The SmartCode Workshop

Overcoming the limitations of single-use zoning demands tools that are comprehensive and cost-effective. The form-based SmartCode is such a tool. It provides an integrated template for stimulating healthy growth in keeping with community character and for broadening choices for residents and businesses.

At the SmartCode Workshop, you can hear context-setting theory and get a line-by-line explanation of its key provisions. With technical experts guiding discussions, you can dig deeply into lessons learned and best practices for implementation.

Through a variety of interactive sessions with a host of accomplished practitioners, participants are guided page by page through the SmartCode, exploring the theory, scales and elements of transect planning. Public works standards integrating well-designed places are discussed in detail, along with calibration practices, including the synoptic survey, equivalency tables, and urban design under form-based and transect-based zoning ordinances.

Thanks to being hosted in El Paso, which adopted its SmartCode over three years ago, this workshop will focus on use of the code -- both the developer's design / build perspective, and to a lesser extent on the City's administrative point of view. In-depth sessions address:

• Elements Smart Growth and nuts and bolts of SmartCode
• Case studies of various types of projects – infill, greenfield, and redevelopment – through the design, application, and approvals process.
• Economic, environmental, and social benefits of SmartCode development. Given El Paso's market and climate, illustrate how these sorts of projects can be economically viable.

Headliner Jeff Speck, co-author of Suburban Nation and Smart Growth Manual, and former Design Director of the National Endowment for the Arts will be joined by other form-based code experts, including Susan Henderson, Hazel Borys, Geoff Dyer, Howard Blackson, Nathan Norris,Jennifer Hurley, and John Anderson.

Tuesday, November 29, 1 pm thru Thursday, December 1 at noon
Philanthropy Theatre
125 Pioneer Plaza, El Paso, Texas 79901

Download agenda
Lecture Series
Register here.
For questions, email info@placemakers.com.

After the SmartCode Workshop El Paso wraps up, a by-appointment-only Developer's Clinic will follow on Thursday afternoon. Available to workshop participants who are developers with plans underway, SmartCode Workshop lecturers will sit down in small groups and talk through value capture and design elements on specific properties.

A special thanks to our sponsor, the City of El Paso, for making this workshop possible.

This workshop carries 16 hours each of APA AICP, AIA CES, and CNUa credit. Each participant will have the opportunity to sign in daily, and receive a certificate of completion with hours noted at the end, so may be eligible for self-reporting for other professional organizations, such as LEED-ND and Professional Engineers.