Zoning
By: Chris Allen
Zoning is one of the most powerful tools local governments use to shape housing, transportation, public finance, neighborhood life, and local economic opportunity. At its best, zoning provides a clear and predictable framework for good development. It helps neighbors, builders, city staff, and public officials understand what can be built, where it can be built, and what standards apply. At its worst, zoning becomes a system for freezing communities in place, separating compatible uses, mandating expensive development patterns, and making normal neighborhood evolution illegal.
IncDev’s position is that zoning should make small-scale, incremental development legal, predictable, and straightforward. A healthy zoning code should allow a community to mature over time: a house can become a duplex, a corner lot can hold a small neighborhood business, a deep lot can support a cottage court, and a main street can add upper-story housing. This is closely aligned with the Strong Towns call to allow “the next increment of development intensity” by right in every neighborhood.
The central problem with much of American zoning is not that it regulates development. Development needs rules. The problem is that many codes regulate for a narrow, auto-oriented, postwar development pattern: single-use districts, large minimum lots, excessive parking mandates, deep setbacks, low lot coverage, rigid density limits, and lengthy discretionary approvals. These rules often make it easier to build large projects at the edge of town than small, compatible projects in existing neighborhoods. They also raise costs, reduce housing choice, limit local entrepreneurship, and prevent neighborhoods from adapting to changing household needs.
This matters because zoning is not just a planning issue; it is also a housing affordability issue, a small business issue, and a municipal finance issue. Brookings has described land-use controls as widespread regulations that make housing more expensive and restrict growth in high-opportunity places. Strong Towns makes the related fiscal argument: cities become stronger when homeowners, local builders, and neighborhood developers are allowed to make many small contributions over time, rather than depending on a few large projects to carry the tax base.
Another critique of conventional zoning is that it too often regulates use while neglecting form. Traditional neighborhoods work because buildings, streets, public spaces, homes, shops, and civic institutions relate to each other in a coherent way. That is why form-based codes have been such an important reform tool within New Urbanism. CNU describes form-based codes as a way to code for complete neighborhoods and public spaces as shared-use places, rather than simply separating land uses into isolated pods. Opticos similarly frames form-based coding as an approach that can support walkable neighborhoods, resilient communities, and thriving cities.
But zoning reform should not become an exercise in producing a beautiful code that only consultants can understand. The test of a good zoning code is whether it can be used by ordinary people. A local builder, homeowner, architect, tradesperson, small developer, or neighborhood business owner should be able to look at the rules and understand what is possible. City staff should be able to administer the code consistently. Elected officials should be able to explain the public purpose behind the rules. And neighbors should be able to see that the code allows change while still creating predictable, human-scaled places.
IncDev’s position is that zoning reform should focus on implementation, not just permission. Cities should legalize missing middle housing, accessory dwelling units, small mixed-use buildings, neighborhood-scale commercial activity, and incremental infill by right. They should remove or reduce parking mandates, lower minimum lot-size barriers, allow more flexible building types, simplify approvals, and replace subjective public hearings with clear standards. Where possible, cities should pair zoning reform with pre-approved plans, pattern books, small developer training, predictable infrastructure requirements, and staff alignment across planning, zoning, building, fire, utilities, and public works.
Good zoning reform is not anti-neighborhood. It is pro-neighborhood. It allows neighborhoods to become more useful, more financially productive, more adaptable, and more welcoming over time. The goal is not to erase local character, but to recover the traditional pattern of gradual change that created many of the places people love most. A zoning code should not force every neighborhood to remain fixed at one moment in time. It should allow communities to evolve in small, durable increments, one useful building at a time.
Best supporting links
IncDev — Home / Work Overview
IncDev’s own framing of helping cities and towns develop policies and regulations that support more housing and commercial development.
https://www.incrementaldevelopment.org/Strong Towns Action Lab — Core Campaign: Incremental Housing
The clearest statement of the “next increment of development intensity” zoning reform principle.
https://actionlab.strongtowns.org/hc/en-us/sections/11668881438868-Core-Campaign-Incremental-HousingBrookings — Reforming land use regulations
Impactful research and narrative on the layered effects of our land use regulations.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/reforming-land-use-regulations/Strong Towns — Housing
A strong explanation of why housing systems work best when homeowners, local builders, and neighborhood developers can contribute incrementally.
https://www.strongtowns.org/housingCNU — Project for Code Reform
CNU’s practical effort to help communities reform zoning codes that prevent diverse, walkable, mixed-use places.
https://www.cnu.org/our-projects/project-code-reformCNU — Great Idea: Form-Based Codes
A concise New Urbanist explanation of why form-based codes can support complete neighborhoods and better public spaces.
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/05/10/great-idea-form-based-codes