Fairwood, a PUD in the Spokane area started in 1968, is a good example of how existing topography may be used to enhance man-made values. In addition to using natural variations in land features, the distant mountains become a dramatic backdrop.

A resident of Fairwood, happy that the development permits her to let her children play outdoors without worrying about passing cars, said "I come outside every so often just to look at those mountains and envy my kids at being able to grow up in such surroundings."

Variations Limitless

A bare-bones description of a PUD runs something like this: (a) It is a subdivision of land into lots for use predominantly for owner-occupied homes with either subsidized or unsubsidized mortgage financing; (b) It has privately owned common property that is an essential or major element of the development, such as an internal park network abutting and serving homesites; and (c) The

commonly owned land is under the ownership, control, and disposition of an association of all the homeowners.

Given these elements as the skeleton of a PUD, it is easy to see that the structure of the concept makes it extremely flexible in serving the needs and desires of its occupants. The possible variations and expansions are many. Conditions permitting, a PUD might include shopping facilities, schools, playground and pools, community centers, churches, and theaters. Villa Pacific, at Huntington Beach, Calif., has three pools, sauna baths, tennis courts, and a whirlpool unit.

The president of the Homeowners Association (HOA) here was particularly proud of all the facilities and the fact that they made it unnecessary for his neighbors to go elsewhere for recreation.

An inevitable result of a PUD is that while it may have greater density, or, more properly, land-use intensity, it nevertheless can yield both greater privacy and more convenient access. Accordingly, planners and architects

who create PUD's must necessarily come up with innovative and imaginative designs. For example, Ridge View, in Pleasant Hill, Calif., uses railroad ties as a landscape device to shore up a hillside.

Planning a PUD

A PUD cannot just happen. In order to fulfill the objective of its creation there must be control and discipline all the way.

One of the first factors to be considered in creating and developing a planned unit development is the zoning code applicable to the land that is used.

Since the PUD is a relatively new approach to housing, local housing codes may not be designed to handle it expeditiously, despite the fact that municipal and county officials are usually quick and eager to see and accept the desirability of a well-designed PUD proposal. Local zoning and subdivision standards may be silent about such features as privately owned common lands. Moreover, the street-and-lot approach of the usual standards is frequently incompatible with the basic approach of a PUD.

In such cases, the local standards are unusable even as a limited measure of the suitability of the proposed design.

Such difficulties in application of local zoning strictures can be eliminated by a planned-unit provision in the local regulations and ordinances. It outlines the locality's procedure for analyzing planned-unit proposals. When the proposal complies with the locality's PUD requirements,

the subdivision plat together with related land agreements are recorded, and individual building permits are issued.

Happily, more and more localities are adding such planned-unit provisions to their regulations. But many PUD's have had to wait as long as two years or perhaps even more, before the local authorities have permitted their construction. Indeed, in some cases, surrounding single-family homeowners have picketed local councils to show their opposition.

In most instances, developers have found, once the PUD has been established and operating, the previous objections of the landowners have vanished.

Homeowners Association Important

Some PUD's limit their buyers to adults only. Others are open to all comers. The Bluffs, at Newport Beach, Calif., started as an all-adult community; now, although it has a large retired population, the original requirement no longer applies.

The description of a PUD set forth above defines it mainly in terms of the contractual relationship of the elements and the participants. So far as the actual physical elements are concerned they consist of the association-owned common property, the public streets, and the individual homes. Each serves a particular function, but all are closely interrelated.

The homeowner association is the cohesive force that makes the whole thing work. As a matter of fact, where municipal services are not yet available, a homeowner association can perform municipal-type services from the

LEFT-The plan for the Indianapolis Operation BREAKTHROUGH site represents typical planned unit development use of space. ABOVE-Ridge View in Pleasant Hill, Calif., represents innovative and imaginative design to take advantage of a hillside setting unusual for intensive land use.

beginning of development and lead easily to municipal incorporation should that become desirable.

One of the elements of a PUD is a monthly assessment used to pay costs for the undividable benefits, such as care and maintenance of the common property, the park areas, the pools and other recreational facilities, security, trash collection, fire insurance on the common property, roof and exterior maintenance of the individual houses, and general day-by-day management. Not all PUD homeowners associations provide all of these features; the variations are many. But the HOA constitution can be made to cover whatever the members want.

Management of the PUD may also vary. In some cases, the PUD is operated on a day-by-day basis by a manager who is an employee of the HOA; in others a professional management firm may perform these chores; in still others it may be some members themselves who are running the project.

One association member, personally involved in project operations, commented, "You learn an awful lot about your neighbors when you're directly concerned with operating a project like this."

HUD-FHA Requirements

While thus far we have discussed some of the general characteristics of the planned unit development, there are other requirements to be met if HUD, through the Federal Housing Administration, is involved.

The proposed development programs must provide for a planned unit which (1) is appropriate to the

characteristics of the site and its location in the anticipated community pattern, (2) provides for properties which will compete successfully for a definite and continuing demand in the housing market, (3) is capable of satisfactory use and operation as a separate entity without necessarily having the participation of other building sites or other common properties, and (4) is within the capacity of the developer to complete within a reasonable time.

So far as actual construction is concerned, FHA's Minimum Property Standards are applicable. They govern the building of individual homes and multifamily properties in a planned unit development in the same way as other developments.

In matters of design HUD requires that overall the planned unit development must provide adequately for dwellings, open space, nonvehicular livability space, recreation space, car storage space, pedestrian and car movement, light, air, service, and all other needs of the development when fully populated.

The design must be at a land use intensity appropriate to the site and its location, and must comply with the site planning section requirements of the Minimum Property Standards. In general it must produce a stable and desirable residential environment.

The common property owned and operated by the homeowners association, as well as other subdivision elements such as public streets and water and sewage facilities must also meet appropriate HUD standards.

The legal "musts" call for creating an automatic membership nonprofit homeowners association; define the uses of the common property; give each lot owner voting rights in the association.

And finally, the common facilities must be brought into being and the homeowners association must be firmly established organizationally, financially, and in its relations with the developer, homeowners, and the public agencies.

There must be no doubt that the association, without dependence on the developer, is willing and able continuously to administer the common property for the use of the homeowners and to conserve the common scheme of the development, or will be willing and able to do so by a reasonable date.

In addition, the common property must have been improved in accordance with the plans and schedules accepted by all interested parties and announced by the developer to the home buyers or will be so improved

before a known and reasonable date.

These, then, are the requirements for a planned unit development under the HUD aegis, so devised as to protect the interests of all parties immediately concerned with the project as well as the interest of the Federal Government.

The planned unit development concept is by no means to be regarded as the ultimate answer to this country's housing demands. But in terms of price, amenities, and the general ambiance of contemporary living, for many families it leaves little to be desired.

The last three decades have been witness to an unprecedented out-migration of industry and white middle class families from the central cities. These same years have been marked by increasing concern by suburban residents lest the way of life they sought in their flight from the central city be upset by those who also may want to migrate but who may have different life styles or may represent a lower economic class.

Public tools relied on in suburbia to keep things as they have been are the zoning ordinance and the subdivision ordinance. By requiring large lots and costly development standards it was hoped that apartments would be kept at a minimum and subsidized housing for low- and moderate-income families could be totally excluded. Until a few years ago the resident of suburbia had every reason to believe that zoning and subdivision ordinances were the best of available tools to hold the line. The courts, starting from early suspicion in the twenties and thirties of such regulation as a dubious interference with property rights, had become increasingly sympathetic to suburban efforts to keep out apartments, trailer parks, and similar uses regarded as threats to desired values.

Now, just when the long struggle appeared to end in victory for the suburb, there are signs that new forces may be emerging to challenge the assumption that each municipality is absolute master of its land use fate. Perhaps municipal control over land development through zoning and subdivision regulations is not, after all, chiseled in tablets of stone.

Housing is Big Business

One force that has helped to shift the balance between suburb and developer has been the change in the character of the building industry. House building has become big business. The small builder who 15 years ago could not match the gamesmanship of the suburb that wanted to discourage apartments has been replaced by a corporation listed on the Big Board that can marshal the resources necessary to outwait or successfully challenge local resistance.

And there are other pressures to challenge the old ways. The civil libertarians have turned from segregated

The map of the area north of Washington, D.C., provided by the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, shows all the different planning areas involved in suburban and regional zoning issues. schools to segregated housing as their point of attack. They claim that suburban zoning ordinances operate to raise the cost of housing and thereby exclude all but those who can afford to pay high prices. They say this result is a denial of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Admendment of the United States Constitution. In some cases in the federal courts in New York, California, and Illinois, where the courts discerned an exclusion based on race, such charges against local zoning practices have been sustained. Cases moving through the state courts suggest that the attack on "exclusionary zoning" will not be limited solely to federal issues. Indeed, suburban restrictions may be more vulnerable in the state forums than in the federal courts.

Even the Federal Government, understandably cautious in such politically sensitive areas as who-livesnext-to-whom, has begun to make noise that federal grants in aid for suburban parks, hospitals, and sewer systems may be awarded first to those communities that show a willingness to allow some mix in housing, both in type and price. And some suburban councils of governments around the country have gone so far as to adopt policies that propose that each suburb take a "fair share" of low-cost or subsidized housing on the theory that if every suburb accepts an equitable proportion, no single suburb will become the target for concentrated attack. The pioneers in this effort at joint relaxation of traditional policy of exclusion are communities near Dayton, Ohio, San Bernardino County, Calif., and municipalities in