Zoning in New Urbanism - Essay Example

These laws written by a commission headed by Edward Basset and signed by Mayor John Purroy Mitchel became the blueprint for the rest of the country (partly because Edward Basset headed the group of planning laws that wrote The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act, which was accepted almost without change by most states) and by the late 1920s, most of the nation would have developed a set of zoning regulations that met the needs of the locality. New York went on to develop an ever more complex set of zoning regulations, including floor area ratio regulations, air rights, and others according to the density-specific needs of the neighborhoods (http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/).

Among large cities in the United States, Houston, Texas is unique in having no zoning ordinance. Houston voters have rejected efforts to implement zoning in 1948, 1962 and 1993. Thus Houston continues to be the largest city in the U.S. with no zoning.Specific zoning laws have been overturned in some other U.S. cases where the laws were not applied evenly (violating equal protection) or were considered to violate free speech. In the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, Georgia, an ordinance banning billboards was overturned in court on such grounds.

It has been deemed that a municipality's sign ordinance must be content-neutral with regard to the regulation of signage. The City of Roswell, Georgia has now instituted a sign ordinance that regulates signage based strictly on dimensional and aesthetic codes, rather than an interpretation of a sign's content (i.e. use of colors, lettering, etc.).On other occasions, religious institutions sought to circumvent zoning laws, citing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). The Supreme Court eventually overturned RFRA in just such a case, City of Boerne v.

Flores 521 U.S. 507 (1997). However, Congress enacted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) in 2000 in an effort to correct the constitutionally objectionable problems of the RFRA. In the 2005 case of Cutter v. Wilkinson, the United States Supreme Court held RLUIPA to be constitutional.Existing development in a community is generally not affected by the new zoning laws because it is "grandfathered", meaning the prior development is exempt from compliance. Consequently, zoning can only affect new development in a growing community.

In addition, if undeveloped land is zoned to allow development, that land becomes relatively expensive, causing developers to seek land that is not zoned for development and then seek rezoning of that land themselves. Communities generally react by not zoning undeveloped land to allow development until a developer requests rezoning and present a suitable plan. Development under this practice appears to be piecemeal and uncoordinated. Communities try to influence the timing of development by government expenditures for new streets, sewers, and utilities usually desired for modern developments.

However, the development of interstate freeways for purposes unrelated to planned community growth creates an inexorable rush to develop the relatively cheap land near interchanges. Property tax suppression measures such as California Proposition 13 have led many communities to disregard their comprehensive plans and rezone undeveloped land for retail establishments, desperate to capture sales tax revenue.In more recent times, zoning has been criticized by urban planners and scholars (most notably Jane Jacobs) as a source of new social ills, including the separation of homes from employment and the rise of "car culture.

" Some communities have begun to encourage the development of denser, mixed-use neighborhoods that promote walking and biking to jobs and shopping. However, single-family homes and cars are major parts of the "American Dream" for nuclear families, and zoning laws often reflect this: in some cities, houses that do not have an attached garage are deemed "blighted" and are subject to redevelopment. Movements that disapprove of zoning, such as New Urbanism, generally try to reconcile these competing demands through creative urban design solutions that hark back to the 1920s and 1930s practices.