How Rezoning Land Can Boost Communities

In the municipal United States, pieces of land from large to small are zoned, designated, for specific purposes that must be maintained. The local government is usually responsible for the zoning process. However, zones are rarely set in stone: municipalities can rezone land, changing its allowable uses, and regularly do so.

Improving Neighborhoods

The zoning and rezoning process can be used to benefit local communities. It can be used to create recreational spaces like public parks and squares that everyone can use, affordable housing, new schools, and exclusively locally owned and operated shops and restaurants. Rezoning can protect communities from gentrification, allowing people to continue to affordably reside in the neighborhoods they have called home for decades.

Zoning rules can require specific landscaping features that beautify areas, such as trees and flowers. They can prevent the construction of high-rise buildings in historic districts.

Better Transportation

New zones can mandate sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike lanes in areas that previously didn’t have them, or didn’t have enough of them, creating safer spaces for pedestrians and bicyclists. The rezoning process can also be used to improve public transportation systems and incentivize their use. When more people take public transportation, they generate less pollution and traffic than if they were to drive.

Rezoning land can ensure that residential areas are not overcrowded and do not become traffic hotspots. Regulations can mandate a minimum number of parking spaces per business, reducing traffic in commercial zones. 

Benefits to Urban Economies

In the 2010s, Millenials trended towards living in urban areas, a preference less common in previous generations. Rezoning can and has incentivized this migration pattern, revitalizing slowed-down urban economies by providing more consumers for local businesses. When done carefully, this sort of rezoning can protect urban neighborhoods from a widespread rise in housing costs, allowing people to remain in their longtime communities.

Zoning and rezoning can have tremendously beneficial effects on local communities.