Zoning is a system of laws that divides a jurisdiction's land into districts, or zones, and limits how land in each district can be used. In the United States, zoning includes various land use laws enforced through the police power rights of state governments (often delegated to their local governments) to exercise authority over privately owned real property.
Zoning laws in major cities originated with the New York City 1916 Zoning Resolution. Before zoning, some cities had local ordinances like those in Los Angeles in 1904 limiting laundries (commonly referred to as "wash houses") from operating in a residential area. These early city ordinances were in some cases motivated by racism and classism.
After the Supreme Court declared racial ordinances unconstitutional in 1917, many localities discovered zoning and began setting down citywide restrictions. In suburban localities, zoning often mandates single-family housing. Though not always explicitly discriminatory, zoning ordinances were often applied in ways that prevented African Americans from moving into predominantly white neighborhoods, under the belief that their presence would lower property values. Alt URL The constitutionality of zoning ordinances was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. in 1926.
According to the New York Times, "single-family zoning is practically gospel in America," as a vast number of cities zone land extensively for detached single-family homes. Low-density residential zoning is far more predominant in U.S. cities than in other countries. The housing shortage in many metropolitan areas, coupled with racial residential segregation, has growing public attention and political debate on zoning laws. Studies indicate that strict zoning regulations constrain the supply of housing and inflate housing prices, increase homelessness, and contribute to inequality, a weaker economy, and racial housing segregation in the United States.
Zoning laws that prioritize single-family housing have raised concerns regarding housing availability, housing affordability and environmental harms. In the U.S., support for local zoning against multifamily housing is concentrated among white, affluent homeowners. There are no substantial differences between liberal and conservative homeowners in their opposition to the construction of dense housing in their neighborhoods. However, among the mass public and elected officials, Democratic constituencies are more likely to support dense, multi-family housing.
Some estimates suggest that restrictive zoning in the United States may result in hundreds of billions to over a trillion dollars per year in lost economic output.
Origins and history Some scholars trace that German urban planner Reinhard Baumeister was the first to develop a system of land use separation that influenced later zoning practices. Frankfurt's nineteenth century zoning plans served as models for urban planning in the United States and other countries in Western Europe.
The perceived need for formal zoning in America arose at the turn of the twentieth century, as rapidly growing cities like New York faced challenges, experiencing rapid urbanization and growth in industry, felt a growing need to reduce congestion, stabilize property values, combat poor urban design, and protect residents from issues such as crowded living conditions, outbreaks of disease, and industrial pollution, through legal means. Edward M. Bassett, author of the first comprehensive zoning ordinance in the United States, wrote in 1922:Skyscrapers would be built to unnecessary height, their cornices projecting into the street and shutting out light and air. The lower floors needed artificial light in the daytime. Business centers instead of being rationally spread out were intensively congested. Transit and street facilities were overwhelmed...Additionally, many of the earliest zoning laws in the United States were influenced by efforts to enforce class-, ethnic-, and race-based segregation. Early zoning ordinances in the United States were narrower in scope and later became more comprehensive. Modesto, California's 1885 ordinance banning wash houses from certain areas of the city is often cited to be America's first true zoning ordinance. Richmond's 1908 zoning ordinance regulating the height and arrangement of buildings was upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in 1910, a decision used as precedent in the implementation of New York City's 1916 Zoning Resolution.
19041930
Los Angeles, 1904-1909
Zoning in Los Angeles is commonly believed to have been first enacted in 1908, although Los Angeles City Council passed the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States, Ordinance 9774, on July 25, 1904. Though the ordinance did not assign all parts of the city to a zoning map, as with later American ordinances, it did establish three residential districts in which laundries and wash houses were prohibited. The prohibition against laundries had a racial component since many were owned by Chinese residents and citizens. This ordinance would later be replaced in 1908 with other ordinances that expanded the scope of the residential districts and greatly expanded the scope of prohibited industries. Existing nuisance laws had already prohibited some industrial land uses in Los Angeles. Dangerous businesses (such as warehousing explosives) were illegal before 1908, as were odorous land uses, such as slaughterhouses and tanneries. The California Supreme Court had already upheld such rules in Yick Wo (1886). Many later California court cases supported the 1908 ordinances, even in one case of ex post facto relocation of an existing brickyard.
Ordinance 16170, adopted on September 16, 1908, established six industrial districts. These were drawn mainly in areas which had already hosted significant industrial development such as corridors along the freight railroads and the Los Angeles River. A new ordinance adopted on August 3, 1909, established that all land within Los Angeles that was not part of an industrial district would become a residence district. However, between 1909 and 1915, Los Angeles City Council responded to some requests by business interests to create exceptions to industrial bans within the three residential districts. They did this through the legal device of districts within districts. While some might have been benign, such as motion picture districts, some others were polluting, such as poultry slaughterhouse districts. Despite the expanding list of exceptions, new ordinances in other cities (i.e., 1914 Oakland ordinance) followed the 1908 Los Angeles model through about 1917. By 1913, twenty-two cities had zoning ordinances.
Race-based zoning ordinances, 19101917 Many American cities passed residential segregation laws based on race between 1910 and 1917. Baltimore City Council passed such a law in December 1910. Unlike the Los Angeles Residential District which created well-defined areas for residential land use, the Baltimore scheme was implemented on a block-by-block basis. Druid Hill had already existed as a de facto all-black neighborhood, but some whites in nearby neighborhoods protested for formal segregation. Just a few months later, Richmond, Virginia passed its race-based zoning law, which was upheld by the Supreme Court of Virginia in the 1915 case Hopkins v. City of Richmond. Over the next few years, several southern cities established race-based residential zoning ordinances, including four other cities in Virginia, one in North Carolina, and another in South Carolina. Atlanta passed a law similar to 1910 Baltimore ordinance. Before 1918, race-based zoning ordinances were adopted in New Orleans, Louisville, St. Louis, and Oklahoma City.
In the end, the United States Supreme Court struck down the Louisville ordinance, ruling in Buchanan v. Warley that race-based zoning was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; more specifically, the Court held that the law violated the "right to contract" and the right to alienate property. Despite the Buchanan ruling, the city of Atlanta devised a new race-based zoning ordinance, arguing that the Supreme Court had merely applied to specific defects of the Louisville ordinance. Even after the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the Atlanta ordinance, the city continued to use their racially based residential zoning maps. Other municipalities tested the limits of Buchanan; Florida, Apopka and West Palm Beach drafted race-based residential zoning ordinances. Birmingham, Indianapolis, and New Orleans all passed race-based zoning laws, while Atlanta, Austin, Kansas City, Missouri, and Norfolk considered race in their "spot zoning" decisions. In some cases, these practices continued for decades after Buchanan.
While not explicitly race-based, it is believed that Berkeley, California is where single-family zoning first originated, as an effort to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods.
1916 New York Zoning Resolution
In 1916, New York City adopted the first zoning regulations to apply citywide as a reaction to construction of the Equitable Building (which still stands at 120 Broadway). The building towered over the neighboring residences, completely covering all available land area within the property boundary, blocking windows of neighboring buildings and diminishing the availability of sunshine for the people in the affected area.
Bassett's zoning map established height restrictions for the entire city, expressed as ratios between maximum building height and the width of adjacent streets. Residential zones were the most restrictive, limiting building height to no higher than the width of adjoining streets. The law also regulated land use, preventing factories and warehousing from encroaching on retail districts.
These laws, written by a commission headed by Edward Bassett and signed by Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, became the blueprint for zoning in the rest of the country, partly because Bassett headed the group of planning lawyers who wrote The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act that was issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1924 and accepted almost without change by most states. The effect of these zoning regulations on the shape of skyscrapers was illustrated famously by architect and illustrator Hugh Ferriss. With essay by Carol Willis.
Standard State Zoning Enabling Act
The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act (SZEA) is a federal planning document first drafted and published through the United States Commerce Department in 1922, which gave states a model under which they could enact their own zoning enabling laws. The genesis for this act is the initiative of Herbert Hoover while he was Secretary of Commerce. Deriving from a general policy to increase home ownership in the United States, Secretary Hoover established the Advisory Committee on Zoning, which was assigned the task of drafting model zoning statutes. This committee was later known as the Advisory Committee on City Planning and Zoning. Among the members of this committee were Edward Bassett, Alfred Bettman, Morris Knowles, Nelson Lewis, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and Lawrence Veiller.Republished by the American Planning Association.
The Advisory Committee on Zoning appointed a subcommittee under the title of "Laws and Ordinances." This committeewhich included Bassett, Knowles, Lewis, and Veillercomposed a series of drafts for SZEA, with one dated as early as December 15, 1921. A second draft came forth from the subcommittee in January 1922. Several drafts culminated in the first published document in 1924, which was revised and republished in 1926.
Initial reception