An image that will be incorporated into Luce County’s new zoning ordinance shows the possibilities of demonstrating land use guidelines with pictures, rather than relying on text only to tell the story. The image at left shows existing development along M-123, including several curb cuts, parking in front of businesses, and little landscaping. The image at right shows the same place with prospective new businesses and new development standards which the county plans to adopt. New development at the site will include tree plantings between the fronts of businesses and a highway, a green strip behind the development, parking behind the businesses that front the highway, and only two entrances to the parking areas. (Courtesy of Michigan State University Extension) Americans miss small town Main Street, that idyllic place in movies and country music where the grocery, library, and hardware are all within walking distance of the post office, and where people can stop for an ice cream cone on the way to a shady town square.

The latest thinking in city planning is a throwback to when businesses on main streets in small towns were just a matter of convenience. Overlooked in the age of automobiles after World War II, Main Streets are increasingly being revived, with new names like Traditional Neighborhood Design, New Urbanism, and Smart Growth. Now, when quizzed about what they want future development to look like, residents of growing towns repeatedly call for tree-lined streets, neighborhoods with a pleasing mix of homes and businesses, parks within walking distance, and attractive buildings.

Nobody ever says they want treeless streets and strip malls. No one ever says they want to live in a housing development 10 miles away from a shopping center, said Rod Cortright, speaking to the Clark Township Planning Commission Tuesday night, February 7.

Mr. Cortright, a land use expert with Michigan State University Extension, told commissioners that traditional zoning has created ugly places and a dependency on automobiles to get people to and from the shopping centers, placed far away from homes, because the thinking then was that different uses should be segregated. He was invited to review the township's 2001 visual preference survey and discuss how Clark Township can best proceed with updating its comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance.

He told them land use guides of the future will have pictures and images to better illustrate the concept people have in their minds of the places they want to live. New ordinances to govern land use are turning traditional ideas about zoning upside down, Mr. Cortright said. Rather than segregating land use in zones, communities are now integrating them, and basing their decisions on appearance.

Mr. Cortright introduced the commission to form-based coding, a type of planning "so new we didn't even have a name for it two years ago."

Only about a dozen communities in Michigan have adopted or are considering form-based codes. Grand Rapids, one of Michigan's fastest growing cities, recently adopted a form-based ordinance, and Suttons Bay near Traverse City is working on one.

"Form-based coding is really something that's come to the forefront in the last two to three years," Mr. Cortright said. "The whole idea is to loosen things up, to spend more time on appearance and less time on use."

Luce County revised its master plan and is now working on the zoning ordinance, incorporating formbased code into the ordinance. MSU Extension and Mr. Cortright are helping the county revise the zoning ordinance, with the support of a Coastal Zone Management grant.

Mr. Cortright said many of Luce county's future lots are being planned around significant features and the lay of the land. Some of the new lots will curve around hillsides instead of being cut into squares and rectangles.

"They're going to eliminate lot sizes altogether. They don't care what size the lot is anymore, as long as they meet a set standard," Mr. Cortright said, when questioned by commissioners about lot depth in the commercial zone and how many lots the businesses will use.

Luce County is planning new shopping squares with small retail shops along the major roads and large, "big box" stores like K-Mart at the back of the development, away from motorists' line of sight. Parking will be behind the stores along the highway, in the middle of the development. Only one or two entryways will bring motorists into the shopping center, reducing the number of curb cuts along the major roads.

"They are redrawing development in Luce to accommodate new things, to cluster as many businesses together as they can," Mr. Cortright said.

Such developments create a sense of Main Street within shopping centers, where even if one drives to a place designated for shopping, many types of businesses will benefit from grouping shops around parking and other amenities.

"They also have allowances for small home businesses and cottage industry," he added.

If a resident wants to set up shop at their home, they can, Mr. Cortright said, as long as they meet an appearance standard set forth by Luce County, and health and building codes.

This new method of visually driven planning gives communities the power to control appearance rather than land use, something local communities say they already have a hard time enforcing. Traditional zoning ordinances have little or no pictures, and leave text descriptions open to wide interpretation, Mr. Cortright said. Pictures leave little doubt about what planners want the community to look like.

"Typical ordinances today let you read between the lines. They talk a lot about what you can't do," Mr. Cortright said, adding that people now find their way around zoning by seeking special land use permits. "Special land uses, in their own convoluted way,” he said, “are basically form-based coding."

He explained that form-based coding and special land use permits both allow mixed uses throughout the community instead of forcing certain uses into their designated zones. Traditional zoning keeps uses separate and is responsible for how some communities have grown into places characterized by cluttered highways and housing developments.

"We've been talking about these things – how communities have evolved because of zoning – for the past 15 years," Mr. Cortright told The St. Ignace News. Traditional zoning is essentially a prescription for sprawl, he said. “If people in Clark Township are happy with that, they don't have to change a thing. If they're not, then they're going to have to look at some different things."

He turned to the Clark Township Visual Preference Survey from 2001 and pointed to examples of places people didn't like. One of them was a stretch of highway in Gaylord that sprouts from the I-75 exit ramps. It shows a treeless highway, thickly lined with telephone and electric wires, directional signs, and franchise restaurant and gas station signs. Heavy traffic runs up and down the street. The image received the strongest negative reaction of the all the images presented to residents who answered the survey.

Another image of Gaylord, with considerably less traffic, fewer signs, grass, trees, and decorative lampposts, drew a more positive reaction. People are walking on sidewalks on each side of the picture, and there are no overhead electrical or telephone lines.

Mr. Cortright collaborated with Clark Township in 2001 to conduct the Visual Preference Survey as the community moved forward with plans to update the township's comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance. The plan was set aside for the past four years as the revisions were put on hold. Now that the planning commission is working on revising the plan, Chairman Dave Dunning said the time is ripe to review the survey.

"I wasn't sure it really got the attention it deserved," Mr. Dunning said, explaining why he thought the planning commission, with many new faces since 2001, should hear the survey results.

Mr. Cortright said the survey can be used as a pictorial guide that shows what residents would like to see in Clark Township in the future. It also suggests specific land use patterns for the new ordinance. The pictures of patterns and survey results can even be added to the comprehensive plan to support future land use ordinances.

Of the 3,000 residents and property owners the survey was sent to, 1,307, or 43.6 percent, were returned. The high percentage of return means planners can assume the results are at least 95 percent representative of the opinions of Clark Township residents. He also noted the number of seasonal cottagers who attended his first presentation of the survey results in 2001, and said they "obviously really feel they are a part of the community here."

In the survey, Clark Township residents consistently chose greener images showing traditional architectural designs. They liked a gas station in Alanson with a peaked roof, surrounded by trees and grass, better than an image of a flat-roofed station in Gaylord cluttered with overhead electrical lines.

They chose smaller, two-lane, tree-lined streets with sidewalks over wide, four-lane highways. "Big box" stores placed in landscaped shopping centers were preferable to a large store with a sprawling parking lot out front. Respondents preferred neighborhoods with houses closer to the curb instead of housing developments where long drives push houses back from the curb. They liked farmhouses with garages on the side better than modern houses with garages pushed out closer to the curb.

The modern type of architecture, prevalent in urban housing developments, demonstrates Americans' dependence on automobiles, Mr. Cortright said. Homes are built with "front-loaded" garages and are the first thing people see when approaching the house, compared to older homes where garages are on the side or situated behind the house.

Some of these developments and styles may never reach Clark Township, Mr. Cortright said, and it may be a long time before the area sees the traffic depicted in some of the images.

Some of those images, however, are of places not so far from here, and "their zoning ordinances got them to where they are now," he said.

"Ninety-nine percent of townships in the United States follow what planners call the Euclidian model of zoning. They are spatially based, with strict separation of uses," Mr. Cortright said.

He explained that Euclidian zoning, called so because of a landmark 1926, Supreme Court case won by the Village of Euclid, Ohio, started because the village was successful at enforcing its ordinance. Communities around America modeled their own ordinances after Euclid's, mapping districts or "zones" around their own communities and assigning uses to those zones. The concept of zoning is based on a need to separate industrial zones from retail stores, housing from shopping areas, and to reduce congestion and housing density.

"There are better ways to do this," Mr. Cortright told commissioners. "You have the potential to do some creative things here."

Signs of sprawl are already evident in Clark Township. The Cedarville waterfront along Hodeck Street once had a mixture of shops, the post office, two hotels, and even a grocery store. Longtime residents describe the former retail district as busy and "vibrant," but economic factors, rising property values, and the introduction of a highway north of Hodeck drove those businesses off the waterfront. Businesses and cottage industries have cropped up along the stretches of highway that run through Clark Township.

In addition to the 2001 visual preference survey, Mr. Dunning said he also wants to incorporate suggestions from the US-2 and M-134 Visual Enhancement Planning Project into comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance updates. Mackinac County participated in a project sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation to improve the visual impact of roadsides along its busiest highways. The project included gathering public opinion about the views along M-134 and US-2, and commissioning engineers to draw ideas of how existing views can be made more attractive.

"The impression people get of the community is what they are seeing as they go up and down the road," Mr. Cortright told The St. Ignace News. "From an economic standpoint, communities that are well developed and attractive are magnets for new business and economic growth. People want to live in attractive communities."

Mackinac County was one of six communities picked in 2003 for the project. Some of the suggestions for Clark Township were to add landscaping on road corners, plant trees and grass, reduce or eliminate overhead electrical lines, and add decorative items like awnings, lights, and benches. The suggestions can be seen at www.liaa.org /upvision/mackinac_co.asp.

The final results and status of the project have been presented at communities around Mackinac County, but not yet in Clark Township. Michelle Walk, Michigan State University Extension director for Mackinac County, is scheduled to present the project to the public at the March 14 Clark Township Planning Commission meeting.