Zoning Rules!

Zoning Rules! provides a dense but highly readable introduction to land use regulation in the United States for non-economists, non-planners and even those, like this reviewer, who have little prior knowledge of American land use control. However, the book is more than an introduction, and provides closely argued insight into multiple facets and stakeholder positions in American land use regulation over the past century.

Drawing on a long career in studying, teaching and simply being intrepid in seeking out explanations for observed phenomena in land use regulation, Fischel presents many inter-connected stories that show what zoning in the US is all about. Starting with some digestible foundations to topics such as land use and land economics generally (Chapter 1) and the legal structure and judicial supervision as the context for zoning activity (Chapters 2 and 3). Fischel sets out the position, in Chapter 4, that land use regulation can become the mechanism by which property tax can be effectively wielded as a ‘fee’ for public services. This is only possible due to the structure of US local government. Local governments mostly have considerable control over their tax raising and spending, which therefore make voter decisions sensitive to how tax is raised and how tax monies are spent on their local services. Chapter 5 presents a non-mainstream economic history of zoning, where its popularity is not the result of top down or progressive innovation by a few individuals, but as being driven, bottom- up, homeowners protecting the value of their property. Chapter 6 demonstrates how some economists’ tools can fruitfully be used to analyse zoning disputes. Chapters 7 and 8 address zoning in suburban and metropolitan development patterns, in particular, the pattern in suburbs of the shift from zoning as ‘accommodating development in an orderly fashion’, or ‘good housekeeping’ in the 1950s, to zoning as ‘growth control’ starting in the 1970s. The final Chapter provides remedies for what the author calls ‘excess regulations’.

The title of the last chapter should not, however, lead us to conclude, therefore, that Fischel’s position is simply a free market advocate, as he has been labelled elsewhere. He himself argues: ‘The laity should be skeptical of those who offer unambiguous advice’ (p367). This attitude is reflected in the ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ arguments he presents on the many issues and cases in the book. The relevance to urban designers in a non-US context may be in the dynamics of bargaining in property disputes, and in the insights into how economists think about development, growth and urban form.

Zoning Rules! is not an easy read, but, with its serious but balanced, if primarily economic, analysis told through a flow of witty illustrative cases – one section is entitled “‘Garden Cities of Tomorrow’ Would Work if Tomorrow were 1905” – it is an ultimately rewarding foray into the world of American land use planning.