Correa and Valle were recommending that Coral Gables' current minimum distances of 15 feet from house side to lot lines be reduced to the historic 3 to 5 feet. The Correa-Valle idea didn't get accepted. Instead, the planning director who hired them got fired. Time for a rewrite Modern-day liability laws can't be ignored, of course. Fighting the code wars could be a secret to a friendlier, less sprawling, and less bureaucratic, South Florida.
Society does of course get some basic safeguards out of the code-makers' volumes.
But too often there is no will to reassess public purpose of the rules. Small wonder we so often get bland, generic, even offensive buildings and settings instead of the intimate, pleasant communities we want. Parking requirements for instance, often force acres of rarely filled stalls, forcing up prices, creating voids of empty space, even in neighborhoods where many people walk or use transit. Codes seem more anchored in our fears than our hopes. A lot of South Floridian planners and thinkers agree.