Good explanation of the problems resulting from antiquated zoning philosophies

Map, L'Enfant Plan, Washington, DC.

The preamble of this blog starts with this sentence: "A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic."

I've read Roger Lewis' column in the Saturday Post for so long that for the past few years I mostly just skim it. Today's, "Working Toward a New Understanding of Zoning," is an excellent explanation in a succinct and direct fashion. He writes:

Urban design thinking and practice have greatly advanced over the past 30 years. Unfortunately, conventional zoning, the crude but all-powerful regulatory tool shaping cities, has changed little. Given the need to transform land-use planning and development, why is it so difficult to transform conventional zoning? Impediments to zoning reform are predominantly political, social and economic, usually having little to do with design.

This is particularly frustrating in the context of Washington, DC, where the home rule charter separates the planning and zoning functions in fundamental ways. The Zoning Commission is an independent agency under the charter. The Commission doesn't have to respond necessarily to concerns about urban design.

Since DC as a city is one of the first planned national capitals in the world, this is a real problem.

The Zoning Commission's Strategic Plan does not address the issue of the kind of built environment that is created through land use and zoning policies. Questions about the relevance of what the Zoning Commission does are not being asked.

From the Lewis article:

Zoning is potent because once zones are mapped and categories of land use, land-use intensity and building criteria are prescribed, the future character of the physical environment, along with its potential economic value, is substantially determined...

Zoning creates vested land-use rights and potential wealth for property owners. In fixing boundaries, uses, densities and building form, zoning also presumably creates stability and predictability. Thus many oppose zoning changes because they see it as a threat to their neighborhood and property.

Although many have benefited economically from zoning, it has become increasingly ineffective as an instrument of urban design. Zoning's fundamental flaw is that it operates primarily by setting limits, spelling out what cannot be done, while remaining relatively mute as to what should be done.

Zoning laws often were written by lawyers, not by planners and designers. Regulations adopted decades ago under radically different circumstances are still on the books. Among the most obstructive regulations are these limiting types of use and mixing of uses. People once believed that proper planning required clearly separated, single-use zones. A further belief was that, within a zone, buildings should be similar in bulk, height and character.

Today, urban designers advocate mixing uses and building types, blurring lines of demarcation between urban and suburban neighborhoods. They strive for connectivity rather than separation, heterogeneity rather than homogeneity...

But by far, zoning's most significant deficiency is its failure to mobilize regulatory power in determining the quality of the public realm -- the design of streets, civic spaces and public parks...

So we have this comprehensive plan revision process going on, and yet, because of the regime of zoning, too often zoning and planning work at cross-purposes.

Index Keywords: urban-design-placemaking