit a proposal based on my ideas for regulatory reform to County Executive James T. Smith. These ideas served as the basis for a redevelopment policy that would introduce human-scale development into the distressed suburbs that ringed Baltimore City.
Learning that the County Executive had accepted the proposal, I felt elated. Legislation followed, which looked good on paper. In reality, however, I had become little more than a pawn in a bit of political theater. Municipal politicians and a few department heads simply co-opted my ideas for purposes having little to do with human-scale development.
Some twenty years later, in January 2023, I calculated the average walk score for a random selection of 50 newly built homes in Baltimore County listed on realtor.com. The average score was an abysmal 18 (i.e., entirely auto-dependent) out of a possible 100 (i.e., a walker’s paradise). The same calculation for 50 new homes approved by the Canadian planning department I’d worked for in Halifax NS provided an average score of just 8.5.
In a previous article, I describe the rule of perpetual urban sprawl and note that Gaithersburg, MD, was the first in the nation to operate as an exception to that rule. Over the past three decades, Gaithersburg has consistently built places that produce walk scores in the “very walkable” range of 70-89. The question is, what specifically did Gaithersburg do differently to break the rule of perpetual urban sprawl?
Gaithersburg builds at the human scale with greater consistency because the municipality has achieved four things not attained in most other suburban locales, namely critical mass, strategic vision, clarity of entitlement, and design competence.
Achievement #1: Critical Mass
Critical mass refers to the ability to assemble the right mix of people that gets a municipality to where it can build its first high-quality, mixed-use project.
In Gaithersburg, that critical mass began coming together when developer Joe Alfandre knew he didn’t want to cover 340 acres of farmland that he and his father owned with yet more urban sprawl. An acquaintance put Alfandre in touch with urban designers Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany, who had long championed the human-scale development that the Federal Housing Administration effectively banned in the 1930s.
The three of them approached Gaithersburg mayor Edward Bohrer, who immediately grasped the significance of their ideas. With business and political interests aligned, Gaithersburg had the critical mass needed to point a nondescript suburban municipality in a very different direction, which led to the creation of Kentlands, the first major mixed-use, human-scale development constructed in over 60 years.
A good way to understand what this critical mass looked like in practice is to look at the first 15 minutes of the presentation below. It was made shortly after Gaithersburg completed a multi-day design charrette, which set the stage for Kentland’s development. The man you’ll see leading the presentation at the outset is Joe Alfandre. Two other key speakers are mayor Edward Bohrer, and urban designer Andres Duany.
| Side note: I spent a day with Alfandre touring “opportunity sites” when working on the aforementioned redevelopment policy at Baltimore County. We intended to incentivize the use of design charrettes to produce mixed-use, human-scale development. |
What’s on display in this presentation is a commitment to mixed-use, human-scale development of a sort that was missing in the municipalities in which I worked. Critical mass depends upon informed leadership on the part of the politician, developer, and urban planner alike. Unfortunately, in most jurisdictions, that combination doesn’t exist. Recognizing a problem, however, can be a first step.
| Side note: In an ideal world, most graduate planning urban programs would conduct a week-long seminar that focuses on the Kentlands charrette presentation (video). There’s so much to discuss here in terms of the criticality of open, accountable, and responsive government. There’s value in comparing what is arguably a gold standard for good governance at Gaithersburg, with what exists in many other jurisdictions in the context of development. Planning students often talk about sustainability, but graduate programs often have little to say about confronting deep levels of dysfunction in local government. |
If you’re unfamiliar with Kentlands, the short video below shot by a realtor in 2010 will provide you with a sense of what it looks like. Today, the trees are more mature, and the place feels established decades after Joe Alfandre stood before an engaged community hopeful for the future.
Achievement #2: Strategic Vision
Once Critical Mass is attained, it becomes possible to establish a Strategic Vision that is expressed clearly and simply to communicate that the municipality is pursuing pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use development at the expense of auto-dependent, single-use development. Gaithersburg’s 1999 Smart Growth Policy is that vision, and it’s still in place today. It addresses the goal of “halting suburban sprawl” and establishes six “principals for development” that they have consistently followed (in large part) for nearly three decades.
The first principle illustrates the policy’s clarity and reads:
“All planning should be done in an effort to provide complete and integrated communities containing housing, shops, workplaces, schools, parks, and civic facilities essential to the daily life of the residents…”
City of Gaithersburg Smart Growth Policy: A Master Plan Element (p. 6)
Succinct, and to the point, the policy provides “clear and specific guidance,” in shaping decision-making relating to “development proposals, funding priorities, master plan amendments, zoning map amendments, and in developing the City’s Strategic Plan.”
This is the policy that former Gaithersburg Planning Director Jennifer Russell said sent developers a message communicating, “When developing in Gaithersburg, you either do it our way or we don’t want you.” The quality of development and associated walk scores produced since Gaithersburg established its Smart Growth Policy shows that developers have largely delivered.
For example, Gaithersburg recently built a place called Downtown Crown shown below, which consists of a small downtown with a main street lined by 5 and 6-story buildings and a mix of single-family homes, townhouses, condos, and apartments.
An ephemeral strategic vision offers little value. What makes the Smart Growth Policy effective is both its clarity and staying power. Gaithersburg created this policy nearly thirty years ago as part of a state-mandated master planning process that requires local governments to periodically review and update plans.
Most local governments in Maryland publish new master plans (a.k.a., comprehensive plans) every ten years. Gaithersburg operates differently in that they keep their older documents active and create newer documents that only note what has changed. Gaithersburg’s Smart Growth Policy is still in effect because embracing human-scale development made sense in 1999, and it still makes sense today.
In most municipalities, developers wedded to urban sprawl exert considerable influence over municipal politicians and politically appointed planning directors. Gaithersburg’s “our way or the highway” attitude has been central to their success, and it aligns with what Planning Director Russell told me years ago regarding how they talk about development in terms of design rather than density. “Speaking in terms of density,” she said, “interferes with good design.”
Density is a byproduct of good human scale design, not an end unto itself. Pursuing density for density’s sake undermines good urbanism. Without the right strategic vision, a municipality may struggle to consistently produce good urbanism over the long run.
Achievement #3: Clarity of Entitlement
Clarity of entitlement refers to a municipality’s ability to move a developer through a transparent approval process culminating in the completion of a human-scale project.[1] In Gaithersburg, clarity is a function of how their master plan and three different mixed-use zones work together.
Clarity in Gaithersburg’s Master Plans
Many municipalities across the country produce master plans that specify goals, objectives, and policies shaping development. Whether or not a municipality does master planning often depends on if it’s required by state law.
Gaithersburg sits in Maryland, and per state law, every municipality in the state must prepare a master plan that’s updated at least once every 10 years. These plans must include the following “master plan elements”:
- Process and Overview
- Land Use
- Transportation
- Sensitive Areas (Environmental)
- Community Facilities
- Water Resources
- Municipal Growth
Optional elements:
- Historic Preservation
- Parks and Recreation
Gaithersburg’s approach to master planning differs from other municipalities in three important ways.
- Typically, municipalities publish master plans as a single document. Gaithersburg splits their plan into multiple documents, organized by state-mandated master plan elements listed above. One of these documents is the “land use element”, which is of central relevance to providing clarity of entitlement.
- Gaithersburg’s land-use element document includes a list of maps. Each map focuses on a single parcel or group of adjacent parcels that are candidates for development or redevelopment. These maps have accompanying analysis and recommendations on how to develop or redevelop the property. Depending on the scenario, the analysis can be succinct or extensive if evaluating larger tracts referred to as “special study areas.”
- When it comes time to update the master plan, Gaithersburg only updates its land use element where circumstances have changed. What this means in practice is that during a fresh round of master planning, they produce a new “land use element” document with a new list of maps. If recommendations for developing a specific property appear in an older document and nothing further is said about the property in the newer document, the original recommendations stay in effect. This is an efficient way to do municipal-level master planning, and as we’ll see shortly, their approach offers strategic benefits.
This master planning process effectively serves to annotate Gaithersburg’s zoning map, clarifying development context at the most granular level (i.e., parcels). I’m not aware of another municipality that provides this level of specificity regarding all parcels within a municipality. This approach has served as an effective way of communicating intent to developers and residents alike openly and transparently about the rationale for the future development of a specific parcel.
| Side note: Besides producing a land use element document and later updates for the municipality as a whole, Gaithersburg also produces master plans that guide development in specific sections of the municipality. This kind of area-specific master planning is done by municipalities elsewhere. These plans focus on a set of interrelated subjects, such as existing conditions, commercial-residential mix, urban design considerations, transportation, and more. In Gaithersburg, these master plans are considered to be amendments to their land use element. To date, they’ve produced location-specific master plans that are shaping development in their historic town core, two commercial corridors, and a 102-acre indoor mall. |
Clarity in Gaithersburg’s Mixed-use Zones
As mentioned, Gaithersburg has three separate mixed-use zones, and they are used in different scenarios that I’ll describe shortly. (If you’re unfamiliar with zoning, I’ve written a brief article covering zoning fundamentals which you can find here.) Clarity of entitlement is a function of how master planning, and these three mixed-use zones work together.
Stanley Abrams, one of Maryland’s pre-eminent land use lawyers and Gaithersburg’s long-serving city attorney, crafted the zones with input from planning staff. He and the others at Gaithersburg who conceived of these zones understood that clarity benefits everyone involved—developer, decision maker, and citizen alike.
Gaithersburg uses its Central Business District (CBD) zone to improve the urban fabric in and around its small historic downtown. Their Corridor Development (CD) zone is being used to slowly transform a busy commercial corridor with large volumes of traffic into a more pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environment with a significant residential component. Finally, their Mixed-Use (MXD) zone is being used throughout the rest of the municipality on all parcels considered suitable for mixed-use development or redevelopment, taking care to integrate well with older conventional suburban development.
Each zone has three sections that are key to providing clarity of entitlement namely, Purpose, Procedure for Application and Approval, and Findings.
Key Section: Purpose
The Purpose section lays out the principal objectives regarding facilitating quality, mixed-use development, and emphasizes abiding by what’s in the master plan. For example, the Purpose section of Gaithersburg’s Mixed-use zone begins with the following:
“It is the objective of this zone to establish procedures and standards for the implementation of master plan land use recommendations (emphasis mine) for comprehensively planned, multi-use projects…”
Code of the City of Gaithersburg, Maryland Sec. 24-160D.1.–Purposes and objectives of zone.
Continuing, the Purpose section reads:
The specific purposes of this zone are:
(a)To establish standards and procedures through which the land use objectives and guidelines of approved and adopted master plans can serve as the basis for evaluating an individual development proposal, as well as ensuring that development proposed will implement the adopted master plan (emphasis mine) and other relevant planning and development policies and guidelines for the area considered for MXD zoning….
Code of the City of Gaithersburg, Maryland Sec. 24-160D.1.a—Purposes and objectives of zone.
This language is innovative. Master plans are policy documents intended to guide development. They do not have the force of law. Zoning ordinances, however, are enforceable laws. Violating them can trigger penalties. What Gaithersburg has done is write its mixed-use zones (i.e., laws) to say that compliance with master plans is required. Note that this works well because Gaithersburg’s master planning process produces recommendations that are tied to specific parcels having specific recommendations in a way that’s not done in other municipalities.
Key Section: Procedure for Application and Approval
The Procedure for Application and Approval section is important because it lays out a straightforward, three-stage process for entitling a project. Details of each stage (referred to as concept, preliminary, and final) aren’t relevant here. The point is that Gaithersburg provides a clear process for entitling well-designed, mixed-use development that’s baked right into each of the three mixed-use zones.
Thousands of other municipalities have well-oiled processes for propagating urban sprawl. What most don’t have in place are streamlined processes that effectively incentivize pedestrian-oriented, human-scale development.
Key Section: Findings
Last but not least is the Findings section. It plays a crucial role in providing clarity of entitlement. This section lists requirements that must be met in each phase of the development process before the municipal council can approve development plans. Developers, therefore, know in advance that the municipality will only approve their concept plan (i.e., the first stage) when,
The application is in accord with recommendations in the applicable master plan for the area (emphasis mine) and is consistent with any special conditions or requirements contained in said master plan…
Code of the City of Gaithersburg, Maryland Sec. 24-160D.10—Findings required.
As mentioned, clarity of entitlement in Gaithersburg is a function of how their master plan and mixed-use zones work together. The municipality takes care to provide consistent processes for all mixed-use projects that tie entitlement to compliance with master planning activities. But in the end, for all of this to matter, a municipality needs to embody design competence.
Achievement #4: Design Competence
Origins of Design Competence in Gaithersburg
Design Competence refers to a municipality’s ability to consistently make the right decisions regarding human-scale design. If you can’t make the right decisions, critical mass, strategic vision, and clarity of entitlement are irrelevant. Design competence is cultural. Some places have it. Others don’t. Let’s look at the origins of design competence in Gaithersburg.
| Note: Gaithersburg is not above occasionally making decisions that work against their strategic vision, but more often than not, they’ve gotten it right for more than three decades. |
Establishing design competence in Gaithersburg was a process that began with their 1988 Kentlands design charrette. Influential people—the mayor, developer, and two urban designers—understood that human-scale development offered a more promising future than abiding by car-dependent development standards promulgated by the federal government in the 1930s.
The choice to use a design charrette to produce Kentlands was critical. The municipal council, the planning commission, planning staff, municipal department heads, the developer, and the public all saw and learned things during the charrette that were new for people who came of age in an era of suburban sprawl and urban decline. This multi-day participatory design process established a foundation of knowledge regarding human-scale design.
Russell said that getting Kentlands built provided people in Gaithersburg with something concrete to point to and say, “We want more of that.” Clearly understanding what you want is part of design competence. This, in turn, gave Gaithersburg the momentum needed to create its first mixed-use zone and adopt its 1999 Smart Growth Policy.
Discussions and educational outreach involving people you might not think to include in urban design decisions shaped design competence. Take firefighters, for example.
The fire department had concerns regarding streets being narrower than those found in standard subdivisions. The planning department did mock setups of roads but couldn’t convince the fire department, who said Kentlands was a high-risk area with narrow streets. When the planning department pointed out that older sections of Gaithersburg had narrow streets, fire officials responded by saying older areas had a higher density of fire stations. Ironically, there was (and still is) a fire station right across the road from the Kentlands site.
In the end, streets were made narrower than standard suburban streets, but not until the project team agreed to add sprinklers to houses which increased costs. Russell told me part of the problem at the time was the fact that people simply didn’t like change. In later projects, streets were narrowed further without pushback or requirements to add sprinkler systems to houses. A cultural shift had taken place.
I’ve focused on fire officials here, to emphasize that developing design competence is multifaceted. A municipality that’s been producing suburban sprawl for decades doesn’t effortlessly pivot to a brand-new way of doing things. Mindful of the importance of critical mass, the only reason that planning staff could even hope to constructively engage fire officials was that they had the backing of the mayor, council, and planning commission. All this is to say that even after the municipality established critical mass, there was still work to do to change entrenched mindsets.
In short, design competence in Gaithersburg originated with the critical mass that leadership produced in 1988. Once they reached critical mass, the expansion of knowledge about what entails human-scale design could begin.
Through engagement and educational outreach, the culture of planning and development changed in Gaithersburg. Over the next decade, they held other design charrettes, both for specific projects and for the creation of area-specific master plans. All the work and community-wide communication associated with these charrettes reinforced the municipality’s embrace of human-scale design.
Sustaining Design Competence
In any municipality, there are two scenarios in which development occurs, namely as-of-right development and discretionary development. Sustaining design competence, in the long run, depends on the quality of people involved in these two processes. Let’s look at each, keeping in mind that Gaithersburg uses the latter approach for reasons I’ll explain.
Sustaining Design Competence with As-of-Right Development
Municipalities use as-of-right development to facilitate human-scale redevelopment in a specific area, such as a town’s main street, or city district. Sustaining design competence in this context depends upon a municipality having planning staff capable of ensuring development applications comply with prescriptive urban design and architectural requirements.
With as-of-right development, developers have the right to go ahead with the construction phase of a project if they meet all requirements specified in the applicable zone. There’s no lengthy, multi-stage review process of the sort you find with discretionary development. Planning staff, working in a zoning compliance role, evaluate the plans and make a determination regarding approval without holding public hearings and shepherding the project through multiple review phases. If there are issues, staff collaborate directly with developers to sort them out.
In order for as-of-right development to produce the human-scale outcome a municipality wants to see, a prescriptive zoning ordinance must focus on a range of subjects relating to human-scale development such as the form a building takes, its relationship to adjacent buildings, and its relationship to the street. This kind of prescriptive ordinance is called a form-based code, and it differs from conventional zoning ordinances (made up of multiple zone definitions) that have been shaping suburbia since the late 1930s.
In suburban communities, zoning is synonymous with single-use zoning, where townhouses go in a townhouse zone and strip malls go into a strip mall zone. Everything is spatially separated from everything else, and it’s expected that you’ll use your car for almost every activity of the day. These kinds of zones say little about what a building looks like aside from a few requirements relating to measurements like height and the distance a building can sit from a property line.
Form-based codes differ in that they’re principally concerned with the physical appearance of buildings, roads, and green space and their relationship to one another. A principal aim of a form-based code is to create places where people find it a pleasure to walk.
How the building is used is of secondary concern or of no concern at all in a form-based code. In terms of design, everything is on the table including exterior building materials, the percentage of a building’s frontage that’s given over to windows, window proportions, roof style, practical species for street trees, how an entrance relates to the sidewalk, and more.
Arlington County, Virginia provides a good example of a form-based code that they are using to revitalize a three-mile commercial corridor. If you get a chance, have a look at this zoning ordinance as it will clarify how municipalities organize prescriptive regulations to facilitate as-of-right development.
Form-based codes are illustrated to communicate what is expected. The figure below illustrates one of several street classifications in Arlington County.
Form base codes include a “regulating plan” that defines the geographic locale within a municipality to which the code applies. If the geographic area that the plan covers is large, it’s preferable to use a multi-day design charrette to help produce the code because that type of participatory design process is ideal for addressing complexity. This is what Arlington County did. For smaller areas, it’s often sufficient to have urban designers work directly with municipal staff to produce the code, but public input and feedback would ideally be an integral part of the process.
To summarize, sustaining design competence with as-of-right development is a function of both the quality of the form base code and the professionalism of the municipal planners responsible for code compliance. They must be well-trained, and capable of recognizing gaps between what the code requires and what a developer’s plans claim to deliver. Staff also need to recognize where a form-based code may fall short in the execution of compliance and apply updates where appropriate. If a planning office inculcates a culture of human-scale design from the top down, the results are going to be good. If not, then all bets are off.
Sustaining Design Competence with Discretionary Development
A discretionary approval process offers advantages over as-of-right development in a municipality that builds human-scale development in disbursed locations, where conditions on the ground differ over time. Using the same form-based code (i.e., as-of-right development) for projects sitting miles apart can constrain designers and impede good design. Creating a form-based code for each site is expensive and impractical given the variation in development contexts.
As shown on Gaithersburg’s zoning map below, they’ve zoned parcels across the municipality as Mixed-Use (MXD). This dispersion is largely the reason they opted for discretionary development.
Gaithersburg applies their two other mixed-use zones, Corridor Development (CD) and Central Business District (CBD), to geographically constrained areas. They could have managed development in these areas with form base codes, mirroring what Arlington County did for its Columbia Pike corridor. Instead, Gaithersburg chose to consistently manage all mixed-use development with discretionary development. With this in mind, the charrette used to create their CBD zone (used in their Old Towne) also produced a separate master plan and set of design standards that, in some respects, resembles a form-based code.
Gaithersburg applies all three mixed-use zones as “floating” zones, meaning that they don’t assign a zoning designation to a parcel to be developed until council approves the application (plan).
In contrast to the prescriptive design requirements found in a form-based code, Gaithersburg’s three mixed-use zones have more generally worded minimum design requirements, hence the “discretionary” nature of the approval process.
Developers submit applications that go through a three-stage review process involving planning staff, the planning commission, and the municipal council. This process culminates in elected officials receiving formal recommendations from the commission, which they factor in when deciding on plan approval.
| Note: Planning commissions are advisory bodies whose members are appointed by locally elected officials. Commissions make planning and development-related recommendations to municipal councils. Municipal council votes on whether to approve a development proposal. |
Previously, I described how Gaithersburg structures mixed-use zones to provide clarity of entitlement. As for sustaining design competence, I’d like to briefly focus on Gaithersburg’s Mix Use (MXD) zone to stress that the elegance and clarity of the zone play a significant role in sustaining design competence.
In a section titled, Purposes and objectives of zone, we find the following language which serves to remind everyone involved what they are aiming to achieve with human-scale development:
To encourage the efficient use of land by: locating employment and retail uses convenient to residential areas; reducing reliance upon automobile use and encouraging pedestrian and other nonvehicular circulation systems; retaining and providing useable open space and active recreation areas close to employment and residential populations; and providing for the development of comprehensive nonvehicular circulation networks, separated from vehicular roadways, which constitute a system of linkages among residential areas, open spaces, recreational areas, commercial and employment areas, and public facilities.
Code of the City of Gaithersburg, Maryland Sec. 24-160D.1
Mandatory minimum requirements make up a significant portion of the MXD zone. They serve as starting points for design discussions. The requirements reflect the knowledge gained during the design charrette, which informed the creation of the MXD zone.
Design-oriented sections in the MXD zone include Minimum development standards, Density and intensity of development, Compatibility standards, Minimum green area, Landscaping, and amenity requirements, and Parking requirements. Taken together, the language in these sections reflects a commitment to the human scale.
The clause below, taken from the compatibility section, illustrates how these minimum development standards foster both good design and respect for the existing community. Its purpose is to disallow out-of-scale buildings that adversely impact pre-existing development with the following clause.
No building shall be constructed to a height greater than its distance from any adjoining property not zoned MXD recommended for residential zoning and land use on the applicable master plan unless the city planning commission finds that approval of a waiver of this requirement will not adversely affect adjacent property.
The Code of the City of Gaithersburg, Maryland Sec. 24-160D.5.a.1.c
Over the past 30 years, those involved in reviewing and approving development applications have benefitted from the clear guidance these mixed-use zones provide, as well as the innovative way in which each zone requires compliance with the master plan’s parcel-based analysis. Sustained design competence is a function of the mixed-use zones themselves and the capabilities of planners, commissioners, and locally elected leaders.
Proof of sustained design competence materializes as projects completed over the past three decades which include, Kentlands, Lakelands, Spectrum Town Center, Downtown Crown, and Watkins Mill Town Center whose site plan appears below. Notably, there is significant variety in design across these projects, yet all are built at the human scale.
Although they’re not infallible, typically, Gaithersburg’s planners, commission members, and elected officials possess a solid understanding of human-scale design in different settings. Much is required of these people because what comprises good design cannot be neatly looked up in a form-based code. With leeway comes a greater risk of exercising poor judgment.
Design competence is part of the culture in Gaithersburg. It’s a function of how government and citizens come together to produce well-designed places because it’s what most of their residents want. It’s part of what draws people to Gaithersburg and it’s part of what keeps them there.
Dealing with Inevitable Lapses in Judgement
Municipalities shifting to human scale are doing so because the people involved in the process bring integrity to the job and understand key urban design considerations relating to scale, massing, granularity, compatibility, compactness, height, order, variety, selection of exterior materials, overall quality of the pedestrian experience, and more.
With this said, it’s not as if there aren’t lapses in judgment. In December 2022, for example, Gaithersburg’s planning staff made a recommendation to its planning commission to move forward with a proposal that was significantly out of character with a particular street in Old Towne.
Most residents attending the public meeting were furious, with one saying that the planner who presented and supported the ill-conceived plan should lose his job. Fortunately, planning commission members understood the design flaws and requested the developer to resubmit a design that was compatible with the surroundings in terms of granularity, scale, and massing.
The level of design competence on display in that meeting by the planning commission is why the municipality produces results. If you don’t have the right decision-makers, then things fall apart.
Communicating the Benefits of Change
Again, I’ve focused on Gaithersburg because, over the past 30 years, they’ve consistently produced human scale development with walk scores in the “very walkable” range of 70-89. More recently, a handful of other municipalities such as Dublin, OH, and Tigard, OR, have started to change development patterns as well. Regardless of these success stories, auto-dependence remains the rule in the United States.
The lesson Gaithersburg offers is that change is possible. Locally elected leaders, planning commissioners, and urban planners can all play a role in working with residents to understand the significant benefits that walkable, human-scale development offers financially, physically, economically, socially, and environmentally.
When I lived in Gaithersburg briefly in 1990, it was a nondescript suburb of Washington, DC. In 2022, Fortune considered Gaithersburg to be the 7th best place in America for families. The underlying reasons for this recognition tie back to the four achievements Gaithersburg has realized to break the rule of perpetual sprawl and produce more places to live where the simple act of walking is a pleasure.
If the human scale is to prevail, critical mass, strategic vision, clarity of entitlement, and design competence are mandatory achievements. Realizing these achievements requires that a municipality adopt and improve upon best practices established elsewhere. Given the benefits of change, can you help provide the leadership? It comes down to education, transparency, a good deal of professionalism, and a deep respect of the sort Gaithersburg shows for the community. It pays dividends.
[I] Greenfield development refers to building on previously undeveloped land.
[ii] Land entitlement is the legal process by which a developer obtains the set of approvals needed to get something built.
[iii] Gaithersburg is essentially using its master plan to augment its zoning map with additional information to clarify development context at a very granular level (i.e., individual pieces of property)
[iv] Most municipalities have planning commissions (a.k.a., planning boards) that provide recommendations to elected officials regarding issues related to land use, such as development approval and master planning.
[v] Gaithersburg has used design charrettes for the redevelopment of Kentlands Town Center, Kentlands Boulevard, their historic district, and the Route 355 corridor.
