Our Approach

Values

A Shared City

We believe that the outcome of equitable planning produces a "Shared City" — a city where the regulatory system distributes the conditions for thriving equitably across everyone who calls it home, one where the planning process aims to represent the full community rather than representing only the loudest voices or the strongest market forces.

When analysis, policy, and regulation is "context-sensitive", they align from start to finish with the diverse needs of a community, growth can happen on terms the community recognizes as its own. Thus growth will serve existing residents and workers rather than displacing them. New residents arrive and new employment can take root without hollowing out what came before but rather build upon it.

"Context-sensitive" driven planning recognizes that equity does not mean treating every place the same. Different parts of a city serve different functions, and a regulatory framework calibrated to those functions produces better outcomes, rather than one that applies uniform standards regardless of context. The goal is a city where every place is regulated according to what it actually is and what it can realistically become, and where growth in one part of the city does not come at the expense of another. A strong, well-functioning center generates the economic activity, employment density, and tax base that make citywide investment possible. Planning that concentrates intensity where infrastructure, transit, and market conditions can support it is not in tension with equity. It is a precondition for it.

Strong centers and livable neighborhoods are often treated as competing priorities. An equitable framework rejects that tradeoff. The benefits that strong centers produce should reach across the full community, locating amenities where they are needed, protecting existing communities from displacement, and distributing the rewards of development beyond the districts where land values are already highest.

Context-sensitive planning holds both of these ideas together. It gives centers the regulatory framework to perform at their full capacity, and it gives neighborhoods the standards that protect and strengthen what is already there. But physical systems alone are not sufficient. Roads, transit lines, utilities, and stormwater infrastructure have long held a clear place in planning vocabulary. Less consistently named and planned for is the broader set of conditions that allow a diverse community to genuinely thrive in a place rather than simply occupy it: stable housing, economic opportunity, civic participation, and access to the institutions that build intergenerational wealth.

A truly Shared City aligns the economic, social, physical, and regulatory systems that together determine whether a community can put down roots, build wealth, participate in civic life, and see itself in the future of the place it calls home. These systems are interdependent, and when they are unevenly distributed, the communities with the least access have the fewest tools to advocate for more. A Shared City takes that asymmetry seriously. Strong centers and distributed benefits matter. So does the foundation beneath them and the conditions that make it possible for every resident to participate in what the city is building toward. That is what Union Point works toward.

Methodology

Policy-to-Regulation Pipeline

Effective planning regulation is built for a place, not merely applied to it. Zoning codes that rely on uniform standards across fundamentally different contexts fall short of the outcomes their plans envisioned. The result is regulation that underperforms in practice, difficult to administer, disconnected from market realities, and out of step with community values. A high-intensity commercial corridor and a low-scale residential street may share a zoning designation, but they serve different users, support different activities, and require different regulatory treatment to produce the intended built environment.

At Union Point, our work begins with a rigorous analysis of local conditions rather than the adaptation of generic standards. Before drafting a rule or policy, we build an evidence-based picture of how a place actually functions at the parcel level. That methodology of "context-first" drives the differentiation of site-specific standards, even where broader form-based frameworks can apply more widely. In order to produce regulation that is legible to residents, workable for staff, responsive to market conditions, and defensible under state law, our process moves through three stages: read, define, calibrate.

Stage 1: Read the Place

We begin at the parcel level. Using integrated datasets across demographics, economics, employment, housing, mobility, and urban form, we build an evidence-based picture of how a community functions , not how it has been zoned, but how it actually operates.

Data layers include:

Demographics and household composition
Economic activity and employment density
Job accessibility, commute patterns, and labor shed analysis
Proximity to parks, open space, and civic amenities
Walkability and transit access
Parcel size and building footprint
Housing units and tenure
Urban form indicators including intersection density, height, massing, and frontage

Analysis runs at the parcel level , granular enough to distinguish a corner lot from a mid-block parcel, a transit-adjacent block from one two blocks away. Parcels are then aggregated into coherent functional clusters based on shared characteristics.

Stage 2: Define Context

From parcel-level analysis, we identify distinct functional contexts: areas that share similar characteristics, roles, and relationships within the larger community. Contexts are defined by what they do, not just what they look like. A downtown job hub functions differently from a neighborhood commercial corridor, even if their buildings are similar in scale.

We then model how each context could evolve given population growth projections, market trajectories, climate pressures, and community priorities. We test scenarios and present communities with real choices grounded in real data.

Stage 3: Calibrate Regulation

Once contexts are defined and planning objectives are established, we design the regulatory framework to match. Zoning designations, permitted uses, development standards, frontage types, height limits, setbacks, and design requirements are calibrated to the specific context they govern.

Examples of calibrated zoning strategies in practice

Industrial Mixed-Use Integration

In areas where housing is being introduced into formerly industrial or flex-commercial fabric, zoning must do more than permit new uses. It must actively manage the transition. Effective regulatory frameworks in these contexts:

Establish a hierarchy of use buffers, requiring that ground floors along primary frontages accommodate active commercial, maker, or live-work uses rather than placing residential directly adjacent to loading, outdoor storage, or light manufacturing.
Standards addressing building orientation, noise attenuation, and facade articulation to soften the physical edge between residential and industrial activity.
Minimum ground floor transparency requirements and active frontage mandates ensure that even in transitional districts, the street reads as a place rather than a hard boundary.

Suburban Retail Retrofit

Strip malls and big box centers present one of the most significant land use conversion opportunities in most cities. Zoning that supports their transformation:

Eliminates minimum parking requirements and replaces them with maximum parking ratios, freeing sites from the surface lots that make walking hostile.
Build-to lines replace front setbacks, pulling buildings to the sidewalk and establishing a continuous street wall.
Ground floor retail mandates and minimum facade transparency standards activate the pedestrian edge.
Increased height maximums accommodate residential and office uses above ground floor commercial, making vertical mixed-use financially viable.
Shared parking standards and reduced stall requirements further reduce the dominance of the car.

Regional Retail Repositioning

Aged regional retail, outlet centers or enclosed malls that no longer perform at scale, require a zoning framework oriented toward place quality rather than use segregation. Form-based standards govern building placement, massing, and ground floor activation rather than prescribing uses in detail. The regulatory goal shifts from controlling what happens inside buildings to shaping how buildings meet the street and one another.

Upper floors are opened to residential, hotel, and office uses without requiring discretionary approval.
Minimum amenity space requirements are embedded in development standards, with density bonuses tied to the quality and accessibility of contributed public realm.
Signage standards allow greater creative expression consistent with a design-forward identity.

Neighborhood Commercial Integration

Conventional zoning segregates neighborhood-serving commercial uses into designated nodes, requiring residents to drive to destinations that could reasonably be within walking distance. An integrated approach allows small-scale commercial uses, corner stores, cafes, child care facilities, and personal services, by right within residential zones, subject to form standards that maintain neighborhood scale and character. The result is a neighborhood fabric where daily needs are woven into the walk rather than isolated from it.

Setbacks, massing, and material requirements are calibrated to match the surrounding residential context rather than defaulting to commercial district standards.
Minimum parking requirements are eliminated for small-footprint uses.
Ground floor commercial with upper floor residential is permitted and in some cases incentivized.

The Planning Process

From analysis through adoption — an interactive map of how we move from data and community vision to calibrated regulation and lasting implementation. Each stage links to the essay behind it.