In 1959, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a local zoning ordinance that raised the minimum lot size in a portion of Fairfax County from one half to two acres, effectively excluding anyone without the means to purchase a larger lot. Single-family zoning originated in the famously liberal enclave of Berkeley, California, where the Elmwood neighborhood adopted single-family zoning in 1916, effectively setting up the area to exclude lower-income households into the present day.īy the 1960s, the term "exclusionary zoning" had come to denote the detrimental discriminatory effects of planning and land use policies of the 20th century. Exclusionary zoning persisted in more insidious ways and became a defining characteristic of mid-century America's suburbanization and white flight, including single-family zoning. Other cities passed similar ordinances until 1917, when the practice of racial zoning was declared unconstitutional in the case of Buchanan v. In 1910, Baltimore passed one of the first racial segregation laws, prohibiting Black people from moving into white-majority areas and vice-versa. However, since their inception, American zoning ordinances were also used as a tool to maintain racial homogeneity and exclude "undesirable" residents, sometimes outright banning specific ethnic groups, thus institutionalizing housing inequality. Social reformers in the early 1900s proposed zoning as a tool to exclude undesirable uses (such as noxious industrial facilities), reduce urban congestion, protect public welfare, and prevent the spread of slums. Zoning grew in popularity in the early 20th century as cities sought to separate dangerous or polluting uses (such as manufacturing and waste disposal) from residential areas and maximize the social utility of grouping certain uses together. ![]() Zoning is a planning tool that regulates land use, including how land can be developed, the type and size of buildings that can be built, and how buildings relate to their surroundings and the public realm. The practice of allowing the development of very few uses in a neighborhood is referred to as exclusionary zoning.
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