10 Ways Cleveland’s New ‘Smart Code’ Will Greatly Change the City’s Feel in Decades to Come

What makes a city appealing?

Safety. Diversity. Things to do and places to eat. Prosperity.

And then there’s image—a mix of how a city looks and feels and operates. That’s the basic idea underlying Cleveland’s new form-based planning code, which went into effect last month. Often categorized as Smart Code, these are fresh laws for how everything on private ground is built, laws that are currently being piloting in three neighborhoods: Detroit Shoreway/Cudell, Hough and parts of the Opportunity Corridor.

Form precedes use. That’s the fundamental philosophy of Smart Code. Which tells developers this: That before anything, a building first must contribute to a public space appealing to the eyes and ears—to tree-lined pathways instead of bleak stretches of concrete, lively barbershops and delis instead of parking spaces or brick walls, outdoor concert stages and café table seating instead of parking lots. A building is not just an island; it is part of a city.

Since 2012, 62 American cities, from Miami to Cincinnati, have re-engineered their planning laws to shift from old code—which put homes far away from shopping plazas, and even further away from the office—to new laws designed to foster healthier public realms. (Rather than designing cities around the automobile.) Laws that can help speed up, the idea goes, development. “Change the code,” journalist Charles Montgomery says, “and you change the city.”

Change that is going to take time. A lot of time. In May, City Council passed Title VIIA, a Neighborhood Form-Based Code that will act as a precursor to, if things go well, all of Cleveland being eventually redone with Smart Code. Which begs some very key questions. Will Smart Code be able to heal a Cleveland still pockmarked with vacant lots, abandoned factories and poisoned land? And will such code actually, in a developer’s perspective, create market demand?

To better understand, and of course visualize, what the city may look like in a decade or two, Scene went on a trip with city planner Matt Moss, who is, just as anyone in his department, eager to see form-based code put into practice. Moss, who has become planning’s unofficial leader for Cleveland’s 15-minute city pitch, was also somewhat giddy. Most of his work grows behind a map or computer, so walking the city—with spiraled codebook in hand—seemed to light up synapses that a thoughtfully-designed tree-line near Gordon Square only could jolt.

And added reason for Moss’ colleagues. Form-based code could lighten the load across the Planning Department, as developers who’ve had to find legal workarounds (i.e., variances) to not build parking spaces or build apartments over retail spaces will no longer have to wait months to do so.

“We want the code to support and allow appropriate development that helps the city grow and meet its needs. Yeah, that’s the goal,” Moss said, walking east on Detroit Avenue on a particularly hot Tuesday morning. “And I think part of that is having a code that allows a pathway for projects to get built without variances.”

“We just want builders to build,” he said.

Here are ten takeaways from Cleveland’s new Smart Code, design rules that apply to any new construction (and most additions) in the three pilot neighborhoods after July 3 — design that could greatly change how the entire city feels in the next ten, twenty, thirty years.

1. Most residential buildings must have outdoor amenity space for the public.

Tenants can swim in the pool on The Luckman’s rooftop, or get air with a dog at the Statler’s inner courtyard. But the vast majority of apartment buildings in Cleveland, at least those built before the Great Recession, don’t have anything of value for those who don’t have leases.

In Cleveland’s form-based code, every residential building over 20,000 square feet must provide outdoor space for both renters and the general public. A small courtyard or pet-friendly corner park, say, of at least 400 square feet, is required by law.

Moss pointed to Treo Apartments, the orange-and-yellow mid-rise situated off West 25th and Swift Avenue. Tables and turf, which were empty as Moss examined it, would still fit the code requirements. But such shade covers and tree planters have an objective in mind.

“These threshold spaces are semi-public,” he said, standing in front of Treo’s gym space. “Like, you don’t need to be a resident here to sit down and just, like, hang out, or wait for the bus, or whatever.”

2. Only one-fifth or less of a building can be “dead space.”

Anyone who’s ever walked through Midtown, or by one of the many bland parking garages on Superior Avenue, knows the feeling well. The walk itself is anything but captivating. It isn’t fun, or appealing. And sometimes it doesn’t feel very safe.

New code hopes to assuage that uneasy feeling, and tries to replace it with building fronts filled with activity—people doing things inside!—instead of idled car grills or the stark welcome of a concrete wall. Only twenty percent or less of a building’s street-facing side (frontage, in planner parlance) can be, well, nothing.

Moss pointed to the front of Ohio City’s Reinberger Auditorium as example of past planning foibles, and what Smart Code would reject. More than one-third of the auditorium is brick and door, creating a kind of automatic anticipation anxiety in the walker.

“If there’s people behind there, you won’t know if they’re there,” he said. “There’s no light that spills out onto the street. There’s no activity that’s present on the street. Just the same way, like, a parking lot is also considered dead space because it’s not active with people in it.”

He turned to the east side of the Reinberger, where three people lounged on a staircase. “I mean, compared to here,” Moss said. “You’ve got windows, there’s light, there’s activity.”

3. At least half of a building’s ground floor windows have to be transparent.

In Jane Jacob’s Death and Life of Great American Cities, the foremother of New Urbanism stated that a good street must foster “eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street.” Occupants who “cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it, and leave it blind.”

If dead space is discouraged, then alive space is encouraged by Smart Code. In most instances, more than sixty percent of a large apartment complex must be glass that can be seen through—not covered in “temporary” window wrap, as you see in some cloistered restaurants or tinted to the point of blackout. (A third for smaller homes.)

And not just because alive space is prettier. Like Jacobs, Moss believes that window transparency, the sign of life off the street, does wonders to help deter the possibility of crime. And, for those inside, to help deter it naturally: by just being there.

“If you want the street to be active, you want people walking on it,” Moss said. “If you want people taking transit, riding bikes, going to restaurants, going to retail, you want it to feel like a space. But first, people feel comfortable.”

4. Developers can build as many housing units on their land as they please.

All of the theory in Smart Code is carried out via eight specific districts: House-Scale, Neighborhood-Scale, Community-Scale, Urban Flex, Urban Node, Industrial Flex, Urban Innovation and Special. These eight districts, zoned with neighborhood input, decide look and feel. And they decide, like zoning’s original intent, what certain blocks are for.

But most, if not all, of these districts don’t tell developers how many units of housing to build. Districts determine the height of fences, the maximum number of stories and overall height. They size up windows and doors. They dictate the size of pocket parks or courtyards.

Within these limits however, builders are pretty much given free rein. Which of course has its pros and cons: On one end, more housing equals density, which leads to a more well-funded public realm. And on the other end, developers might build smaller units—”workforce,” “micro,” “efficiency”—that could seem a stretch for higher rent asks.

“Still, the unit count could be whatever they want,” Moss said, looking out at a vacant Burger King on Detroit Ave., which is now classified under Urban Node 5, a zoning district meant to encourage mid-rises. “They could do studios. They could do all four-bedroom units—if it makes sense to do that.”

5. It’ll be illegal to build parking in between the building and the street.

It’s both the crown and bane of American suburbia: the street-facing parking lot.

They’re seen in the front of every drug store, every restaurant, every Orange Theory, every Jamba Juice. Planning code passed in the 1960s required builders to build a specific number of parking spots—and in the front of the building the vast majority of them decided they should go.

Smart Code simply says no to this. No developers can legally build any kind of parking space between the building and the street.

Not only is Cleveland a land of parking space surplus, but those front-facing parking lots, like the one at Planet Fitness on Lorain, have a similar affect on pedestrians as does dead space.

“It makes the whole street less walkable,” he said. “And there are fewer things. It’s just like, you can fit more than a gym here, right? And looking at it, it’s obvious that what’s taking up all the extra space is cars.”

6. The front of buildings can’t be built too far back from the sidewalk.

Walkable cities, the Barcelonas and Copenhagens of the world, aren’t walkable without them. The vast majority of buildings in dense city centers are built flush with each other, as far as how they line the street.

Every single district has its own setback parameters, meaning how far the front of the space is set back from the sidewalk. (No more than 15 feet in most; up to 40 feet in past code.) The goal, Smart Code says, being to “frame the public realm with a consistent street wall.” To keep city blocks unified, so to speak. To help us feel connected to the city itself.

Decades of disinvestment and car-dependency have obliterated that consistent front of buildings, noticeable in Downtown’s Warehouse District, and flat out agonizing in East Cleveland. You can feel this subconsciously walking a sidewalk with no consistent street wall: protected here, anxious there, intrigued here.

Moss pointed out The Welleon, a new mid-rise off Detroit Avenue in Ohio City, as a new example of restoration of the street’s fledging “wall.” As he measured the building’s setback, a duo of contractors tended to the greenery on the tree lawn nearby.

“See, it also lets you build more pedestrian space,” Moss added, nodding to the Welleon’s setback line. “And places people want to be.”

7. Outdoor dining patios are encouraged.

Dining patios represent a kind of symbol of the sludge of the current code. All developers hoping to build one have to enter the often lengthy process of getting a variance and permission from the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Outdoor dining patios, like the ones at Astoria or (soon) at Ice or Rice in Asiatown, would no longer be exceptions to old rule. Those umbrella-dotted and string-lit spaces, historically infrequent in Cleveland, would be allowed by default, not with a needed variance, as long as it doesn’t tamper with sidewalk traffic.

“Like, which one you rather have?” Moss said, standing in front of Astoria’s patio. He compared it to a nearby brick wall, flanked by a used car lot. “Well, this one has plants. Like, it’s green. And there’s just people here, like, having lunch.”

“You can see it yourself,” he added, nodding to a group of guys having lunch. “That’s difficult to do when it’s a blank wall.”

8. Developers can build as many parking spaces as they see fit. Or not.

For the bulk of the 20th century, anything built in and around Cleveland had to follow strict guidelines as far as parking is concerned. Developers had little choice otherwise. Every unit needed one space. Hotel rooms needed X amount. Movie theaters Y. Grocery stores Z.

Form-based code eliminates that need completely. Developers have free rein to build as many parking spaces for cars as they think their market needs, without permission from the Board of Zoning Appeals, and without breaking the law.

Moss used the Clermont Apartments off Siam Road and Fulton Avenue as good example. Built this year, the 12-unit complex opted only for half the number of parking spaces after a six-month-long correspondence with BZA. Six were built. And were built in the back of the building.

“It doesn’t meet [today’s] minimum parking requirements,” Moss said, surveying Clermont’s lot. “But it’s fine. And there used to be just one house here. And now it’s twelve units. You have twelve homes in place of just one.”

9. Trees are a must. As are bike racks.

A walkable city can’t be walkable if the summer sun beats you down.

The arborist’s solution is by creating natural shade cover over hot concrete — the elusive blanket of leaves known as a city’s tree canopy. Cleveland’s own canopy is a third of what it was a century ago, which has lit a fire under City Hall’s Division of Forestry to scramble to find money to try and restore it. And do it soon.

Smart Code orders developers to contribute. By law, street trees must be planted in what’s called the furniture zone—that space between the sidewalk and the street—and planted every 20 to 30 feet. The philosophy is that City Hall’s coffers can only do so much. Builders have to do their part.

With Moss, who did his best philosophizing under leafy locust trees in Gordon Square or off Lorain Avenue, the point of the canopy is to foster places on the sidewalk where people feel safe congregating and walking. Away from heat exhaustion.

And not just walking. With the promise of Cleveland’s Midways being built before the end of the decade, Smart Code would also urge builders to provide at least two bike rack spaces—one for every ten units—in front of their complex. (Even outside industrial spaces, too.)

“This is all about trying to make the pedestrian experience as good as it can be,” Moss said, under a locust tree on Detroit, “given the circumstances.”

10. If you choose to build a parking lot, it at least must look nice.

Putting parking into the hands of the developer means that not every builder will buy into the idealism of the walkable city. That more people than you think bike. That everyone can live their lives in a comfortable, tree-lined radius of their one-bedroom apartment.

Form-based code seems to recognize this. Developers will still build parking lots—for residents of their five-story apartment complex, for 277 patrons of their new concert venue. What the new code does is force lots to at least not be eyesores, but be “safe, comfortable and attractive environments for users and pedestrians,” it reads, “while also mitigating heat island effects, absorbing noise pollution, managing stormwater runoff.” And so on.

For every ten parking spaces, a builder must place an island with at least one large tree, and one at least every four parking rows. And every lot of cars must be screened, or wrapped, with trees, walls or fences—the goal being to hide machinery behind greenery.

“I mean, just look at it,” Moss said, pointing to a parking lot off West 65th and Detroit. It was green. It was behind the building. It seemed, to Moss, like a handsome place to just be. “They’re just locust trees, but they do a pretty good job providing shade.”

At that, Tim Myers, a 31-year-old contractor, walked up to Moss with his bike. Hearing Moss’ adoration for Gordon Square’s authenticity—it’s only one of three blocks in Cleveland that has all of its original buildings—Myers began to boast about his own neighborhood. About the character of the Rowley Inn. About the lure of the Christmas Story House.

“My house was built in 1897,” Myers told Moss. “It’s fucking historic. You can’t tear it down.”

Moss lit up. He turned to the buildings around the intersection. “These buildings, these apartments, pretty much all of them can’t be built under current zoning code,” he told Myers.

“Because they’re historic,” Myers said.

“Sure, but imagine if this building, like, just wasn’t here.”

“Oh no,” Myers said. He looked at the Square in silence. “That would suck, man,” he said.

It was Myers’ day off, so he left Moss heading to Edgewater. It was a perfect encounter for Moss, a kind of proof-in-pudding episode for theory made practice. At the intersection in front of Gypsy Bean, Moss turned with a smile. This was Smart Code rearing its beautiful purpose: to foster the chance connections of city-goers.

“I mean,” Moss told Scene, “if we were in a car this whole time, would we have ever met Tim in the first place?”

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This article appears in Jul 3-16, 2024.