Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS)

CATS promotes understanding of the built environment as part of the natural environment, through the planning methodology of the rural-to-urban transect.

"Practitioners and scholars associated with CATS are committed to transect-based environmental and land development principles that guide and encourage the following outcomes:

• provision, protection and repair of walkable, transit-connected communities, including existing downtowns and first ring suburbs
• comprehensive zoning reform to legalize and protect traditional neighborhood patterns, halt the proliferation of auto-dependent sprawl, and encourage the evolution of single-use areas into towns
• context-based thoroughfare design and engineering for safe and efficient multi-modal transit that includes pedestrian, vehicular, and mass transportation options
• affordable housing and community-based income diversity
• regional, local, and individual food production
• passive climatic response in building and urban design through local patterns and character
• reduction in the environmental impacts and costs of infrastructure
• reduction of waste and harmful emissions as byproducts of human settlement, and the promotion and study of renewable energy technologies" [from Website]

The transect concept and model is the basis for SmartCode; development code available for all scales of planning, from the region to the community to the block and building. The code is intended for local calibration to your town or neighborhood. As a form-based code, the SmartCode keeps towns compact and rural lands open, while reforming the destructive sprawl-producing patterns of separated use zoning.

Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS)