Transect planning

This article outlines anew approach to the implementation of New Urbanist and smart growth principles. The approach is termed transect planning and is based on the creation of a set of human habitats that vary by their level and intensity of urban character. In transect planning, this range of environments, from rural to urban, is the basis for organizing the components of the built world: building, lot, land use, street, and all of the other physical elements of the human habitat. Transect planning seeks to create immersive environments, created to preserve the integrity of each location along the rural-to-urban continuum. This is a matter of finding an appropriate spatial allocation of the elements that make up the human habitat. Rural elements must find their place in rural locations, while urban elements must find their place in more urban locations-not unlike natural ecological systems where plant and animal species coexist within habitats that best support them. The transect is designed to strengthen the integrity of each immersive environment and can be used as a new, alternative approach to conventional zoning systems.