A Standard State Zoning Enabling Act

United States Department of Commerce, Advisory Committee on Zoning

Provides a template statute letting any state legislature hand its municipalities the power to separate land uses by district, and nearly every zoning code in the United States still descends from the model it set out.

Read it

Where it is now wrong

The template most American zoning still descends from. The single-use, low-density pattern it made standard is now the main thing blamed for sprawl, segregation by income and the housing shortage, so read it as the origin of a constraint rather than as guidance.

Before you start

FreeIntermediatelink checked 17 Sept 2026

Groundwork for

Works in the library that name this one as a prerequisite.

The Economic Implications of Housing SupplyEdward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2017House prices above the physical cost of construction are the visible signature of local land-use regulation, and that regulatory constraint on supply, not scarce land itself, is what makes coastal American cities so expensive.

Filed under Urban Design & Planning in Architecture & Built Environment.