HOW ZONING SHAPES COMMUNITIES

THE GOOD, BAD AND HOPEFUL ASPECTS 

OF THE CENTURY-OLD TOOL THAT DETERMINES

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE PLACES WE LIVE, WORK AND PLAY

Post World War II, when more than 10 million G.I.s returned from the battlefields and car ownership was exploding — auto-oriented suburbs grew like weeds. 

“Zoning was following real estate development trends. Large-scale homebuilders covered a lot of ground. 

The financial industry wants certainty in what it is lending to, so single-family zoning blanketed the nation,” David Morley, AICP, American Planning Association’s research program and QA manager, said.

Critics taking issues with Post War development patterns appeared in the early 1960s. 

That is when the Planned Unit Development (PUD) came into favor. 

“It was an option for large-scale developers — saying you don’t have to follow the letter of the law and you can get a mix of uses,” Morley said. 

“That was the first seismic shift of the way zoning worked for nearly half a century.”