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into widespread zoning schemes that all but replaced private land use schemes as a means of <br />planning. Form-based code, a principal tool of New Urbanism, represents the next step in the <br />evolution of land use planning; like zoning, this tool comes at time of massive social and <br />economic change in the American urban environments. In such a context, the word community <br />becomes even more a contested notion. For this reason, one of the most noteworthy features of <br />the form based code, the community consultative process via the charrette, becomes a subject <br />for significant critique. <br />IIL The Charrette and the Nature of the "Community" in the <br />Process of Developing the Form-Based Code <br />In writing about the communal nature of the city and the development of neighborhoods, <br />Jane Jacobs expressed skepticism about the notion held by traditional planners that there was a <br />sufficient commonality between people living in the same geographical area of a city so as to <br />assume them to be allies for purposes of creating and maintaining successful cities.93 She <br />suggested, for example, that the several thousand residents of a particular section of a large city <br />have no "innate degree of natural cross connection"94 such as that presumed by traditional <br />planners, and that hence, city planning which seeks to foster the growth of neighborhoods can <br />have only limited success.95 These observations remain true, and the differences between and <br />among the residents in any particular section of a city remain one of the biggest challenges to <br />� Jacobs, Great American Cities, at 114-116. <br />94 Id at 115 <br />95 Id <br />26 <br />