form-based code

Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation > form-based code

Your input is needed for Walnut Hills’ future

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We are getting closer and closer to adopting form-based code as the law of the land here in Walnut Hills! BUT there is still one last piece of community engagement that needs to be completed and we need your participation! Remember the ‘regulating plan’ that was created at the neighborhood design workshop last October which laid out how the neighborhood business district and surrounding areas will be re-zoned? (View the 29mb PDF here). Well, we want YOUR INPUT on the plan before sending it to City Council. Here’s what you need to do:

Show up on September 12th to the Walnut Hills Area Council meeting at the The Bush Recreation Center (2640 Kemper Lane) at 6:30pm. City Planners will give a brief presentation and then we will all break into groups to discuss the new zoning code! If you can’t make it right at 6:30pm no problem! Feel free to come anytime between 6:30-8pm.


We promise that all of our hard work is close to paying off and that we will soon stop ‘bugging’ you about form-based code 🙂 Join us for one last input session!

Talking Form-Based Code with Vice-Mayor Qualls

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Our Executive Director, Kevin Wright, joined Vice-Mayor Roxanne Qualls yesterday on WVXU‘s Cincinnati Edition to discuss the City’s new Form-Based code implementation and how the new code impacts our neighborhoods! Walnut Hills is one of four pilot neighborhoods in Cincinnati that volunteered to adopt this new type of zoning, and we’re very excited about the opportunities it will provide

According to Vice-Mayor Qualls, the Form-Based code “specifies proportion and relationship to the street and to other buildings. People are choosing more and more to live in our neighborhoods because they want an urban experience and we know the value of the architecture and the original urban form of our communities. Form-based codes respect that and it actually allows for new development that is also respectful of that original urban form.”

Qualls adds that the new code “makes things very clear to developers what they can do in a specific neighborhood. You should be able to get all your approvals in a very short amount of time.”

In the case of Walnut Hills, Kevin Wright states that it “allowed the community to create a vision for their business district and how they want it designed. We took that vision and are attaching a zoning code to it.”

According to Wright, the new code system “creates a win-win-win for community, the City and the developer”. “When we visited Nashville”, he continues, “some developers even admitted being skeptical at the beginning, but once they started developing under the code and saw that the form based code was much easier to use than conventional zoning…developers loved it.”

Click below to listen to the full interview: