{"id":17084,"date":"2024-01-20T14:19:52","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T19:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=17084"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:12:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:12:55","slug":"singling-out-single-family-zoning","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-111\/volume-111-issue-4-april-2023\/singling-out-single-family-zoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Singling Out Single-Family Zoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Single-family zoning is increasingly under attack in both the popular <\/span>press and scholarly journals. Critics highlight how zoning districts that <\/span>allow only detached, single-family homes exacerbate racial and<\/span><\/span> eco<\/span>nomic<\/span><\/span> segregation and perpetuate wealth disparities. Although a few <\/span>local and state legislatures have eased regulations to permit denser<\/span><\/span> de<\/span>velopment<\/span><\/span> in existing single-family neighborhoods, such neighborhoods <\/span>remain the dominant component of American zoning. The power of local <\/span>governments to impose zoning derives from the police power<\/span>\u2014<\/span><\/span>tradition<\/span>ally<\/span><\/span> understood as the power to legislate in furtherance of health, safety, <\/span>and the public welfare. These traditional concerns seem to provide little <\/span>justification<\/span> for<\/span> prohibiting<\/span> duplexes<\/span> and<\/span> triplexes<\/span> in<\/span> single-family <\/span>enclaves. Recognizing this, many early zoning proponents feared that <\/span>courts would strike down exclusively single-family districts. They<\/span><\/span> con<\/span>fronted<\/span><\/span> criticism that such zoning was merely aesthetic in nature and any <\/span>actual benefits it conferred were problematically limited to those wealthy <\/span>enough to live in a single-family home.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

This Article provides an intellectual and legal history of single-family<\/span><\/span> zon<\/span>ing<\/span><\/span> districts. While others have documented the history of zoning generally, <\/span>the discrete justifications for single-family districts have not been closely <\/span>examined. This Article explains how a number of prominent early supporters <\/span>of zoning, through writings and speeches, formulated distinct arguments in <\/span>defense of single-family districting and refined those arguments in the face of <\/span>legal challenges. Supporters justified single-family zoning as one component <\/span>of a comprehensive zoning regime grounded in careful consideration of a <\/span>community\u2019s existing needs and future demands. Because comprehensive <\/span>zoning itself constituted a valid exercise of the police power, they argued, it <\/span>rendered valid individual components, including single-family districts, that <\/span>may not have been independently justified.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Continue Reading Singling Out Single-Family Zoning<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nGT-GGLJ230012<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Single-family zoning is increasingly under attack in both the popular press and scholarly journals. Critics highlight how zoning districts that allow only detached, single-family homes exacerbate racial and economic segregation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10024,"featured_media":0,"parent":17071,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-17084","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17084"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23242,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17084\/revisions\/23242"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}