Design Code
Fixed by the code.
Won in competition.
Two hundred and sixty-four facades on the outer wall, each by a different architect, and the street still reads as one street. That isn't luck — it's the code, fixing what must not vary so that everything else — voted on directly in the app — can be won on merit.
Fixed by the code
The things that would ruin the street if they varied.
- Cornice height, bay width, the 80-foot section, the depth of the wall.
- The material palette — stone, timber, lime, zinc. No substitutions.
- The absence of a road grid, which the code makes structural rather than optional.
- Where a wet fixture can go, how partitions meet the timber matrix, how loads stack.
Won in competition
The things that would flatten the street if they didn't.
- Every facade. Architects submit under their own name, and pledgers rate the work directly in the app.
- That rating is a term in the architect's design fee — the judgement is not ceremonial.
- Every merchant. Endorsements, tagged and tracked in the app, decide who is even eligible to pledge for a lease.
- Every lease, again each December — decided by the same app vote as every other steward decision. Serve well and it renews. That is the whole tenure.
Car-Free by Code
Cars aren't banned. Car dependency is.
The Form-Based Code makes the road grid structurally absent — not discouraged, not taxed, simply not there. Nothing inside the town requires a vehicle.
0 cars
Not discouraged — structurally impossible. There is no road grid inside the town to drive on.
225 hrs/yr
What the average American adult loses to commuting each year. 11 full 40-hour work weeks, gone.
End of the Parent Taxi Tax
Children walk to school. Daily logistics require zero vehicles — nothing to drive, nothing to opt out of.
Third Places
A backyard isn't shared space.
Real public space costs a developer money, so it gets replaced — a private yard here, an HOA pool there, wrapped in a liability waiver instead of a neighbor.
Every Courtyard URB wraps a space that belongs to everyone living around it — not a compensation prize for the shared space you didn't get, the real thing. Up to 500 third-place buildings sit along 24 Spice Tray corridors — cafés, galleries, live music, sunset terraces — every one voted in by the people who use it, and voted out again if it stops earning its place.
Your move