Montebello provides a range of living, working, and recreational options to suit diverse needs. The form and character of the different human habitats is conceived as a geography of diverse place types such as neighborhoods, districts, and corridors.
The City is largely built out with stable residential and commercial areas. Some of the vacant and underutilized sites in the Downtown area, the Corridors, and Districts along the Freeway offers the greatest potential for preserving commercial development and attracting new growth.
Community preferences and directions guide the coding of the built environment — from a broad, citywide scale, to a detailed scale of individual neighborhoods, blocks, buildings and physical character, consistent with the history and desired future of the place.
A Specific Plan is being developed for the Downtown area which will include a development code. The development code for the Downtown area will be a form-based code (FBC). FBCs are an alternative to conventional zoning regulations. FBCs are purposeful place-based regulations with an increased focus on the design of the public realm: the public space defined by the exterior of buildings and the surrounding streets and open space.
A key difference between conventional use-based and FBCs is that FBCs do not determine entitlements through FAR or floor units per acre. The conventional density controls have failed to produce diversity in living and working arrangements in a contextual manner. Overly restrictive use and density regulations are common barriers to small-scale development.
The focus of this code is on the few but critically important urban standards that shape the public realm. These include design of streets and open spaces, setback, building height, building frontage at street level, parking, and access.
The properties in Downtown area are build-out. The vision for Downtown area calls for preservation of existing commercial development while allowing incremental and contextual infill development.
The regulations in the Downtown Code will focus on creating a unifying public realm and are intended to be lean and less regulatory on the private side. The area will develop incrementally and more organically. This code will intentionally encourage improvisation and innovative infill development that creates a rhythmic pattern of existing and new buildings unified by a distinctive, vibrant, and walkable public realm.
At the Visioning Charrette Noon Talk on June 24th, Kaizer Rangwala reviewed the elements of a FBC and discussed how FBCs are used to protect and preserve stable areas from incompatible development and to attract appropriate (re)development to transform areas at risk. This FBC reinforces the historical form patterns with the use of streets, frontages, buildings, and open spaces that are appropriate for the Downtown Montebello context. Click here to see the recorded presentation.
Kaizer is the founding principal of Rangwala Associates. Kaizer’s multidisciplinary training and experience in drafting and implementing General Plans for over three decades bring forth a broad and distinctive perspective to crafting Form-Based Codes. Kaizer’s work on General Plans, Corridor Plans, and Form-Based Codes has been recognized with numerous awards. He has lectured extensively on the place-based economy and Form-Based Codes. His writings have been featured in economic development and planning publications.
