What is the issue?

Johns Island has experienced and currently experiences growth pressure. Concern is widespread that without adequate land use and development regulations, the area’s scenic roadways, pristine natural surroundings and agricultural heritage will be forever changed. The key point is to create a code that will protect the unique character of Johns Island while continuing to allow the island to grow. During 2007, the City of Charleston completed and adopted the Johns Island Community Plan. The Community Plan was a public planning process with the Johns Island community. During the week of March 5-10, 2007, over 350 Johns Island stakeholders (residents, property owners, business owners, government officials, utility representatives, etc) attended the charrette in order to plan for the future of the study area. The study area represents just 17% of Johns Island’s land uses, but represents the core of its “urbanized” area (area within the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB).

How would it affect South Carolina?

During the workshop, the project team realized that the current zoning and development pattern is not sensitive to the context of Johns Island. The majority of existing settlement patterns illustrate conventional suburban design, uniform distribution of density (repetitive lot types), lack of focus on architecture/public realm, “heavy on the land” infrastructure patterns that do not respect the ecology of Johns Island, zoning that focuses on use rather than form, as well as haphazard building placement. Thus, the City hired a planning firm to produce a SmartCode for Johns Island.
Many of the most-loved traditional towns of North America were deliberately and thoughtfully planned. Countless other cities, towns, and villages evolved as compact, walkable, mixed-use places, because of their geography and because of the limits of the economic and circumstances of their time. However, in our time, over the past sixty years, places have evolved in a completely different form. They have spread loosely along highways and haphazardly across once-open country, enabled by the widespread ownership of automobiles, cheap petroleum, and generalized wealth.

The SmartCode is a tool that guides the form of the built environment to resemble that of traditional neighborhoods, towns and villages. This form is compact, walkable, and mixed-use, and it is meant to be comfortable, safe, and ecologically sustainable. It allows a mix of uses within the neighborhood, so its residents don’t have to drive everywhere. It simultaneously preserves the form of urbanism and open lands.

What can you do about it?

The Code will be up for review by the Planning Commission in the coming months. Attend the SmartCode review meetings of the City of Charleston Planning Commission and City Council and voice your support. A code, once adopted as law, stays in place, allowing urbanism to evolve and mature without losing its sense of order. A code ensures that a community will not have to scrutinize all proposed projects, because, in the process that leads to the code, what the community intends has already been specified. The SmartCode is a comprehensive framework for that process.

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