Planning | Codes | Design

White Smith Cousino offers a wide variety of products and services for our clients. Our multi-disciplinary skills allow us to manage a variety of planning and code projects for our clients, ranging from the development of planning policies and strategies to implementation tools that help to bring a comprehensive plan or development proposal to life. These services are listed and more fully described below:

• Plans and Strategies
• Development Codes
• Mediation Services
• Impact Fees
• Adequate Public Facilities/Concurrency
• Military Overlays and Base Encroachment
• Public Facilities and Infrastructure Finance
• Specialized Planning Issues
• Zoning and Use Issues

Development codes, including zoning, subdivision, growth management, and innovative design regulations. The principals in our firm are nationally renowned for their work in this area. Our development codes have won awards, and are cited in several national publications as examples of the state of the art in code development. Our in-house designers use graphics, matrices, and other illustrative techniques to make ordinances readable and user-friendly. 

White Smith Cousino develops practical solutions to potential conflicts between military operations and local government property interests.  We have developed or participated int he development of over 25 joint land land use studies and implementation projects, including the development of military legislative revisions in Missouri and Indiana, as well as zoning overlays, memoranda of understanding, and other military-local government tools for compatibility coordination.   

We also have advised our military communities on zoning, transferable development rights, noise, safety, and air obstruction avoidance techniques that protect military operations while also protecting private property rights and the authorities of local governments. .

Many communities struggle to find financial resources to keep pace with new growth and development. Our principals have been extensively been involved in both calculating and implementing impact fees. In addition to impact fees, the firm can address other techniques to finance the costs of new growth, including development agreements, concurrency programming, and adequate public facilities ordinances.

Our planners and designers bring extensive knowledge and experience to the challenges our clients all over the country face.  For example, our development codes are illustrated with graphics to represent written standards, flowcharts to illustrate procedures, and photography where useful to illustrate compliant development. 

In addition to the key practice areas, our principals are widely published and have extensive experience in specialized issues such as signs, telecommunication, transportation, affordable housing, and urban design. Mark White is the former president of a local nonprofit community development corporation (Westside Housing Organization), and has published extensively on of affordable housing and transportation issues. These issues are always at the forefront of any local government's efforts to revise its comprehensive planning and zoning regulations.