ABSTRACT
Form-based codes (FBCs) emerged in recent decades as a way of implementing a three-dimensional vision of desired urban patterns and forms. The goal is to achieve this vision in a transparent, predictable way. Some of these FBCs are transect-based, meaning that they use an organizing framework in which the elements of urbanism—building, lot, land use, street, and all of the other physical aspects of the human habitat—preserve the integrity of different types of urban and rural environments. This chapter presents a methodology for creating a transect-based FBC. Steps are laid out for measuring existing urbanism, calibrating zone requirements, and then proposing an FBC that reinstates a meaningful spatial pattern of zones in which regulations vary based on locational intensity ranging from more rural to more urban qualities.
