Episode Details

Hannah wants to build a mid-sized walkable Israeli city with a new Levantine architectural language — and she's asking what the form-based code underneath it would actually have to say. This episode digs into how form-based codes work (frontage types, regulating plans, the shopfront vs. the stoop), why they regulate the shape of buildings but almost never their style, and what Modi'in — Moshe Safdie's master-planned city between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — teaches us about the gap between a beautiful principle and the wrong instrument. A resident's verdict: "too planned," missing the spontaneity that is part of every city. The answer isn't a bigger code. It's two documents instead of one. Key sources: • CMAP / Form-Based Codes Institute, Form-Based Codes: A Step-by-Step Guide for Communities, 2013 — https://formbasedcodes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/CMAP-GuideforCommunities.pdf • Safdie Architects, New City of Modi'in project page — https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/new-city-of-modiin • PlannersWeb, Part 3: Typical Elements of a Form-Based Code, Mary Madden & Joel Russell, 2014 — https://plannersweb.com/2014/12/fbc3/ Episode 5933 — myweirdprompts.com/n/5933 (permanent short link: myweirdprompts.com/896492)