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Building Orientation
Building placement and orientation is critical to enhancing a community’s or development’s character and promoting pedestrian activity. Buildings should be oriented toward streets and have easily recognizable and accessible primary entries. Build-to lines can help ensure development complements the existing neighborhood character while providing some flexibility for siting buildings on lots with challenging natural conditions.
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Building Placement
An existing building placement pattern should be continued and infill development encouraged when it has produced a harmonious coexistence of buildings, drives, walks, and landscaped areas. In areas without established patterns or where the current pattern would benefit from modification, consider the kinds of building placement patterns being established and the overall effect their replication will have on adjacent properties.
Buildings should be placed on the portion of the site with the least natural value. Retaining existing natural features (e.g., hills, trees, ponds, streams) enhances the site’s value, as well as increases community support of proposed site alterations.
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Entries
Building entrances should be easily identifiable, inviting, and accessible. A combination of architectural details and landscaping elements can create a recognizable, inviting entrance and provide an area for people to gather or wait for others. Primary entrances should be from main streets, and entries from adjacent parking areas should supplement this entrance.
Variation in sites and businesses necessitates flexibility when establishing entrance locations. When a primary street entrance is not possible, inclusion of paved, well-marked and well-lit pathways from the street to the entrance is recommended. All entries should meet ADA requirements and be appropriately lit (refer to Critical Design Practices: Site Lighting & Utilities). Sloped sites provide an opportunity to provide grade-level access to multiple floors; however, soil characteristics influence the viability of developing sloped sites.
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Parking Lot Placement
Whenever possible, parking areas should be located and accessed from the side or rear of a lot. Buffering and screening is encouraged to give visual relief to the parking area.
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Build-to Lines (green dashed line in picture above)
Build-to lines provide a method of creating visually interesting, pedestrian-oriented streetscapes by arranging buildings and entrances to the front of lots. As opposed to setbacks that establish areas where a building cannot be constructed, build-to lines specify where a building is to be built on the lot. Establishing build-to lines can facilitate a sense of enclosure even along streets in lower-density areas within the ten-county region.
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Setbacks (grey dashed line in picture above)
Setbacks impact building placement and affect a lot’s open space by specifying minimum distances from front, rear, and side lot lines. Appropriate setbacks vary depending on a building’s use, as well as local street type and traffic volume.
Establishing appropriate setback distances, however, is critical to creating a human-scale environment. Shallow setbacks produce a feeling of congestion, increase safety risks, and make future road improvements difficult. Exceptionally deep setbacks reduce a neighborhood’s connectedness and create unnecessary costs to owners in the form of sewer and water line connections, paving, and snow removal. To provide consistency yet allow for variation, consider establishing setback zones or variable build-to lines.
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Key Points:
- Things to consider when determining building placement include: topography, natural characteristics, and open space on adjacent properties in order to maximize open space and natural habitats. Place buildings on the most suitable soils, in clusters, and behind stands of trees when site conditions permit. When placing buildings in open fields, use gentle earth mounds and screens of naturally occurring plant species.
- While commercial or mixed-use entrances typically are even with walkways, residential building entrances should be elevated at least sixteen (16) inches above pathways to provide residents additional privacy. ADA accessibility standards must be taken into account to provide access to people of all abilities.
- Build-to lines are typically five (5) to thirty-five (35) feet from curbs with a small percentage of the structures (ten (10) to thirty (30) percent) permitted to deviate up to twenty-five (25) percent of that distance from the build-to line. Only a structure’s primary mass need conform to the build-to line; porches, bay windows, and other minor building elements can and should project over or be recessed from the line. Public and institutional buildings frequently are exempted since those structures are traditionally larger and require more space.
- Front setbacks for commercial or retail establishments are generally narrow (approximately twelve (12) to fourteen (14) feet from curb) in order to site buildings along sidewalks to facilitate pedestrian access. Setbacks in residential areas frequently range from ten (10) to thirty-five (35) feet (in urbanized areas) and some variation (ten (10) to fifteen (15) percent) should be encouraged to provide visual interest.
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