10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421 by Consorci De Serveis Universitaris De Catalunya, Wiley Online Library on [26/12/2022].
See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Zoning
YASNA CONTRERAS GATICA
University of Chile, Chile
The origin of zoning theory can be found in
Germany when Reinhard Baumeister used it
for the first time in 1876 from a functional
perspective, based on the increasing den-
sity and height of buildings. According to
Baumeister, it is the most natural and objec-
tive model to classify land use because in
large cities functions are no longer mixed and
tend to be divided. Nevertheless, zoning did
not emerge as such until 1891, in Frankfurt,
based on analysis of the different parts of the
municipal territory (Zonen), and a map that
defined such zones on municipal land (Bau-
zonenplan). This sort of zoning emerged as an
answer to increased density in the city center
by the end of the nineteenth century, which
explains why the term was then exported to
other Anglo-American countries.
In the United States the concept arises
in the 1880s with attempts to control the
expansion of Chinese laundries in California,
first in the city of Modesto and then in San
Francisco and Los Angeles. However, from
1909 zoning according to land use was used
in a wider sense (Hall 1996), more specifically
in New York, where the term was extended,
in 1916, to include what is traditionally
understood by zoning: urban regulation that
recognizes different land uses, as well as the
interests of private agents and owners of
particular spaces in the city. In New York,
German principles of zoning were adopted,
since zoning combined land use with height
restriction, creating a Commission for City
Planning, which attempted, through urban
regulations, to balance the different uses,
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Edited by Anthony Orum.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421
especially existing manufacturing with the
proposal for new, high buildings (Hall 1996).
According to Schwieterman and Caspal
(2006), in the city of Chicago,
the zoning provides some very basic guidelines
of use division and buildings volumes, seeking
to regulate the hassles of the different land uses,
particularly industrial one. At this stage, the reg-
ulation is a direct extension of police power of
local authority in matters related to health and
safety. The Ordinance consists of two set of zon-
ing maps, one that regulates uses, and the other
building volumes. (Tercco 2015, 1)
The statement warns about the sense of land
property and the power of this in urban
spaces, essentially city centers, which in
a way distorts the original meaning from
which the concept emerged in Germany.
Zoning in the United States was studied by
Harry Chaddick, Mayor Richard Daley, and
Edward Bassett (1936), whose mission was
to solve the growing problems arising from
the conflict of interests between owners in
New York City. What was new and different
in the application of this urban order was the
provision of legal validity for the different
forms of territorial occupation.
According to Mancuso (1980, in Tella
2012) there are at least three reasons why
New York can be considered the key example
for understanding the meaning of the zoning
in the rest of America: for the first time, zon-
ing affected all the administrative boundaries
of the city on a framework of growth; zone
regulations defined all the characteristics
of the buildings that could be constructed
there; these regulations were formalized in
order to acquire legal status according to the
Constitution and valid legislation at the time.
In 1926, the Supreme Court of the United
States argued that zoning would not violate

2 Z ON I NG
the Constitution or forms of city planning
and that it was role of government to be
responsible for regulating the private use of
property in order to ensure the welfare of the
community. Since that time, control of land
use has been transferred from state to munic-
ipalities, allowing the limitation of land
development within the boundaries, and
establishing requirements regarding the
height of buildings, volumes, and popula-
tion density within the regulation framework
declared by each municipality (Pacione 2009).
Thus, the first zoning regulation was born,
which started to provide solutions to the
growth of cities. The context of the nation’s
first zoning law, passed by New York City on
July 25, 1916, and the landmark US Supreme
Court case of 1926, Village of Euclid vs. Ambler
Realty Co., declared that zoning was a proper
use of the police power of a municipal author-
ity. That decision led to the rapid spread of
exclusionary zoning throughout the United
States. Therefore, zoning had a theoretical
purpose, more so than empirical: to super-
impose a regulatory framework that would
prevent the breaking of growing legislation
so peculiar to the city (Tella 2012). Through
regulation, responsibility was transferred to
municipalities, thus controlling land use.
Zoning has become one of the structural
instruments of urban planning, allow-
ing a balance between forms of occupation,
interests of different actors, and scale of devel-
opment. In general terms, regulation and
control of land use following the implemen-
tation of zoning solve or at least minimize
congestion problems, risks related to fires,
ways to address heights and volumes of build-
ings, control of population density, balance
between population density and provision
of equipment, and so forth – promoting, by
those means, public goods (Pacione 2009).
All these considerations respond to forms of
suburban growth that American cities had
10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421 by Consorci De Serveis Universitaris De Catalunya, Wiley Online Library on [26/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
been experiencing since the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Thus, zoning comprises the division
of land into areas where certain uses are
allowed, according to rules established by
municipal regulations. In Spain, zoning is an
urban term used for “regulatory division of
the city into zones in order to guide urban
development and growing” (Lopez 2010).
The difficulties of zoning lie in the arbitrari-
ness of some land owners who adapt the rules
according to their own interests – which leads
to different forms of zoning. According to
Pacione (2009), these can be summarized by
the types shown in Table 1, which shows their
main characteristics and also the objectives
and/or beneficiaries.
Zoning can be defined as “an arrangement
of elements and urban and regional activities
by partial sector in function of its homo-
geneous characteristics in order to achieve
greater efficiency in its use and avoid interfer-
ence between different activities” (Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Valparaíso 2015, 3).
However, Table 1 reveals that, regardless of
what form zoning takes, it is a complex plan-
ning criterion and that land use, densities,
borders, complementary uses, and the inte-
gration of residential and industrial uses with
a transportation system are subordinated
to private interests more than to municipal
control, which, according to the Constitution,
should regulate a balanced land use.
When referring to zoning, it must be able
to reconcile territorial interests and demands
at different scales: local, regional, national,
and even cross-border. However, one of the
criticisms of planning experts and technicians
regarding the concept of zoning is the impo-
sition of individual, private, and restrictive
interests, which puts into question the origin
and meaning of the concept. Also, these spec-
ulative and arbitrary logics evade the ability
of different territorial scales to agree on sus-
tainable modes of occupation of the territory.
 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421 by Consorci De Serveis Universitaris De Catalunya, Wiley Online Library on [26/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Z ON I NG 3

Table 1 Forms of zoning according to Pacione (2009)

Forms of zoning
Cluster zoning and
planned unit
development
Special district
zoning
Downzoning
Large lot zoning
Incentive zoning
(source: Pacione 2009, 179)
Principal characteristic
Involves the clustering of development
on part of a site, leaving the
remainder for open space, recreation,
amenity, or preservation.
Designed to maintain the special
land-use character of a place, central
district, etc.
Rezoning of an area to a lower density
use. It is often the result of
neighborhood pressure to avoid the
development of intrusive land use, or
gentrification.
This has the ostensible purpose of
safeguarding public welfare by
ensuring that there is good access for
emergency service vehicles, that
roads are not too congested, and that
there is ample open space.
This is basically a means of obtaining
private sector provision on public
amenities by offering zoning bonuses
in return for private finance or
specific infrastructure.
Objectives or beneficiaries
Developers are given freedom to
design developments to meet
market demand but within a
negotiated set of criteria
relating to pollution, traffic,
congestion, etc.
Designated to deflect market
forces and maintain a
particular industry against
pressure to convert
manufacturing space into
offices and apartments.
Is likely to be objected to by land
owners who promote
gentrification and urban
renewal, especially in damaged
central areas.
Controls the spread of the city.
However, much of this type of
zoning is done by real estate
developers.
Offers bonuses to developers in
return for the provision of
public or amenities benefits.

Behind the zoning persists an interest in rec-
onciling uses, decisions of different territorial
agents, residential demands, carrying capac-
ity of the territories, among others. The latter
would therefore require the need to think
about the governance behind the zoning,
while reconciling the interests of different
territorial agents is key to the concept.
The concept of zoning has presented an
evolution in its application, since, in the
last 30 years, a normative sense of zoning
and the land use that arose from it has been
questioned (see Table 1). Such questioning is
focused on the forecast of land value; there-
fore, limiting and controlling certain spaces
does not imply diminishing or maintaining
the low land values in peripheral zones. Also,
the excessive amount of reserve land in differ-
ent parts of the city, in the hands of better-off
people, presupposes an exclusionary criterion
after zoning. In North America, some areas
are even examples of racial exclusion – as a
result of a tool that has both a physical and
financial dimension in the way that space is
occupied.
New theoretical currents have questioned
the meaning of sustainability under the dif-
ferent forms that zoning assumes in North
America. Schwieterman and Caspal (2006)
argue that it is necessary to consider other

4 Z ON I NG
factors when regulating the pattern of land
occupation and the conversion of these
forms, particularly environmental, cultural,
and socioeconomic factors. In addition,
zoning requires the binding participation of
communities affected by local government
decisions. Concern for the preservation of
heritage and environments in certain neigh-
borhoods can often lead to the reduction of
indicators and constructive capacity restric-
tions on building height and density control,
leading sometimes to the abolition of uses of
zoning in conflict. “Developers are permitted
to resolve agreements with neighborhood
organizations, aiming to create consensus
on areas with greater development pressure
and saving for the municipality the role of
mediator or negotiator” (Tercco 2015, 3).
Zoning is justified “economically as it is
a useful way to ensure a fair distribution of
costs, forcing each individual to pay its own
expenses” (Hall 1996, 166). This criticism
by geographer Peter Hall refers directly to
those who externalize the costs of zoning,
who are not the developers who imposed the
idea of density in New York, but rather the
owners of the land, as well as those who are
willing to pay more for land use. Therefore, as
zoning proposals do not establish dialogues
with planning organizations, the location
of activities in space, the densification of
the population, the practice of mobility and
transportation systems that ensure efficient
movement enter a paradox between specula-
tion, exclusion, and sustainability. As Richard
Sennett says, in a critique of American zoning
in his book Uses of Disorder (1970), zoning
does not ultimately govern in the practice of
the welfare state but rather represents “special
tax conditions and physical planning proce-
dures that are simplified” (in Hall 1996, 367).
Others assure us (Schwieterman and
Caspal, 2006) that behind the zoning and
regulation of space, some are excluded
and marginalized from forms of land use,
10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421 by Consorci De Serveis Universitaris De Catalunya, Wiley Online Library on [26/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
especially the sites that have better connection
to the city. Both authors describe the way dif-
ferent local organizations sought to limit the
expansion of black neighborhoods through
zoning, for example with the exclusivity of
individual housing in certain areas, taking
into account the difficulties of African Amer-
icans in accessing such housing. Critics of
the practice of exclusionary zoning refer to
the “adoption by suburban municipalities of
legal regulations designed to preserve their
jurisdiction against intrusion of less desired
land uses” (Pacione 2009, 178). Zoning,
especially in suburban spaces, is inadequate
from a territorial point of view, especially
because the creation of new housing requires
extensive ground at lower cost for private
investors with flexible regulations that go
from land density to the amount of public
space per capita, as well as the links between
leisure space, work, and residence.
One of the major problems of zoning lies
in the different interests and conflicts that
arise in lands with high income potential.
Central spaces that fall into the logic of
“downzoning or the special district zoning”
(Table 1) are constantly subject to better-off
land owners – essentially real estate and
commercial development that promotes and
generates processes of gentrification that
mostly exclude low income households.
Densification and the increase in height of
buildings in New York City during the 1920s,
for example, were an expression of a zoning
practice that was more concerned about
private returns rather than public; thus the
zoning “gave greater security and guarantees
to the investor” (Hall 1996, 69).
Subsequently, “certainly [zoning’s] whole-
sale use during much of the twentieth
century, has helped to determine the land-use
structure of metropolitan areas” (Pacione
2009, 178), since zoning does not mean
planning or does not act directly as a plan-
ning tool, as it deals with the capitalization

of well-connected land at low prices. As
Hall (1996) argues, “zoning was greeted
enthusiastically in New York as it was a prof-
itability and commercialization mechanism
of the land in some areas of the city where
the land value was stable; on the contrary, in
other places where there was a speculative
gain, the differential rent on city planning is
zoning and social control” (Hall 1996, 70).
From this perspective, the study of zon-
ing criteria in legislation and contemporary
urban-regional planning gives rise to many
questions. Some of these questions revolve
around the production processes of the city
and attempts to control and conduct its
physical and social occupation, and how to
show the conflicts and contradictions pro-
duced in the city (Tercco 2015), as well as
land disputes between better-off and and less
well-off purchasers of land. A clearly defined
zoning system on a master plan protects and
strengthens the socioenvironmental impact
of each of its parts, and in that sense it could
become a device to retrieve the value of a built
area, reducing to a minimum the interests of
the owner in favor of the purpose of the zone
so that zoning is oriented to planning and not
speculation.
SEE ALSO: Sprawl; Suburbanization; Urban
Planning
10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0421 by Consorci De Serveis Universitaris De Catalunya, Wiley Online Library on [26/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
Z ON I NG 5
REFERENCES
Bassett, E. 1936. Zoning: The Laws, Administra-
tion and Court Decisions during the First Twenty
Years. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Hall, P. 1996. Ciudades del mañana: Historia del
urbanismo en el siglo XX. Barcelona: Ediciones
del Serbal.
López, L. 2010. Diccionario de términos sobre la
ciudad y lo urbano. Madrid: Editorial Biblioteca
Nueva.
Mancuso, F. 1980. Las experiencias del zoning.
Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
Pacione, M. 2009. Urban Geography: A Global Per-
spective, 3rd ed. New York, NY: Routledge.
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.
2015. “Glosario de Términos de Geografía
Urbana.” Accessed June 22, 2018, at ww2.
educarchile.cl/UserFiles/P0001/File/geografia%
20urbana.pdf.
Schwieterman, J. P., and D. M. Caspal. 2006. The
Politics of Place: A History of Zoning in Chicago.
Chicago, IL: Lake Claremont Press.
Sennett, R. 1970. Uses of Disorder. New York, NY:
Norton.
Tella, G. 2012. “Los orígenes del zoning.”
Plataforma Urbana, August 29. Accessed June
22, 2018, at www.plataformaurbana.cl/archive/
2012/08/29/los-origenes-del-zoning/.
Tercco, M. L. 2015. “Una historia del zoning
de Chicago.” Café de las Ciudades, Novem-
ber 23. Accessed June 22, 2018, at www.
cafedelasciudades.com.ar/planes_50.htm.