Madison, the state capital of Wisconsin, is situated between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. It's a nice place to live, and a progressive city, but its landscape code has several flaws that provide a good lesson in code writing.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Progressive Cities
Madison, Wisconsin (pop. 240,323) is one of the more progressive cities in the Midwest. It is a community devoted to education, technology, government and agriculture. It's home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which was founded in 1848, and enrolls over 43,000 students.

Madison, the state capital, is called the "City of Four Lakes," referencing that it is tucked between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, with Lake Waubesa and Lake Kegonsa just to the southeast. The city has the vision of being the green capital city. It is known for its active sidewalk cafés, farmer's markets, street fairs and popular cultural events, particularly in the summer. See "Madison Streetscapes Highlight Vibrant Community".

The Madison Department of Planning and Development is actively involved with neighborhood and special project planning.

Madison is certainly one of the very nice places in this country to live. The Midwest, however, is one of the regions where landscape codes are not normally found. It is well known that contemporary landscape codes were created in the South in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Over the intervening decades they have slowly moved northward. University towns are usually where good, progressive landscape regulations are to be found. And one would think the landscape code of this community would be progressive, but it is not.

There is not much that is impressive about the Madison landscape standards. Irrigation and onsite stormwater management is not part of the ordinance. There are no standards for dealing with drive-through service areas. There is no mention of parking lot screening, nor the use of parking lot stormwater detention. However, the Dunn's marsh diversion stormwater pond (pictured), constructed in 2007, was the first completed stormwater management project of several proposed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum.
Photo: City of Madison

Madison Regulations
There are several flaws in the Madison code that provide a good lesson in code writing. Other communities in the Midwest might want to consider these. The code is found in Chapter 28, Zoning, Section 28.142, Landscape and Screening, Ord. 12-00134, 1.2.1213 of the municipal code. This code contains some of the traditional articles found in landscape codes, but certainly not all. There is a purpose clause, applicability provisions, landscape plan preparation requirements and, of course, a listing of design components and some technical standards. Some of the standards are objective, but many are arbitrary. Subjective standards are left to the designer, and difficult to enforce by planning staff.

Design components of this somewhat dated code include street frontages, parking lot interiors, building foundation plantings, district boundary buffers and "screening of site service areas and facilities. There is not much that is impressive about these standards. Irrigation and onsite stormwater management is not part of the ordinance. There are no standards for dealing with drive through service areas. There is no mention of parking lot screening, nor the use of parking lot stormwater detention.

One of the nice features of this set of regulation, however, is that calculations are required as part of the permitting process. Sadly, however the calculations pertain to plant quantities only in the form of points. As mentioned many times in this column, point system landscape codes are quota codes and not design based landscape regulations. Points are given for use of certain types and sizes of plants, placed in specific locations based upon a 300 sq. ft. basis.

This formula often results in a uniform community "codescape" in which the designer concentrates on meeting the minimal points and not seeking excellence in design. Calculations are a perfect way to measure design and enforce code standards, but they need to be more imaginative than what is provided in this code.

Perhaps calculations should include such parameters as minimum canopy standard, a permeability ratio, bed ground coverage percentage, an open space to footprint ratio and specifics on irrigation design. Taken together this would be a good way to measure open space devoted to landscaping.

Code Future
This code should be upgraded to meet common standards in use today in other communities. This is particularly so in regard to car culture, vehicular use area standards and sustainable landscaping practices.

Madison might even consider allowing as an option to its minimal code requirements the use of some of the sophisticated calculations used by SITES, which are standards now being considered in other progressive cities across the nation.

Madison has prepared a sustainability plan, and there are several sections in this plan in which an upgrade to their landscape code would assist in meeting their goals and green benchmarks. This plan places much more emphasis on the importance of the landscape code as a tool to build a sustainable resilient community. This is particularly so in regard to the environmental services produced by the urban forest of the community. Goal 7 of the plan is directed to restoring and preserving natural habitat, such as tree canopy, open space, parklands and wetlands. One of the first upgrades that would show progressive system thinking would be to set a minimum canopy standard, integrate a percentage of native habitat preservation to all building sites and incorporate several of the actions noted in Goal 3 and 4 affecting surface water quality and stormwater management.

Adoption of SITES standards as the centerpiece of the code would make the Madison landscape code one of the best in the nation.