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

When cities reform zoning to allow more construction, the impacts are small but meaningful.

Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, believes affordable housing has increasingly become a national issue. 

“When cities reform zoning to allow more construction, the impacts are small but meaningful. [But] zoning changes are inadequate alone to create affordable housing for the entire community,” he said.

“We need to do a whole variety of things, such as increasing low-income housing tax credits, which has produced millions of affordable housing units around the country.”

Freemark authored a research paper on the impact of zoning changes and warns that there is no magic bullet when it comes to upzoning and housing affordability. 

He found that Downzonings (regulations that reduce density) definitely limit construction and worsen affordability, but he also found a mixed bag in researching upzonings, which allow increased density, concluding they “offer mixed success in terms of housing production, reduced costs, and social integration in impacted neighborhoods; outcomes depend on market demand, local context, housing types, and timing.”