Zoning
Throughout the Age of Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, cultural and socio-economic shifts led to the rapid increase in the enforcement and invention of urban regulations.
[8] The shifts were informed by a new scientific rationality, the advent of mass production and complex manufacturing, and the subsequent onset of urbanisation.
Low density residential areas surround the park, providing a pleasant walk between work in the city within and the family homes outside.
All retail activity was to be conducted within a single glass-roofed building, an early concept for the modern shopping centre inspired by the Crystal Palace.
[18] The application of single-use zoning has led to the distinctive form of many cities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in which a very dense urban core, often containing skyscrapers, is surrounded by low density residential suburbs, characterised by large gardens and leafy streets.
[16] Planning and community activist Jane Jacobs wrote extensively on the connections between the separation of uses and the failure of urban renewal projects in New York City.
These still use the basic regulatory mechanisms of zoning, excluding incompatible uses such as heavy industry or sewage farms, while allowing compatible uses such as residential, commercial and retail activities so that people can live, work and socialise within a compact geographic area.
[23] For instance, form-based zoning in a dense area may insist on low setbacks, high density, and pedestrian accessibility.
Form-based codes (FBCs) are designed to directly respond to the physical structure of a community in order to create more walkable and adaptable environments.
[23] Form-based codes recognize the interrelated nature of all components of land-use planning—zoning, subdivision, and public works—and integrate them to define districts based on the community's desired character and intensity of development.
[8]: 77 Performance zoning may use a menu of compliance options where a property developer can earn points or credits for limiting environmental impacts, including affordable housing units, or providing public amenities.
[34] Incentive zoning has also been criticized for increasing traffic, reducing natural light, and offering developers larger rewards than those reaped by the public.
[43][46] Pattern zoning may also be used to promote certain building types such as missing middle housing and affordable small-scale commercial properties.
[56] Inclusionary zoning refers to policies to increase the number of housing units within a development that are affordable to low and middle-income households.
These policies can be mandatory as part of performance zoning[30] or based on voluntary incentives,[12] such as allowing greater density of development.
[62] While a jurisdiction can rezone even a single parcel of land in some cases, spot zoning is often disallowed when the change would conflict with the policies and objectives of existing land-use plans.
Single-use zoning and urban sprawl have also been criticized as making work–family balance more difficult to achieve, as greater distances need to be covered in order to integrate the different life domains.
[69] These issues are especially acute in the United States, with its high level of car usage[70] combined with insufficient or poorly maintained urban rail and metro systems.
For example, in 2022, Gloversville's Free Methodist Church in New York wished to provide 40 beds for the homeless population in -4 degree weather and were inhibited from doing so.
[81] In Houston, Texas, the lack of a local zoning ordinance means that property owners make heavy use of deed restrictions to prevent unwanted development.
Same permitted uses as Category 2 residential zone with addition of theatres, restaurants, stores and other entertainment facilities with more than 10,000 m2 of floor area and warehouses.
Residences and shopping can be constructed but schools, hospitals and hotels are impermissible New Zealand's planning system is grounded in effects-based Performance Zoning under the Resource Management Act.
In order to prevent local authorities from being overwhelmed by high volumes of small-scale applications from individual householders, a separate system of permitted development has been introduced.
[95] The proposals hinted at a move toward zoning, with areas given a Growth, Renewal or Protected designation, with the possibility of "sub-areas within each category", although the document did not elaborate on what the details of these might have been.
The constitutionality of zoning ordinances was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1926 case Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co.
In a simple hierarchical zoning system, districts are organized with residential (the most sensitive and least disruptive category) at the top, followed by commercial and industrial.
[8]: 65 Single-use zoning is used by many municipalities due to its ease of implementation (one set of explicit, prescriptive rules), long-established legal precedent, and familiarity to planners and design professionals.
Separation of uses can contribute to urban sprawl, loss of open space, heavy infrastructure costs, and automobile dependency.
[108] He claims a strong relationship exists between an area's allowance of building housing at higher density and racial integration between blacks and whites in the United States.
[108] Rothwell and Massey suggest homeowners and business interests are the two key players in density regulations that emerge from a political economy.
