Pattern zones help development in the suburbs

Image Credit: Matthew Petty, Infill Group, and Matthew Hoffman, Miller Boskus Lack

A new technique called a pattern zone can be used by cities and towns to make good urbanism a natural outcome of their local real estate market. The concept itself isn’t necessarily new as Matthew Petty, a planner and developer in Fayetteville, AR, discusses.

Before zoning codes and land use lawyers, cities were built from pattern books containing construction plans for the building types in common use.  However, a municipal pattern book with pre-approved plans is at the center of the latest pattern zone concept. It changes the market activity because it lowers those barriers in ways that are valuable to developers: time and money. Matthew explains “For a missing-middle project, the savings can equal thousands of dollars per unit, once again making middle-scaled buildings as economical as single-family subdivisions and large-scale developments.”