What Are The Big, Long-Term Trends in Zoning?

Our work as community planners and plan implementers often requires a focus on details that draws us so deep in the trenches that we can lose focus on the larger forces shaping our nation and the world. To counter this trend, the 2017 Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute sponsored a lunchtime plenary session on “The Big Picture: Macro Trends in the Economy, Planning, and Zoning. Clarion Director Don Elliott, FAICP, was joined by professional colleagues (and former classmates) Andrew Nelson, MRE CRP (Chief U.S. Economist for Colliers International) and Bill Anderson, FAICP (Director of City and Regional Planning for AECOM Americas) to examine these issues. Don’s review of macro trends predicted that zoning will:
1. Continue to search for a balance between predictability with flexibility
• Because there is no right answer to this eternal dilemma
2. Find more efficient ways to be more flexible
• Because individual “one-off” negotiations are too slow for the world economy
3. Continue to create new hybrids of building form and permitted use controls
• Because – again – there is no right answer to the “form vs. use controls” debate
4. Get much more flexible about housing
• Because of continuing struggles with affordability, aging, and demographic changes
5. Allow more mixed uses in more areas of our communities
• Because it expands options and reduces greenhouse gasses
6. Adjust parking and loading standards downward
• to reflect autonomous vehicles and drone deliveries
7. Allow more personal services into residential neighborhoods
• Because our aging population needs them nearby, and to reduce delivery times
8. Allow an expanding range of “third places” for meeting and relationship-building
• Because more socializing will take place outside of our smaller housing units
9. Lighten up on nonconformities (pre-existing activities that don’t meet our new rules)
• Because most of them have few if any negative impacts
10. Become more prescriptive and inclusive on housing, jobs, and sustainability
• Because healthy communities need to “include” wider ranges of people and activities