Zoning
What it is
Zoning is the legal division of a city into districts, each with rules governing permitted uses and the bulk, height and density of buildings. Early use-separation ordinances appeared in German cities such as Frankfurt from the 1880s, and comprehensive zoning was codified in New York City's 1916 Zoning Resolution, prompted partly by the shadow of the Equitable Building, then upheld for the US in the 1926 Euclid v. Ambler Supreme Court case. It works by binding land to categories such as residential, commercial and industrial.
Why it matters
Zoning became the dominant legal tool for shaping 20th-century cities, controlling where things could be built and how big. It is also the chief target of criticism for enforcing separation of uses, low densities and, in many places, social and racial segregation.
Plans it shaped
- Greater Berlin Competition (1910)
- Regional Plan of New York & Its Environs (1929)
- Ankara Jansen Plan (1932)
- Istanbul Henri Prost Plan (1936–1951)
- Recife Agache Plan (1943)
- Rotterdam Basisplan (1946)
- Nairobi Master Plan (1948) (1948)
- Chandigarh (1951–1965)
- Buenos Aires Plan Regulador (1958/62)
- Dhaka Master Plan (1959)
- Tsukuba Science City Plan (1960s–)
- Santiago PRIS (1960)