Can We Fix Zoning By Tweaking a Few Numbers? 

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5 years ago when Minneapolis made headlines for getting rid of single-family-only zoning they made the compromise to not adjust any of these other dimensional requirements. That meant that despite technically being permitted anywhere, in order to actually build a triplex you would need basically two plots of land anyways. This has lead to only 100 duplexes and triplexes actually being built since the change. Saint Paul right next door just passed their single-family-only reform bill this last week, in it they learned from Minneapolis's mistakes and really cleaned up these hidden numbers too, I'm very excited to see how it goes

Minimum setback requirements are so absurd. I'm in Scotland right now, and in the town I'm in, all the houses are set back 10 ft, instead of the 20 or 25 ft mandated where I grew up, and just that one change makes the neighborhood feel much more inviting.

I live in Fort Wayne, and I'm delighted you chose it. You're absolutely correct that this is a standard, boring, bland US city. I was surprised when you told us the minimum required lot sizes, because my house is on a corner lot, and I only have about 5,200 square feet of land. My house was made in 1945, so I'm guessing it was before the minimum lot size was determined. I love living in an older neighborhood, because it's very walkable.

I would love to see stores owned by people either next to their homes or on the first floor.

I particularly dislike required setbacks. I'd love to have a porch right up against the sidewalk (or a small home business storefront, but that's a slightly different discussion).

Setbacks are one of the worst laws in my opinion. The front lawns may look nice but they are an absolute waste of space. Let developers and people decide how close they want their house to the street, government (whether local or state) should have no say in that.

Austin TX is current in the middle of a fight to amend zoning laws to allow more density and make housing more affordable. Right now, if you want to build a $3 million home in Austin, it's pretty easy to do so. But when you want to build smaller, more efficient homes that are more affordable to a broader range of income earners, it's really difficult, even illegal. Of course the opposition is stating it will "destroy single-family neighborhoods". It as if every street is a slipper slope in these NIMBY neighborhoods. Not to mention most of the 1950s neighborhoods are currently being torn down and rebuilt as McMansions which is completely changing the character of the neighborhood because that is the only redevelopment currently allowed.

Sadly the city where I'm on the City Council is governed by an HOA that covers 90% or the city. The other 10% is in a flood plain. There's very little we can legally do. The state passed some progressive housing laws last year but they don't apply to existing HOA's. It's so frustrating.

I find it so bizarre that the U.S. is still struggling with this, given how it used to be extremely common (and effective) up until WWII and is still the standard in Europe today. Even most suburbs are built with more density (and of course also walkability, though it depends per country) in mind. Good to see you're showing the public oversees how it needs to be so the land is used better!

You forgot about maximum impervious surface coverage. Homeowners love having expansive patios for their outdoor kitchens and pool access. The more they spend on their patios, decks, and pools, the less opportunity they have to expand the building.

Modern R1 zoning in the US is the worst, but through collective action we can make it better!

I wish there was more crossover between permaculture and urban planning. Those narrow lots look great, but those houses won’t get very much sunlight. We can have small lots and sunlight by reorienting the houses so the long side faces south and not having a house directly south (maybe a street or a path there). On this note - @citybeautiful I would love to see a reaction video to Andrew Millison’s permaculture neighborhood video.

These places in North America with the abundance of dead space in front of the homes always feels very alienating and unintuitive.

Now that you talk about it, I realize that many older homes in my city have a 15ft setback from the street, and are built on a 30x30ft plan, giving 900sqft with 2 floors. While many of the mid century bungalows have a 25ft setback and are about 22x42ft , giving 920sqft, but without a second floor. Also important to note with the bungalows is that the long side faces the street.

Please consider doing a video on turning golf courses into neighborhoods for example there’s a lot of golf courses in San Francisco A city with a huge housing crisis

You miss a rather glaring aspect that zoning is predicated on. Infrastructure/Utilities. Water Supply, Waste Removal (Sewer System), Gas & Electric Supply … These things are determined by estimated population density/growth with some small percentage of overage. These are then installed Underground prior to building and are not simple to “adjust” later. So … take a typical “Block” … to make it simple … of 10 houses with 4-6 people per house (40-60 residents … Users of Infrastructure) … add 25% (60x1.25=75) just in case. In terms of “Land Use” yes, you could just change lot size but if you allow 1/2 lots … suddenly you have 20x(4 to 6) or potentially 80 to 120 residents in an area where the infrastructure is designed to carry/support a MAXIMUM of 75 … HOW do you manage more than doubling the Water, Sewer, Drainage, Electrical … not to mention Services like Police, Fire, School and …? Zoning is a carefully thought out overall design of “Carrying Load” of a given area and NOT simply the “Size” of a plot.

Houses should not have minimum sizes.

In Indiana, Fort Wayne is known as fort fun.. ironically of course

3-7 dwellings per acre in America, in the UK a new build estate would probably put between 25-30 houses in an acre, including roads. I wouldn't be surprised if they could get more houses in. You could literally put a terrace or houses in the front garden of an American home! The obvious answer is ditch the minimum size restrictions all together, the property developers will then build what people are willing to buy.

We don't have minimum house/Appartment sizes in Germany (So far I never heard of it there I live). When someone lives for example in a two family house and the kids moved out, it's possible to split the apartment into two smaller ones, so you end up with a three family house.

It is wild to me that there are regulations and laws trying to restrict housing density! Obviously nobody wants to live in overcrowded spaces like slums, but a moderate density is proven to be beneficial. Maybe it's because I'm European or maybe because I've always lived in a city centre, but that's crazy

RIP Fort Wayne :( You're bland now.

Liked this video, hoped it would be longer hahaha the end kinda surprised me, hope you make more videos on this topic, perhaps even more in depth

Your illustrations and animations are top notch.

Thank you for another great video!

As someone who’s considering getting a Master’s degree in Urban Planning soon I gotta say thank you for making these informative videos!! I’m learning a lot

I lived in a small town in OR where they kept putting new apartments and multi family in the back of our small 6 block 90's development away from collectors and the center of the community so the traffic through it would get exponential. More density is good am glad Oregon is going to allow more of it, I'm just doubtful about investment in infrastructure to support it. They run this state like a colonial backwater when compared to our big neighbor to the south. Those houses in Hubbard had huge setbacks I lived on a corner with the larger side setback. Place felt uninviting outside. Now I live in an infill lot that has the 15 ft in front of the house - its cozy.

Very informative. Thanks.

nice video! Oh the Urbanity! have a good video for visualizing housing density as well

The animations and graphics in this video are really good 👍🏼

The area where I live used to be 95% cornfields and it has been a victim of overdevelopment poorly planned, we have snob zoning and 4000sq.ft. houses and minimum lot sizes, 90% of the traffic is forced on 10% of the streets, all new retail is in soulless strip malls with enormous parking lots. I have lived in Germany and they do things the complete opposite. 5 story apartments with ground level retail, superior mass transit and much less car traffic. Suburbia should have their retail and residential rental properties done the same way in a central location with the single family housing surrounding it so it looks more like small town America as opposed to a leavittown

Urban planning isn't about one perfect way. Its beauty lies in how well we follow its principles, there's no single right approach. As always, a really informative video!👏👏

Moved to very bland Fort Wayne a while ago from a small city in the PNW. I moved first int0 their huge lot suburbs, but then luckily got out and moved into the close-in residential lots you are talking about, complete w/ the alley. The Fort's layout SUUUUCKS. There are tiny pockets of density that are slightly more walkable but "stroads" between housing are everywhere and make driving here terrible. To go anywhere you have to drive on them and to walk anywhere you have to cross them. Many places have no sidewalks too, especially along those stroads. They need a major re-do of zoning AND road design here to make it really livable, plus actual transit and sidewalk maintenance in winter.

I'm still learning about why's and how's zoning codes, so this was helpful. As an Austin area resident, this is actually a hot topic due to the city council's push to increase availability. Fingers crossed.

My city has a really nice dense downtown-adjacent neighbourhood. It used to be single-family, but has since been so in demand that it's a lot of multi-family in these usually 3-story vernacular-style old buildings. In fact, it's denser than downtown. What I can't understand is why they don't allow this sort of thing everywhere.. clearly, people love this place since it's so expensive! The same architecture and density without the age would be a godsend. I also walked down there a lot and can confirm that the front yard with the homes that have a shallower front "setback" (although sometimes it's literally nonexistent and the houses are at the curbside, especially on some corner lots) tends to become a high quality garden by the homeowners, to show off the property and gain a little more privacy. And you even get more private backyard space, too. I would love to live in a place like that! And they have such beautiful trees too, some roads have literal entire canopies where the street is completely shaded, it's gorgeous and our city earned National Forest City of the Year for it, as well as our nickname. I really hope my city revises those zoning regulations. I live in a single family neighbourhood that is medium-density as single family neighbourhoods go, but I really wouldn't mind if it turned into one of those denser downtown neighbourhoods

First city beautiful vid I have seen that I don’t agree with, hear me out The whole problem with suburbia is that it is an endless see of houses, no green space/trees/yards/privacy for the neighborhood kids to come over and play with your kids on, or to host a BBQ night. Shrinking lot size takes away the benefits of single family homes, the worst offenders are large homes with no yard that all look identical, forcing seas of driving only neighborhoods with no community. It also doesn’t solve the housing situation anywhere as much as condos and multi level buildings do. I think one should either be in the city or the country. Either have a yard and a community or have a city filled with tall buildings and walkable to every shop and amenities. Just packing more single family homes on less land is the worst of both worlds-an endless sea of car only identified wooden houses with no green space or community or privacy, but still not affordable or in a walkable neighborhood.

Mixing uses so people can walk, bike, or at least drive less is important to reducing traffic. If we increase density of homes while leaving them single use people will have to drive a lot and be dense so traffic would get worse. Mixed use can reduce the need to drive reducing overall traffic.

I love the Lego architecture skyline sets in the back!

The one issue when it comes to removing lot coverage requirements is the issues with having too much impervious surfaces. Not impossible to mitigate but definitely could cause some complications

Great video!

Thanks for the 10% off. I ordered one.

When you calculate the gross units / acre at 3:14 why do you include the entire street width? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the midpoint of the street since the street is shared by the blocks on each side?

At 3:12, the streets included in the calculation should only show covering 2 of the 4 streets, e.g. North and East streets. The South and West streets will then be captured when counting the blocks to the South and West. Of course, I wonder if showing this accurately may have led to many comments of people saying "you missed 2 of the 4 streets!" So I'm hypothesizing this wasn't actually an oversight but rather was a calculated intentional misrepresentation to avoid sidetracking fewer viewers.

:How does snow storage play into this...do we see wider lots in more northern citys as the front yards are used for snow storage off the driveway?

Im am zoning counselor for Hillsborough County FL and i have to repeat to most callers that just because you have the acreage for multiple dwelling units doesn't mean you can automatically have it, and its often the lot width that kill potential minor subdivisions.

It's not just stipulations about the lots themselves and what's on them, there's also the issue of regulations surrounding the adjacent infrastructure too. Even if you shrunk lots, implemented missing middle housing, allowed for mixed use developments, got rid of minimum parking and set back requirements, you'd still have to contend with oversized suburban roads that are unnecessarily wide relative to their surroundings.

I'd love to see you or Oh the Urbanity make a video responding to John Phillips, a radio host for 790 KABC in SoCal who exemplifies everything wrong with the American car-centric mentality. Phillips is the ultimate NIMBY suburbanite, and I personally find him to be even worse than Randal O'Toole. Phillips literally celebrates the deaths of "jaywalkers" and regularly tries to depict transit/walkability advocacy as a woke identity politics issue. At least ROT tends to stay away from the whole culture war thing. In fact, you should totally call Phillips' show and have a debate with him!

Here is what I would prefer: 1. Eliminate side yard minimums 2.Keep lot coverage ratio maximums the same 3. Allow 1-unit buildings to be attached to each other 4. Allow parking space (including attached or detached garages) to be on the front yard 5. Make the maximum square footage of a 1-floor, basement less house be 2000 sq ft

Your take on minimum house sizes feels optimistic. These regulations may have been a bit more benign prior to the existence of state building codes, but they have not aged well, and have ultimately become a tool of exclusionary zoning, particularly in regions with high land costs where vacant lots alone can be pricey and the cost of building the minimum house easily transcends the budgets of most. It's a restrictive tool that helps drive the development of McMansions for a small slice of our population.

It would be interesting to have an episode on “housing crisis” so often mentioned in the channel. Is it a recent phenomenon or has the situation always been bad? For example, how much % of a family’s income goes into housing today vs 30 or 50 years ago? Does it affect equally different parts of the US? Etc.

I live in Vienna, where the primary zoning restriction is height. Is that a thing in more urban areas in the us?

zoning in the suburbs in the US is more restrictive than it was in soviet ruled eastern europe

I think an extremely under apprecoated fact is that reducing regulation doesnt force people to build higher density housing, it happens because people WANT higher density, and are willing to buy those propertys, no one is forcing them to. And if you remove that option from them because you think people are buying higher density property because they dont have any chocie, well then your cutting people out who now wont have anywhere to live in that area at all which is much worse than making people compromise on smaller propertys

Hi mate, can you do a video on zoning density of single house blocks and the removal of tree cover and gardens. I'm in Australia and we have suburbs like you suggest. They have turned into gutter to gutter blocks with no gardens or trees. The temperature of where they live has increased and on street parking becomes a huge issue. google map -34.66238013118144, 138.6741416479643 this is an example

Be careful with zoning reform. You start with adjusting a few setbacks here and lot sizes there and before you know it, you are lobbying state government to ban Level of Service and mandated off-street parking. Excellent video!

My spouse and I have no kids or pets. When we lived in the EU we had an apartment that was 70 square meters or approximately 750 square feet. Because the ceilings were high, 4 meters or 12 feet, it felt incredibly spacious and was more than enough room for us. When we moved to his home city back in the States, we looked for a house in town so we wouldn't need to own a car. We're on a 7500 square foot double lot with a 1400 square foot house. Most houses are on a single lot of about 3500 square feet. The house is double the living space that we had before and it's frankly enormous to me and way more than we need. We walk to the grocery store and carry our food home. Most of the rest of the world does this. Other people in our community do it also; we're never the only ones carrying our groceries home. I think American communities would benefit from an adjustment of expectations in terms of what people view as reasonable.

Ah, Shanghai. Yes, it's the golden archetype we all aspire to.

I live in Serbia, this is my situtation. I write in metric, so hear me out: My house is 70 sqrm in base, 2 floors, total 120 sqrm of livable space (if you exclude the garage). Lot area is 370 sqrm, of which, 70 is for the house, 200 is in front of the house, and 100 is back yard. Distance from house to the street is about 18m, and lot width is about 12m. I have 400m to school, bust stop, kindergarten, a factory, a mall, corner shop, hardware store. There are small apartment buildings in the same area.

Watched this back on Oct 7th on Nebula. Another fantastic video about something I hade no idea I need to know about! Loved it! One of my favourite creators on Nebula. Thanks, Dave!

I live in Muskegon, Michigan and the city is going one neighborhood at a time and either allowing up to 4 units per lot IF they have an alley with parking in the back, or 2 units per lot if there is no ally or no parking in the back. We are trying to make up a 5,000 unit deficit in housing over the next 3 years.

@citybeautiful The next suburb up has a minimum house size of 2500 sq feet and I don't know how they pulled this off but there are no apartment complexes in the city of 28,000.

Wait til city beautiful hears about objective design standards for multi-family housing, which is a trend in CA. Those standards can extremely opaque and ironically open to staff interpretation. That being said, it limits the risk of abusing discretion at the council/commission level - so its a nuanced topic.

Single-family housing generally has front setbacks because single-family housing was originally designed for children, in an era when children actually wanted to play with random neighbors and parents were comfortable with them being out on the street side where everyone could see them. It was a selling point. Also it was an era when people opened their windows, and some distance from whatever noises/smells the neighbors were making might be welcome. The front setback also in the past often served the purpose of being space in which to make up changes in grade, so that a street-efficient layout could be continued rather than leaving gaps where terrain was inconvenient.

6000 sq ft for one lot? That's a lot (pun definitely intended). Our very comfortable house is built on plot size of 1200 sq ft with 2.5 floors (ground + 1 + half on the second) and that's a very comfortable living space for a family of 4. Given we don't have the insanity of stroads and therefore don't need massive lawns on the front and not much space is needed for parking. We also have a park in front of the house and trees all along the street so greenery is not missing again alleviating the need for big lawns. Most residential zones in and around the city (Delhi NCR) have some green space nearby so this is not unique to our locality.

3:13 Shouldn’t gross acreage include only half the street on the perimeter?

I think a better way to get higher density is get more households into one house rather than making smaler houses. Doublehouses are an obvious example for that.

Great explainer! I was just looking into my local zoning codes and it was v confusing so this definitely helps. It’s so infuriating so much of our house problems boil down to zoning laws!

It is insane back in the early 50s families might have lift on 3000 sft lot in a house of 1000 sft size print. Lets have 5 families of 4 People life like that. That 15000 sft plus + frontage road. Now today it is more likely to have 3 people living in on average 6000 sqft lot so so for 18 people you now need 36000 sq ft. Considering that the population of the US is more twice what it was in 1950s no wonder that home prices are crazy.

I think a good policy would be suspending zoning rules for one or two existing lots per block as first come first serve, which would allow more density without effecting "neighborhoodcharacter" much. Even a ten story building wouldn't do much overall if it only had a 1 lot footprint.

3:10 You should not include the streets on all 4 sides of the block to calculate gross acres, or if you do, you should only count half of each street (because the other half "belongs" to the next block/acre.

Zoning Codes are made from very,very bad planers,wow i hate Suburbia❤

Thanks for the informative video!!! Content like this helps us all become more educated on how to make OUR city beautiful.

I love your videos, i watch them pretty often and like their length and how they're made, it's amazing. But please at least include a graphic with the metric system, maybe in brackets or something, I'm sure I'm not the first one to ask this and I don't know how much of your audience uses the metric system, but imo it really would be an improvement, but still love your videos, just not the imperial system. Edit: I know it's about US zoning so the metric system's definetely not as important as in european zoning, but just for imagination, it's far easier to imagine a meter than a feet if you grew up in europe.

Speaking from UK yes you do need a minimum size. I have seen new build done to our minimum size you get bedrooms just big enough for a bed and nothing else. The smallest houses have almost no storage space. developers will build the worst houses they are allowed to build.

With my neighborhood, I think the city (or the developer) was well intentioned, but they missed the mark. The lot sizes are small, and the driveways are small. Problem is, we're in the middle of a huge car-centric suburb, so nearly every household has multiple vehicles. This makes parking in the neighborhood a nightmare, and street parking is everywhere, but the street is pretty narrow. This isn't the end of the world normally, until you have to deal with moving vans and delivery vehicles. It's not unusual for a street to be completely blocked off. It sucks for pedestrians to because they're constantly having to dodge the cars. At least the speeds are low from the tight quarters, I guess.

Ft Wayne being the most accurate and sad thing as a Hoosier

City of Fort, Indiana. Nice prop. That’s my home town.

Basically, the government is telling you what land you can own and what you can do with it. That's a hard NO. When the government pays my mortgage and bills, then, and only then, can they dictate what I do on/with my property. This applies to HOAs as well.

I can't stand the burbs, primarily b/c they require having a vehicle. I wish Detroit was still a safe city, b/c it was walkable when my mom, b. 1944, attended grade school. It was still walkable when I was born 20 years later, but had become a haven for gangsters, which means NOT walkable.

A 950sf house is very tiny.

Too often there are cries of the missing middle and increasing density for the sake of increasing density...Without also including green space, transit, infrastructure (electricity, water, sewer, etc), services (schools, etc) and revisiting commercial placement (corner store, coffee shop, etc). There seems to be a bit of magical thinking that increasing density is a magic bullet that makes so many other urban ills better when it could compound existing problems. Setbacks among other reasons is a way of future proofing a street, if at some point it needs to be widened and the setbacks are insufficient, then a row of housing must be demolished to widen that road. Changing zoning is just one of many concurrent things that need to be addressed to increase density in the best places as increasing density for its own sake is just creating future problems.

"Take that, Muncie!" As a Muncie native, I'm offended 😂

cant help but have a minor nitpick 3:11 gross acre would be to the centerline of the roads, not the other side of them

It's so absurd from the outside. My house in the UK is way smaller than any of this, yet it's enough. Especially for a young couple just getting on the ladder. I live in a terraced house with a decent garden space and tbh I don't know why someone in my position would want bigger. That's far too much to maintain. Not to mention I have a small row of shops probably 500m away and others not much further. We drive maybe once a fortnight at most now because the city centre is also walkable. If every house inbetween us and the city was expanded to these sizes, it would be an hours walk because it's almost all terraced/semi-detached or small apartment blocks. Not to mention all the extra road capacity required if shops were not allowed to exist inbetween these houses.

Wasn't expecting to hear Muncie in one of your videos. Grew up there. I've always thought the downtown had great sized blocks for nice dense development. The city owns so much of the land there, so many empty lots with potential for urbanism and they won't come off of them. To be fair most of Indiana is bland.

(1) Outlaw ANY shops in R1 areas. (2) Zone the equivalent of the entire city of Monaco in just R1. (3) Wonder why your citizens are so car-dependent... US Americans sure are cute sometimes :D

Say what you want about Fort Wayne, not every city would have it in them to elect a mayor Harry Baals.

‫1st video on my youtube mobile homepage recommend‬ (: - mico

15 feet setback is way too much already… As far as backside setback, in Brazil it’s common to be able to built right on the border as long it’s distanced from the main unit, usually 2m. Lot coverage is usually 80%, ratio really depends, goes from .5 to 4 in most places (more is negotiable, usually with bonds). And setbacks are usually 5m front, 1m in one side only (we have 10m plots) and 3m back.

imo, to get more density we should just build apartments or other developments like that. What is the point in owning a SFH when your neighbor's house is 2ft away from your windows, if I wanted to practically share a wall with my neighbor, I'd just get a condo. Having big yards is part of the appeal of SFH.

1:52 "(15) Heliports" I don't even know what to say...

Feedbac! 1) Thanks for this, but I think that the teaching format made the topic more difficult to digest. I suggest remaking it by giving us a preview at the beginning, and then using a formal lecture to go from point to point, where each point is a term/phrase. 2) 3:11 You highlighted in yellow the streets for gross acre. I think that this would be unfair in the sense that you highlighted both sides of the street. I think that your highlighting doesn't represent actual calculations, because most places probably calculate only to the middle of the street. After all, if both sides are calculated, then wouldn't both sides be factored into neighbouring blocks?

The front yard setback needs to be universally abolished.

YES!!! FORT WAYNE MAKES IT INTO A VIDEO!!!! ouch, just average huh? Im not sad, you're sad

bro really really called fort wayne out

LMFAOOOOOO take that fort wayne! --Indianapolis resident

The real question is if density is increased and land can be used to build multiple overpriced residences instead of just one - has anything been really solved?

Is this also happening in states like texas?

I do not get neighborhoods where they do not have stores. People need to get into car to buy anything.