Zoned in the USA

Zoned in the USA
Author: Sonia A. Hirt
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2015-02-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0801454700

Why are American cities, suburbs, and towns so distinct? Compared to European cities, those in the United States are characterized by lower densities and greater distances; neat, geometric layouts; an abundance of green space; a greater level of social segregation reflected in space; and—perhaps most noticeably—a greater share of individual, single-family detached housing. In Zoned in the USA, Sonia A. Hirt argues that zoning laws are among the important but understudied reasons for the cross-continental differences.Hirt shows that rather than being imported from Europe, U.S. municipal zoning law was in fact an institution that quickly developed its own, distinctly American profile. A distinct spatial culture of individualism—founded on an ideal of separate, single-family residences apart from the dirt and turmoil of industrial and agricultural production—has driven much of municipal regulation, defined land-use, and, ultimately, shaped American life. Hirt explores municipal zoning from a comparative and international perspective, drawing on archival resources and contemporary land-use laws from England, Germany, France, Australia, Russia, Canada, and Japan to challenge assumptions about American cities and the laws that guide them.

Zoning Rules!

Zoning Rules!
Author: William A. Fischel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2015
Genre: Electronic books
ISBN: 9781558442887

"Zoning has for a century enabled cities to chart their own course. It is a useful and popular institution, enabling homeowners to protect their main investment and provide safe neighborhoods. As home values have soared in recent years, however, this protection has accelerated to the degree that new housing development has become unreasonably difficult and costly. The widespread Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome is driven by voters’ excessive concern about their home values and creates barriers to growth that reach beyond individual communities. The barriers contribute to suburban sprawl, entrench income and racial segregation, retard regional immigration to the most productive cities, add to national wealth inequality, and slow the growth of the American economy. Some state, federal, and judicial interventions to control local zoning have done more harm than good. More effective approaches would moderate voters’ demand for local-land use regulation—by, for example, curtailing federal tax subsidies to owner-occupied housing"--Publisher's description.

Arbitrary Lines

Arbitrary Lines
Author: M. Nolan Gray
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2022-06-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1642832545

It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up

Land Use Without Zoning

Land Use Without Zoning
Author: Bernard H. Siegan
Publisher: Mercatus Center at George Maso
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2021-02-05
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781538148624

The conversation about zoning has meandered its way through issues ranging from housing affordability to economic growth to segregation, expanding in the process from a public policy backwater to one of the most discussed policy issues of the day. In his pioneering 1972 study, Land Use Without Zoning, Bernard Siegan first set out what has today emerged as a common-sense perspective: Zoning not only fails to achieve its stated ends of ordering urban growth and separating incompatible uses, but also drives housing costs up and competition down. In no uncertain terms, Siegan concludes, "Zoning has been a failure and should be eliminated!" Drawing on the unique example of Houston--America's fourth largest city, and its lone dissenter on zoning--Siegan demonstrates how land use will naturally regulate itself in a nonzoned environment. For the most part, Siegan says, markets in Houston manage growth and separate incompatible uses not from the top down, like most zoning regimes, but from the bottom up. This approach yields a result that sets Houston apart from zoned cities: its greater availability of multifamily housing. Indeed, it would seem that the main contribution of zoning is to limit housing production while adding an element of permit chaos to the process. Land Use Without Zoning reports in detail the effects of current exclusionary zoning practices and outlines the benefits that would accrue to cities that forgo municipally imposed zoning laws. Yet the book's program isn't merely destructive: beyond a critique of zoning, Siegan sets out a bold new vision for how land-use regulation might work in the United States. Released nearly a half century after the book's initial publication, this new edition recontextualizes Siegan's work for our current housing affordability challenges. It includes a new preface by law professor David Schleicher, which explains the book's role as a foundational text in the law and economics of urban land use and describes how it has informed more recent scholarship. Additionally, it includes a new afterword by urban planner Nolan Gray, which includes new data on Houston's evolution and land use relative to its peer cities.

Strong Towns

Strong Towns
Author: Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119564816

A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you’ll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles—and why it just doesn’t work. New development and high-risk investing don’t generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens’ quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the “traditional” search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

Zoning

Zoning
Author: Elliott Sclar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-11-06
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0429951256

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.

Women and the Environment

Women and the Environment
Author: Irwin Altman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1994-07-31
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0306446804

This thirteenth volume in the series addresses an increasingly salient worldwide research, design, and policy issue-women and physical environments. We live in an era of worldwide social change. Some nation-states are fracturing or disintegrating, migrations are resulting from political up heavals and economic opportunities, some ethnic and national animosi ties are resurfacing, and global and national economic systems are under stress. Furthermore, the variability of interpersonal and familial forms is increasing, and cultural subgroups-minorities, women, the physically challenged, gays, and lesbians-are vigorously demanding their rights in societies and are becoming significant economic and political forces. Although these social-system changes affect many people, their im pact on women is especially salient. Women are at the center of most forms of family life. Whether in traditional or contemporary cultures, women's roles in child rearing, home management, and community relations have and will continue to be central, regardless of emerging and changing family structures. And, because of necessity and oppor tunity, women are increasingly engaged in paid work in and outside the home (women in most cultures have historically always worked, but often not for pay). Their influence in cultures and societies is also mounting in the social, political, and economic spheres. In technological societies, women are playing higher-level roles, though still in small numbers, in economic and policy domains. This trend is likely to acceler ate in the twenty-first century.