COURSE SCHEDULE
Week 1. The History and Law of Zoning
Summary: The basics of how zoning came to be, how its roots include racism and classism, and how zoning tools have evolved over time
Readings: A Better Way to Zone, Chapter 1: A Brief History of Zoning The Color of Law, Chapter 3: Racial Zoning
Week 2. The Misuses of Exclusion
Summary: Focus on how zoning is based on a “DNA of Exclusion,” and the difficulty of reforming zoning to remove that bias
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 2, How Zoning Works Zoned Out (excerpt), Jonathan Levine
Week 3. Current Uses of Zoning Creates Lots of Problems
Summary: The role of zoning (and other factors) in reducing housing affordability, environmental sustainability/resilience, and fair outcomes for disadvantaged populations
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 1, The Dangerous Consequences of Current Zoning
Arbitrary Lines (excerpt), Nolan Gray
Week 4. Getting the Focus Wrong – Most Development is Redevelopment
Summary: Seeing the inherent focus of zoning on new greenfield development ideas and patterns, when 80-90% of all zoning decisions involve reuse of already developed land
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapters 3.1. and 3.2, Too Focused on First Time Development, and Blank Sheet Thinking in a Highly Constrained World
The Greenest Building is the One Already Built (excerpt), National Trust for Historic Preservation
Week 5. What Else Does Zoning Get Wrong?
Summary: The failure of most zoning systems to understand the financial consequences of new standards and discretionary approval procedures, and the misuses of “placemaking” in many situations
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapters 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5, Wealthy Thinking in a Lower Income World, Slow Thinking in a Faster World, and Picture Book Thinking in the Real World Excluded (excerpts),Kahlenberg
Written Exercise: Review a local zoning ordinance, identify which of the mistakes identified in Weeks 4 and 5 are reflected in that ordinance, and summarize those in a concise two-page memo addressed to an elected official
Week 6. Better Rules for More Affordable Housing
Summary: Specific zoning rules that can be removed, or new ones adopted, to allow a wider variety of more affordable housing through redevelopment.
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 4.1, Improving Affordability Missing Middle Housing (excerpt), Daniel Parolek
Week 7. Better Rules for Fairer Zoning Outcomes
Summary: The need to not just improve public notice procedures but remove unnecessary zoning hearings and to focus on outcomes as a key measure of zoning procedural success
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Section 4.2, Improving Equity Group Homes (excerpt), Dwight Merriam and Brian Connolly
Week 8. Better Rules for a Warming World
Summary: Specific zoning rules that can be removed, and new ones added, to promote more sustainable and resilient redevelopment.
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Section 4.3, Improving Sustainability and Resilience
The Case for Climate-Informed Zoning, Smart Growth America
Written Exercise: Review a different local zoning ordinance, identify one of the challenges addressed in Weeks 6, 7, and 8, identify what changes suggested in the readings could effectively address specific barriers to those community goals, and summarize the needed changes in a concise two-page memo addressed to an elected official
Week 9. Midterm Exam
Timed – completed independently from home – no attendance required
Week 10. The Legal Basics of Zoning Procedures
Summary: Understanding the basics of due process, equal protection, regulatory takings, and First Amendment protections necessary to craft defensible zoning reforms
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 5.1, Understanding the Legal Framework
Beginners Guide to Land Use Law (excerpts), Pace University Land Use Law Center
Week 11. How and When Should the Public Be Involved?
Summary: The need to remove the number of discretionary zoning approval hearings, as well as the use of subjective and manipulable development approval criteria when those hearings are necessary
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 5.2, Clarifying the Role of the Public
The Public Hearing Process for New Housing is Broken: Here’s How to Fix It, Brookings Institution
Week 12. Avoiding the Negative Trifecta of Current Zoning Procedures
Summary: Understanding the important role that expensive, time-consuming, and unpredictable zoning redevelopment procedures play in perpetuating unaffordable housing, unsustainable redevelopment, and unfair zoning outcomes
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 5.3, Reducing Time, Expense, and Unpredictability
Objective Design and Development Standards: More Housing; Great Places, Opticos Design
Written Exercise: Review a third local zoning ordinance, identify which of the procedural mistakes identified in Weeks 10, 11, and 12 are reflected in that ordinance, and summarize what changes would address those challenges in a concise two-page memo addressed to an elected official
Week 13. Addressing Redlined Maps is Harder Than You Think
Summary: Understanding the difficulty of trying to remove the impacts of “redlining” by simply erasing redline-based zoning lines, because of the unintended consequences to current populations on both sides of those lines
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 6, Fixing the Map
The Black Butterfly (excerpts), Brown
Week 14. Resolving the Tensions Between Good Zoning Changes
Summary: Five basic decision-making rules to apply when a desired zoning change to promote one key community value will make it harder to achieve other community values
Readings: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapter 7, Resolving the Tensions America’s Frozen Neighborhoods (excerpts), Ellicksen
Week 15. Getting Started with Key Zoning Changes
Summary: The importance of focusing first on removing outdated standards, criteria, and constraints, as well as greenfield-based standards, as the key to successful zoning reform outcomes
Reading: An Even Better Way to Zone, Chapters 8.3 and 8.4, Use the Wonder Bread Approach, and Embracing Reality
The Key to the City (excerpts), Bronin
Week 16. Final Exam
Timed – completed independently from home – no attendance required
