Introduction to Zoning
A Brief Overview
Daniele Fogel
November 19, 2021
EJ Toppin
Nicole Montojo
Eli Moore
AUTHORIAL SUPPORT
PRESENTER
DATE
What is zoning?
The set of land use regulations local governments use to separate land into different sections, or zones, with specific rules governing the activities on the land within each zone.
Today’s municipal zoning codes often include regulations related to:
In the United States, most municipalities also regulate land by separating residential, commercial, and industrial uses from each other, and give residential zones the greatest protections from land uses that may cause nuisances or hazards to residents.
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What is Euclidean Zoning?
Since the1926 landmark Supreme Court case, Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, it has been understood that the localities, municipalities, towns, and cities of the United States have the right to zone by dividing the town or community into areas in which specific uses of land are permitted. This is referred to as Euclidean zoning, and is considered the traditional and most common form of zoning in the United States. Euclidean zoning divides towns into districts based on permitted uses, and in so doing creates specific zones where certain land uses are permitted or prohibited. This can be helpful, as it enforces the separation of industrial land uses from residential land uses and can protect against pollution risks. However, Euclidean zoning has also exacerbated segregation issues, limited housing supply, and encouraged urban sprawl. Restrictions on minimum lot sizes, strict building codes, and other elements of Euclidean zoning have increased housing costs, limited new housing construction, worsened affordability issues, and increased the inequality divide in urban areas.
Why is zoning bad?
Formally, zoning policies are typically justified by public health rationales, but in their design and effect, they have often perpetuated racial exclusion.
We can trace exclusionary zoning all the way back to the 1870s!
Let's take a look...
Examples of zoning being used for racial exclusion
In the late-1800s, a wave of anti-Chinese violence occurred across the region, with several Chinese American communities forcibly removed and burned. San Pablo, San Jose, Antioch, and other towns in the Bay Area expelled Chinese American residents in 1886. Around the same time, arsonists set fire to the Chinatown neighborhoods in San Jose and other towns. Anti-Chinese violence and movements led by the Workingmen’s Party and Anti-Coolie Association, which was first established in San Francisco, gave rise to racialized zoning ordinances in the 1870s and 1880s, the California Anti-Coolie Act in 1862, and the federal Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
Explicitly Racial Exclusionary Zoning
Many municipalities in the United States enacted outright racial zoning provisions in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in order to separate white and nonwhite residents by law, and San Francisco was among the earliest. It became the first city to attempt to segregate explicitly on the basis of race by passing an ordinance in 1890 that sought to completely exclude Chinese residents from certain areas of the city. Known as the Bingham Ordinance, it would have given those residents 60 days to relocate to areas designated in the law or face a misdemeanor charge and up to six months in jail. However, a federal court quickly invalidated that ordinance.
Over the following 27 years, numerous cities across the country adopted racial zoning and mapped and designated racial categories for each residential block. The US Supreme Court ruled explicit racial zoning unconstitutional in 1917, although some localities throughout the United States continued to enforce racial zoning after the court’s decision. Many segregationists abandoned racial zoning and began advocating for “comprehensive zoning,” while others turned to private deed restrictions to ensure continued segregation.
Where did zoning start?
Modern zoning has its roots in Berkeley, and racial exclusion and real estate profits were among the primary reasons for its development. Berkeley’s zoning district ordinance was passed in 1916 and created eight types of land use districts, but did not apply them to areas of the city until residents petitioned to have their neighborhood zoned. Some of the issues that motivated residents to zone their neighborhood were explicitly racial: Early “zoning actions by the City Council in response to property owner petitions included one which required two Japanese laundries, one Chinese laundry, and a six-horse stable to vacate an older apartment area in the center of town, and another that created a restricted residence district in order to prevent a ‘negro dance hall’ from locating ‘on a prominent corner.’”
What was the motivation for zoning as a racially exclusionary tactic?
As with most things, it comes back to money and profits over people.
Zoning “tells us about the activities we can and should perform at home and the kinds of people we can and should live near… In governing our building practices, zoning solidifies in our minds what is normal and expected, decent, and desirable. It thus imposes a moral geography on our cities. The ubiquity of zoning makes it so commonplace as to be invisible, but in this invisibility lies power—the power to shape daily practices and the power to shape ideas and ideals.”
�Sonia Hirt, Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation
Contemporary Expressions of Racial Exclusion
Extra Slides
Zoning “tells us about the activities we can and should perform at home and the kinds of people we can and should live near… In governing our building practices, zoning solidifies in our minds what is normal and expected, decent, and desirable. It thus imposes a moral geography on our cities.
The ubiquity of zoning makes it so commonplace as to be invisible, but in this invisibility lies power—the power to shape daily practices and the power to shape ideas and ideals.”
Contemporary Expressions of Racial Exclusion: Zoning
Sonia Hirt, Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation
Zoning Code Components
Zoning Code Components