Sara C Bronin, "Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World" (Norton, 2024)

Oh, yeah.

You know, that's a great opening question.

So zoning is this invisible force that's adopted through law, created through law at the local level pursuant to state enabling acts that give local governments their zoning power.

And these local governments use zoning to shape where businesses can be located, where homes can be located, what kinds of homes, whether it's single family or two family or apartments, what kinds of businesses.

So again, not just where these things can be located, but really specifically what kinds of uses.

and how the buildings have to look.

Can they be more than two stories? Can they be skyscrapers? Zoning is what controls all of that.

And it does so both through a text that writes out what the rules of each zoning district are, and a map which locates where every district is.

So it's that combo, the text and the map that makes zoning law and has huge consequences for how we live in the world.

So wait a minute.

I live in New York City.

I actually can walk to the corner store.

I bitch and moan, it's two blocks away.

But most people, I think in this country now, you correct me because you're the expert, most people can't walk to the corner store anymore, can they?

No, we've zoned out mixed-use neighborhoods where people can access the things they need with an easy walking distance.

That means that in my neighborhood in Washington, D.C., the stores that were there 100 years ago are still allowed because D.C. zoning allows it.

But almost everywhere else, that kind of walkable, convenient, mixed-use neighborhood is not possible.

So when they passed zoning in D.C., I think about the time, not around 1926, maybe before.

So you can have a building now because it got grandfathered in, but you can't have a building after that.

Is that right? So there's no new stores opening up in your neighborhood anymore.

Well, except that here we have just within actually one block in either direction of my house, commercial corridors, M Street in Wisconsin, in my case, and other parts of the city, different streets.

But D.C. as an urban city has the type of zoning that reflects what has historically been there by and large.

So I personally and many people in D.C. can walk to a variety of stores unless you're in the upper northwest or in some parts of the city that have just developed what might have been called back in the day streetcar suburbs when we had streetcars.

But most of the rest of at least the central southern part of D.C. has this type of mixing.

Right.