Building a More Equitable Land Use Regulatory System: Toward a Twenty-First-Century Zoning Enabling Act.

In 1922, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued its first Standard State Zoning Enabling Act, a model law authorizing local governments to engage in land-use regulation. Authored during a period of rapid industrialization in U.S. cities, as well as high rates of European immigration and the Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern industrial cities, the Act delegated to local governments the power to regulate and direct growth within their borders. The Act, last updated in 1926, has proven durable in its first century, as its principles and language are, even today, found in the zoning enabling laws of nearly every state. However, the broad power conferred to local governments under the Act—to engage in land use regulation for broad and undefined general welfare purposes such as maintenance of community character and property values—has brought about serious negative consequences for housing affordability, racial equity, and access to opportunity. This essay argues that a twenty-first-century zoning enabling law, focused on ameliorating high housing costs, addressing racial segregation, and providing access to opportunity for all communities, is needed for land use planning and regulation to respond to one of our most urgent social crises. The essay discusses the origins of the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act and its adoption into state laws; explains how zoning has been used to systematically segregate and preclude non-white and low-income communities from accessing economic opportunity; and offers suggestions for how an updated zoning enabling law could direct local governments toward more equitable land use regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]