Testing New Possibilities Within Existing Patterns
Zone Allentown Pattern Book
Allentown’s new form-based zoning ordinance represents a significant shift in how the city regulates development. But how does the code work when applied to real sites? Through a building type study and a series of housing test-fits, the project identifies where the ordinance works as intended, where questions or inconsistencies emerge, and where targeted amendments could help the code better support the kinds of development Allentown wants to see.
Allentown, Pennsylvania’s comprehensive zoning rewrite, Zone Allentown, established a form-based code that governs new development through fourteen building types drawn from the city’s existing neighborhoods, many of them built out before zoning itself. The Zone Allentown Pattern Book translates that regulatory language into buildable form. In a similar spirit to Denise Scott Brown and Learning from Las Vegas, the project treats the documentation of a place as a latent proposal for its future.
The work began with a close study of existing conditions. Building-type and site-type inventories, together with parcel analysis across thousands of lots, revealed strong correlations between lot width and typology and established the design ranges within which the book’s patterns operate.
These existing patterns then became the basis for new “small general” buildings. Although the type is permitted across much of the city, it is only loosely defined in the new code, leaving its form open to interpretation. It nonetheless represents one of Allentown’s most significant opportunities for middle-scale density. Through a series of test-fits, the pattern book gives the type a concrete, legible form, extending the logic of Allentown’s vernacular rather than breaking from it, so that added density reads as continuity rather than disruption.
Written simultaneously for residents, developers, and policymakers, the pattern book also functioned as a feedback instrument. Its test-fits exposed where the code’s standards constrained the very forms it intended to enable, directly informing post-adoption amendments. In 2026 - 2027, the pattern book plans will be workshopped with local developers and the Allentown Redevelopment Authority to develop a pre-approved plan program for the city.
