Why are there restrictions to the kind of buildings that can be raised up in some areas? Why are some structures more prominent in one area than in others? The reason is simple. Everything related to real estate and the built environment is regulated by laws. These laws are called land use and zoning laws.

What Is Zoning?

The most prominent land use regulation used for the control of local real estate and property development in cities is zoning. It is a control tool used for regulating the built environment and to aid functionality of the real estate market.

With zoning, the location, size and purpose of buildings are determined and arranged. Therefore, a particular city is divided into sections and apportioning specific locations for certain kinds of structures, thus maintaining the shape and layout of the city. The city is thus divided into residential, commercial and industrial zones.

Why Zoning?

As said earlier, zoning enables a community maintain order and aesthetic beauty, while allowing each zone maximize its intended use. This is why in a residential area, you will not find a factory, because zoning laws ensure that such juxtaposition is prevented. It is also because of zoning laws that there are specific speculations for the kind of buildings allowed in certain areas, such as height restrictions, parking lots and requirements, location of utility lines, and more of such.

Whether development in a particular area is facilitated or slowed down depends to a large extent on zoning laws.

How Does Zoning Work?

Every country and State around the world has different modalities for how their zoning laws operate. Again, there are different levels of authority that control zoning regulations.

However, the most obtainable practice is where a local authority such as a county or municipality controls zoning. In some other countries, it is controlled at the national or state level. Still in other areas, zoning laws are controlled by a combination of both the National/State and the county. For the US, each county governs its own zoning regulations.

Apart from these primary zoning control systems, there are also subsidiary regulations that aid the efficiency of zoning laws, such as Australia’s planning scheme overlays.

Breakdown Of Zoning Regulations

Zoning regulations are formulated in the form of zoning ordinances, which are written rules with details of how land should be used in a specific block as well as guidelines for the individual lots in that specific block.

The zoning ordinance is a body of formal rules partitioning land-use policies that are obtainable within a particular county or area. They include specific guidelines on the size of individual lots, height, density and Floor Area Ratio (FAR). The zoning ordinance also makes distinctions between different land use types and establishes permitted land uses.

Another thing zoning ordinances do is to ensure that land uses which are incompatible are not located adjacent to one another. These ordinances also ensure the safety and protection of the city or county by placing restrictions on building in flood plains and wetlands.

Part of the contents of a zoning ordinance would include requirements for planning permits where a developer wants to change the use of a particular land, or where development proposals are tendered, subdivision of land, construction of new buildings and any other change to the land.

Zoning Districts and Overlays

Every zoning ordinance for every city subdivides each city or county into zoning districts and overlays. In New York City, for instance, the zoning ordinance stipulates three zoning districts:

residential, commercial and manufacturing. Each of these districts is further broken down into low-, medium-, and high-density districts. So for instance, under commercial districts, there are low-density, medium-density and high-density commercial districts.

On the other hand, zoning overlays refer to special purpose districts formulated to attain certain specific results and aesthetics. They are designed to specifically meet the needs of particular neighborhoods. For instance, in a residential block, a commercial overlay may be permitted to serve as a retail outlet on the ground floors of the houses in that block.

Overlays could also determine height limits and other visible restrictions to preserve the historical flair of the block and retain a certain aesthetic quality such neighborhood has.

Zoning and Floor Area Ratio (FAR)

The Floor Area Ratio (FAR) primarily controls the size of buildings. It refers to the ratio of the floor area of the entire building to the area of its zoning lot.

The requirements for the Floor Area Ratio of a building development as stipulated by the zoning ordinance, differs from county to county, city to city.

The FAR doesn’t necessarily outline the height of the building or the site coverage, but rather measures the intensity of the site use. In New York City, the Floor Area Ratio of every zoning district equals the maximum amount of floor area allowable on that zoning lot when multiplied by the lot area of the zoning lot. So, if for example, the square feet of a zoning lot in a district is 10,000 and its FAR is 1.0, then the floor area of the zoning lot would not exceed 10,000 sq. ft.

Can Zoning Laws Be Amended?

Sure, zoning ordinances are legal guidelines acknowledged by the law of the land, and you’re familiar with how stringent laws could be. However, zoning laws must also have some flexibility to them to accommodate an ever dynamic culture and development practices.

A zoning ordinance can therefore be amended by either the local authority or the public to achieve desired planning results, or simply to try out new policies. So it must be beneficial to the planning goals and futuristic enough to accommodate future strategies.

There are two ways a zoning ordinance could be amended. The first is zoning text amendment, where the zoning regulations themselves are altered; while the other is the zoning map amendment, where the zoning designation is changed.

Either ways, it should be no surprise that such amendments are not easy to come by. This is because such amendments will have long-standing implications and will affect the bulk of the residents in that community since it would alter how land is used or developed.

The process of making an amendment is also rigorous and back-breaking, often requiring approval from a higher level government or city council. However, in some less established planning processes or structures, amendments could come by more often in order to achieve a specific planning outcome.

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