What is Zoning? What is "upzoning"? Why is all this important?
Zoning is a set of laws or regulations that dictate what can be built on a piece of land. It can dictate the number/type of buildings, as well as the height of buildings. It can also dictate how much parking or open space is required for the site, and it can dictate a long list of other attributes. Here is a sample "Zoning Bylaw".
Notice how complicated the Zoning Bylaw [see link above] is.
Here on this site, we'll try to make it easy to learn what zoning is and to hopefully help the average person figure out what zoning means to them and people around them. It's important to understand how zoning impacts not only yourself but others because zoning has been used to do some really bad things. But zoning can be used to do good things. It's up to you to decide if zoning is good for bad for a specific scenario. Here is the wikipedia page for zoning in the U.S.
See below for our summary of the good and bad.
Here are some of the things that zoning can be useful for:
- to help protect existing homes [like to protect tenants or existing "naturally occurring affordable housing"- require affordable housing in new building projects- to require community friendly features in commercial sites, like shade, walkable designs, etc
Some bad things that zoning can be used for: - to keep housing expensive- to allow more building than a healthy environment can support- to displace lower income people See specific pages for various topics regarding displacement in the menu above
Some bad things that zoning can be used for: - to keep housing expensive- to allow more building than a healthy environment can support- to displace lower income people See specific pages for various topics regarding displacement in the menu above
What is "upzoning"?
Upzoning is changing the regulations to allow more housing units [apartments, condos, single-family-homes] on a parcel of land. It's called "up" zoning when it allows "more" housing on a parcel of land. When upzoning has been done, the number of housing units is "more". It is higher-than-before, and thus called "upzoning". The idea is to "up" the number of housing units on a parcel of land
Upzoning allows a developer to build more housing units on a site and therefore make building at that site "more attractive" [more profitable]. And so it's called an "incentive" to allow more housing be built, if a community wants developers to build more housing on a site. It can be called other things, if upzoning destroys a neighborhood and displaces tenants. But governments generally call it "upzoning".
Why is Zoning Important?
For residents [or residents to be!], zoning can impact how much housing is available and/or what type of housing and/or the price of the housing.
For developers or real estate industry professionals, zoning can impact how many and what type of housing can be sold.
For a retail or industrial business owner, zoning is an important set of laws/regulations that dictate what you can do with a building and what measurements the building, signs, and other "structures" like parking. Zoning can be intimately connected to a business's economic vitality and/or viability.
For a customer and/or fan of a business, zoning can impact you if your favorite business is impacted by zoning. For existing tenants, zoning is critical to pay attention to, because if the zoning changes, the land owner who owns your apartment building may have an economic incentive to evict you. Sooo...if you see a public notice that the local government is planning to change the zoning of the land you live on, please look into the details and the potential "impact" of the proposed zoning. Dheck out the rest of this site, email us for suggestions on how to determine the potential impact. This site was designed with you in mind. The authors of this site, learned of an upzoning proposal in their town and when they realized the proposal would impact over 100 tenant families, they got organized and started explaining to tenants what was being proposed and how it might impact them. See here for our page focused on tenant impact of upzoning.
For a customer and/or fan of a business, zoning can impact you if your favorite business is impacted by zoning. For existing tenants, zoning is critical to pay attention to, because if the zoning changes, the land owner who owns your apartment building may have an economic incentive to evict you. Sooo...if you see a public notice that the local government is planning to change the zoning of the land you live on, please look into the details and the potential "impact" of the proposed zoning. Dheck out the rest of this site, email us for suggestions on how to determine the potential impact. This site was designed with you in mind. The authors of this site, learned of an upzoning proposal in their town and when they realized the proposal would impact over 100 tenant families, they got organized and started explaining to tenants what was being proposed and how it might impact them. See here for our page focused on tenant impact of upzoning.