Zoning is at once a key technical competency of urban planning practice and a highly politicized regulatory tool. How this contradiction between the technical and political is resolved has wide-reaching implications for urban equity and sustainability, two key concerns of urban planning. Moving beyond critiques of zoning as a regulatory hindrance to local affordability or merely the rulebook that guides urban land use, this textbook takes an institutional approach to zoning, positioning its practice within the larger political, social, and economic conflicts that shape local access for diverse groups across urban space. Foregrounding the historical-institutional setting in which zoning is embedded allows planners to more deeply engage with the equity and sustainability issues related to zoning practice.
By approaching zoning from a social science and planning perspective, this text engages students of urban planning, policy, and design with several key questions relevant to the realities of zoning and land regulation they encounter in practice. Why has the practice of zoning evolved as it has? How do social and economic institutions shape zoning in contemporary practice? How does zoning relate to the other competencies of planning, such as housing and transport? Where and why has zoning, an act of physical land use regulation, replaced social planning? These questions, grounded in examples and cases, will prompt readers to think critically about the potential and limitations of zoning. By reforging the important links between zoning practice and the concerns of the urban planning profession, this text provides a new framework for considering zoning in the 21st century and beyond.
About the Author: Elliott Sclar is Director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development and Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University. He is a global expert on the finance and governance of transportation and land use, and his book You Don't Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (Cornell, 2000) won the Louis Brownlow Award (2001) and the Charles Levine Prize (2000).
Bernadette Baird-Zars works on the implementation of land use and housing initiatives. With support from the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, USAID-OCHA, and the Post-Conflict Cities Lab, her current research at Columbia University examines land practices over political transitions in Mexico, Syria, and the US. Bernadette is a partner at Alarife Urban Associates.
Lauren Ames Fischer is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the University of North Texas. Her research examines the governance processes and soocio-spatial impacts of urban transport and land use and has been supported by the National Science Foundation. Lauren holds a doctorate from Columbia University.
Valerie E. Stahl's research explores housing policy and community planning in US cities. Her current project focuses on tenant engagement and resistance in a New York City public housing redevelopment. Valerie holds a master's degree in Urban Affairs from Sciences Po Paris and is currently a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University.
