Marble Falls      Recently, I talked to Professor Sara Bronin with the Regional and Local Planning Department at Cornell University about a project she is organizing called the Zoning Atlas.  She told me there were 30,000 zoning jurisdictions in the United States, and the objective of the atlas is to collect them all and upload them for easy access and information on the website.  They have 5000 done so far, which is a pretty nice start.

I was intrigued about this her project and the atlas.  I think it has a number of solid, civic applications.  It’s definitely a tool for organizers to try and suss out a city has sliced and diced the neighborhoods for existing and new housing.  It also has value to homeowners, so they know where their neighborhood stands and what’s possible.  Nonprofit and commercial developers, big and small, would probably find it useful as well.

Pulling New Orleans as an example, the graphic display of the city is excellent and the site is definitely user friendly.  There’s a pull down menu that allows the viewer to filter for single-family homes, four-plex apartment, as well as where you can build on small lots or add accessory dwelling units (ADUs), or what we used to call “mother-in-law” cottages.  That’s very interesting.   Go to the advanced search and you can also see where there are height limits or parking space requirements, as well as minimum lot size requirements.  In some jurisdictions, these kinds of things can add some discrimination and exclusivity to neighborhoods, so you might stumble onto some issues that were always under your nose.

Sniffing around the site, I also found the research section interesting – and ambitious.  The Zoning Atlas has partnered with various organizations in California, Connecticut, and New York in order to look at everything from housing affordability and the use of zoning to prevent that to climate impacts for future zoning.  One big project that could have wide, national applications involves pilots with tech folks at Cornell to scrape the data on zoning rules nationally where their objective is to “… to create a robust data infrastructure to help researchers better understand zoning’s impact on housing, transportation, the environment, the economy, education, and food supply.”  If they can scale that pilot, those tools could have broad ranging applications.

Yes, the atlas might be as much of a boon for developers as community organizers, but it might keep them within the lines.  And, surprisingly, no, the atlas doesn’t provide a link or information for a user to get to the underlying infrastructure in the codes that inform the graphic displays.  Clearly, they collected the codes from 5000 communities, so they must have these codes.  I’m not sure why they didn’t make them available as well.  If they did, it would greatly enhance the atlas as a one-stop shop when dealing with zoning issues.  The Atlas at this point is also still heavily East and West Coast.  Nothing for Arkansas, Iowa, or the Dakotas for example, but in fairness, they’ve still got 25,000 more to go.

Bottom line:  this is an interesting tool and worth a look now.  With some moves here and there to fill in the gaps and increase transparency on the codes and maps, it could be great and invaluable.  Keep an eye on this to see how it develops.