Rating: 7.5/10.
Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation by Sonia A. Hirt
This book examines the history of zoning, especially focusing on America and how it reached the current state where large areas are mandated for single-family house zoning, something relatively uncommon globally. The strict government regulation in this area seems contrary to the individualist ideas of America. The US is an outlier compared to almost every other country in favoring low-density single-family housing. This has been the case since early in the country’s history because there was a perception that land is plentiful and a general high valuation of personal independence.
A large amount of land in US cities is subject to flat zoning, meaning mutually exclusive use between residential, commercial, business, etc. This is also called Euclidean zoning, named after a legal case from the town of Euclid, Ohio, in the early 20th century. The alternatives are hierarchical, mixed-use, form-based, and performance-based zoning (which allow more mixed-use than flat single-family housing), but in America, this is much less common than flat zoning.
Zoning works differently in other countries: the UK has a lot of flexibility while local authorities decide what is and is not permissible, and the national zoning serves only as a rough guideline. Countries like France, Germany, Japan, and many others have zoning, but the residential zone type allows for much more mixed use than in the US. Canada is the most similar to the US, with various restrictive single-family zoning in some places, but this varies greatly between regions as it is fragmented. The US is different from most places in that the government has very little control over land use except for zoning.
A history of zoning from ancient to modern times: pre-modern societies generally had little central control over land use, and people generally worked in the same place that they lived, although cities naturally created a distinction between urban and rural land. During the early modern age, the need to separate noxious, loud, and otherwise unpleasant activities from residential areas began to be recognized. In the 19th century, Great Britain created some hellish conditions in early industrial cities like Manchester, and health problems began to be recognized later throughout Europe.
Early America, however, developed differently in terms of zoning. The country had much lower density than Europe, and American leaders wanted to preserve the rural lifestyle. When the country urbanized, the ideal was to live in a private space outside the city and travel in for work. It was assumed that only the poor would live inside the city, whereas the rich would find ways to live outside. As the cities expanded, local groups used zoning to exclude undesirable groups from encroaching on their space, often based on racial and social lines.
In modern times, American zoning emerged from a very different historical context than that of European countries like Germany. While Germans generally trusted their city planners, Americans were more cynical and viewed zoning as a potential tool for corruption. They purposefully used single-family zoning as a way to enforce segregation without explicitly doing so, by excluding anyone who could not afford a single-family home. Many wealthy Americans considered apartments and businesses as parasites that would draw the poor into otherwise affluent neighborhoods.
Finally, the author of this book argues that America’s zoning system exists in its current form mostly due to historical reasons, and much of it doesn’t make sense in our modern context. Most cities have been deindustrialized, and there are negative consequences of sprawling metro areas with long commute times due to how zoning is currently set up.
