There’s all sorts of complicated concepts that you have to understand if you want to advocate for changes to zoning. One of the toughest concepts is Floor Area Ratio (FAR) which is the main way that the city limits the size of buildings in the zoning laws.
CUP made an online interactive tool to help community members get a grip on that slippery concept of Floor Area Ratio. What Is FAR? lets you manipulate virtual blocks as it takes you step-by-step through the process of how Floor Area Ratio controls the size of your building. It also shows how the city applies FAR’s other building-size-controlling cousins: lot coverage, setbacks, and height limits.
After you understand how the rules of zoning work, you can use the Neighborhood Tool to see how these rules can shape a whole neighborhood, and how your neighborhood might change if the city changes the zoning rules.
What Is FAR? is an online compliment to CUP’s What Is Zoning? toolkit. What Is Zoning? is a part of the Envisioning Development Toolkits, a series of teaching tools that foster conversations about land use and urban development.