Zoning
Zoning is the planning technique that divides land into zones and sets for each what may be built: use (housing, industry, retail), height, floor area and coverage. It was born to keep factories away from homes and ended up separating everything from everything: it is the main cause of sprawling, car-dependent cities.
In the United States exclusionary single-family zoning bans anything but a detached house on most residential land, and its racial origins are documented. In Spain and Chile the general plan or the plan regulador perform the same function under another name. The housing movement now asks for zoning that mixes.
Videos on this term (25)
- Urban AI
Proximity Transforms: Edward Glaeser on Productive Cities
Edward Glaeser explains why concentrating people and firms makes cities more productive: agglomeration, human…
Edward Glaeser 3 min read - Urban economy
Who Wins When the City Becomes a Business: Molotch's Growth Machine
Harvey Molotch's growth machine explains who really wins when the city becomes a business: developers, politicians.…
3 min read - Urban economy
Ananya Roy: The State Can Also Be Informal
Ananya Roy shows that urban informality is produced by the state as it tolerates, authorises or demolishes…
Ananya Roy 3 min read - Urban form
Mariana Valverde: How Small Rules Order Our City
Mariana Valverde shows that licences, zoning, regulations and policing produce urban order decision by decision.…
Mariana Valverde 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Fulong Wu: The Chinese State Still Leads Urban Transformation
Fulong Wu explains how China's shift to a market economy changed urban production without removing the state: land,…
Fulong Wu 3 min read - Urban economy
Who Pays When a Mega-Project Fails? Public Risk and Private Gain
Mega-projects are built on public decisions and public money, yet gains go private and losses stay public.
3 min read - Housing
Art Washing: Murals, Investment and Displacement in Cities
Art washing uses murals, galleries and festivals to prepare working-class neighbourhoods for investment.
3 min read - Public space
Who Controls Your City's Public Spaces? Private Plazas
Privately owned public spaces look like squares but carry private rules. From New York's 1961 zoning to Occupy,…
3 min read - Public space
The Participatory Theatre That Deceives Us
When you are invited to participate, are you given power or asked to legitimise? Arnstein's ladder, Spain's Auken…
3 min read - Urban form
Michael Dear: Postmodernism and Critical Urban Planning
Michael Dear led the Los Angeles School and brought postmodernism into urban planning. What the postmodern city is…
Michael Dear 3 min read - Urban form
John Forester: Dialogue and Mediation for Inclusive Urban Planning
John Forester explains what planners do among conflicting interests and how dialogue and mediation produce fairer…
John Forester 2 min read - Urban geopolitics
David Theo Goldberg: Race, Space and Power in Cities
David Theo Goldberg shows that racism organises urban space: ghettos, peripheries and zoning manufacture race.
David Theo Goldberg 3 min read - Urban ecology
Ian McHarg: Design with Nature
A summary of Ian McHarg's Design with Nature (1969): planning from the territory up, layered maps, and the origin…
2 min read - Urban geopolitics
City Politics by Judd and Swanstrom: Power and Urban Governance
City Politics by Dennis Judd and Todd Swanstrom explains how US cities are governed: private power, growth…
2 min read - Urban geopolitics
African Cities by Garth Myers: Reassessing African Cities
African Cities (2011) by Garth Myers proposes reading African cities on their own terms: postcolonial, informal,…
Garth Myers 2 min read - Urban economy
Land Policy: Power, Value Capture and Spatial Justice
Land policy decides who gains from urban growth. What it is, how Edward Soja links it to spatial justice and which…
2 min read - Housing
Sonia Hirt and Zoning: The Roots of Urban Inequality in the USA
Zoned in the USA (2014) by Sonia Hirt shows that the exclusive single-family zone, unique in the world, raises…
3 min read - Housing
Naked City by Sharon Zukin: Gentrification and Urban Authenticity
Naked City (2010) by Sharon Zukin shows how the search for authenticity gentrifies New York's neighbourhoods.
Sharon Zukin 2 min read - Public space
Susan Fainstein's Just City: Equity, Diversity and Democracy
The Just City (2010) by Susan Fainstein proposes judging urban policy by its equity, diversity and democracy.
Susan Fainstein 3 min read - Urban form
Strategic Urban Planning: Patsy Healey's Collaborative Approach
Strategic urban planning sets a long-term vision for a city with all its stakeholders. What Patsy Healey proposes…
Patsy Healey 3 min read - Shrinking cities
Deindustrialization and Urban Reuse: Lofts, Rent Gap and Culture
Reusing industrial land turns factories and docks into housing, culture and parks. What Sharon Zukin and Neil Smith…
2 min read - Urban form
David Rusk and Metropolitan Fragmentation: Cities Without Suburbs
David Rusk explained in Cities Without Suburbs how metropolitan fragmentation produces inequality: elastic and…
David Rusk 2 min read - Public space
Decolonising Urban Space: What It Means and How It Is Done
Decolonising urban space dismantles the hierarchies colonisation left in cities. What Ananya Roy and Jennifer…
3 min read - Urban form
The Horizontal City and Suburbanisation: Fishman and Hall on Sprawl
The horizontal city grows outward with low density, cars and highways. How Robert Fishman and Peter Hall explain…
3 min read - Public space
Inclusive Public Space: Sennett and Low on Participatory Cities
Inclusive public space is the infrastructure of urban democracy. What Richard Sennett and Setha Low explain, two…
3 min read
