How City Planning Models Are Changing

The single-family home is losing its cool. Some homebuyers now see multi-unit properties the way they see electric bikes or solar roofs — as part of a climate-aware lifestyle.

We already know single-unit residential zoning limits supply in a time of tremendous housing demand and overpriced real estate. We know it makes it hard for cities to offer housing for their workforces. There’s more, though. Exclusively single-unit zoning encourages reliance on cars. That’s a CO2 problem.  

In the summer of 2022, temperatures are breaking records. People and towns are experiencing the effects of global heating — weather extremes, fires, droughts, and unexpected shortages. In the face of escalating disruptions, city planning is coming under increasing scrutiny.  

In fact, cities and states are already changing.

How Upzoning Increases Our Resilience

R1 or “single-family” zoning bars builders from putting up anything but freestanding, single-unit homes.

In Seattle, R1 zoning covers 80% of the residential land. Seventy percent of the residential land in Los Angeles is zoned R1.

The same was true in Minneapolis until recently. There, city planners are starting to rezone — or “upzone”— for denser residential living.

Back in December 2018, Minneapolis proposed a plan to rezone its single-unit residential areas. Across the city, Minneapolis now permits the building of multiple units on each lot. And multi-unit residential properties have priority near public transportation hubs. To protect people from being forced out of their homes during the upzoning, Minneapolis has established proactive housing assistance and renter protection rules.

☛ What upzoning is not: This is not about forbidding freestanding homes. It’s not about everyone waking up one day to find their neighborhoods filled with huge apartment complexes. It’s about giving everyone the ability to build two, three, or four units on a lot if it makes sense to the property owners. Cities can still have height restrictions (a practice long revered in Washington, D.C.).

California has been steadily working on rezoning to allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on properties with freestanding houses. Oregon is following suit. It’s doing some appealing rezoning work, highlighted by models like cluster housing in the city of Corvallis. This is the building of groups of cottage-style homes around a courtyard, perhaps near shops, restaurants, and local art markets. The cluster housing model effectively deals with the traffic and air pollution connected with increasing commuter activity. In short, it makes neighborhoods more resilient in a changing environment.

As policy makers in other states gear up to try similar ideas, some city planners are asking…

Is it time to retire single-family zoning?

The Sustainability Case for Ending Single-Home Zoning

Some urban planners are now urging cities to scrap single-unit zoning altogether. We all need to focus, they insist, on getting more housing in place for the average earner. That’s for environmental reasons as well as the need to create more housing so people can afford to live somewhere.

A major issue with single-unit zoning is the way it pushes development outward — commonly known as sprawl. This means the spreading of pavement. Paving land with concrete gives off large amounts of greenhouse gases. It also means the destruction of foliage that would have absorbed those greenhouse gases. It means more hard surfaces and thus more flooding. It means people drive longer distances, as infrastructure spreads.

Therefore, there’s a sustainability case for upzoning. It’s possible to control emissions significantly when we allow upzoning, especially if it can be coupled with well-planned accessibility to less car-reliant transit options.

Here are just a few sustainability tools being adopted by planners in a number of cities:  

• On-demand mobility. Cars and parking space were also part of the American Dream. Climate as well as space constraints are changing this. Consider the scooters and e-Bikes of Washington, D.C. They help the city avoid allotting more space to parking lot construction. After all, human opportunities are more important than roping off areas for cars, the argument goes. The rise of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft has also played a role in changing our minds about the primacy of individual car ownership.

• Flexible housing. In past decades, just about everyone would have held suburban home ownership up as the American Dream. Little by little, that ideal has shifted, with many people preferring high-density city living or co-op style housing. Now, architects and designers talk about telescoping furniture and flexible room designs that can change as people’s lives do.

• Shared spaces. Co-working spaces and shared local amenities are making square footage less important to home buyers. Condos with recycled furnishings, compost bins, and shared spaces have become part of the whole green business concept. It’s a trend that understands the places we work and live as part of our shared planetary home.

• Painless high-density development. Some cities are changing their zoning rules to let property owners build accessory dwelling units (“ADUs”) on their land. They’re really just restoring time-honored traditions, from basement flats to in-law cottages.

Not all cities are finding it possible to zone for sustainability, though. Deed restrictions may have been placed in neighborhood associations by developers. Local zoning boards don’t create those, so they lack the authority to change them.

☛ Should you build a new unit in light of local rezoning? Wait a minute… Better check the deed. Deeds.com has more on whether “upzoning” can override a deed restriction.

A New Take on the Role of Zoning Boards

Alexis Harrison, who’s on the Town of Fairfield Plan & Zoning Commission in Connecticut, makes a compelling point: “Local zoning boards are Connecticut’s first line of defense when it comes to environmental protection.”

Jesse Keenan would likely agree. Keenan is a climate researcher at Tulane University. The research shows how states that have used zoning to develop their suburbs in the past few decades have made serious environmental mistakes. The Scottsdale, Arizona metro area, for example, built until its water ran dry.

Other cities are dealing with intense stormwater runoff problems because so much of the land is paved over. Sea-level rise is causing tidal rivers to surge and roads to flood as more severe storms become commonplace. Planners simply can’t wave off the effects of climate change on real estate.

Harrison says density must be understood in a climate-aware context. Upzoning must be done without creating new needs for paved surfaces, or new strains on resources and on nature. Zoning boards have to act in light of new knowledge. They need to be mindful of how nature provides shade, cooling, and the absorption of carbon emissions and stormwater.

To sum up, Alexis Harrison says it well in Connecticut’s CT Mirror:

“Natural ecosystems and green spaces large and small not only promote the public health but also reflect the unique nature of each community, whether it’s a small hamlet, a town or city.”

Supporting References

Eric Jaffe for Sidewalk Labs’ Sidewalk Talk podcast “City of the Future”: Is It Time to End Single Family Zoning? (Feb. 6, 2020). See also: Is Single-Family Zoning on the Way Out?

Benjamin Demers for the American Planning Association blog at Planning.org: Is Single-Family Zoning on the Way Out? (May 14, 2020).

Mt. Airy [Philadelphia] Nexus Coworking Space Raises the Bar for Sustainable Business (Jun. 19, 2019).

Alexis Harrison in The CTMirror: CT Viewpoints – Local Zoning Control Is Connecticut’s Best Tool for Addressing Climate Change (Jul. 27, 2022).

And as linked.

Photo credits: Burak the Weekender, via Pexels.